June 23 to 24—Valladolid and Leon

Dear Family and Friends,

Day 40, Saturday, June 23, Dani hopped out of bed at 9 AM once again to run next door and pick up tickets to Valladolid on the 11:00 AM bus. Once Martha was finally up and showered, we headed back downtown to see Salamanca in the morning before we hopped on another bus. We thought about drinking café con leche in Plaza Mayor, but had a quest to fulfill: Dani had spied a duffle bag for six euro 90 cents in one of the shop windows the day before. Martha would need to condense her two shoulder bags before getting onto the budget airline plane from Santiago de Compostela to Hahn-Frankfurt, Germany, so we’d had our eyes open. This college town seemed to offer the perfect solution, so we picked up the bag, saw that it was already getting on towards our departure time, and headed back to the hostel to pack and head next door to the train station.

The bus ride to Valladolid was set against the wheat fields once again; Dani coined it best as ‘expansive.’ The sky was tremendous in its blues against the creams of the fields, changing in tones with the winds unhindered by trees or buildings. The ride took just a few hours, landing us on the South of town. Our trek took us almost a mile through through Campo Grande (big town park), the pedestrian-only shopping district, into the huge Plaza Mayor here, and to the Hostal de Val. (We have found the Land of the Vals—not actually named after our dear friend in California, but the northern Spanish word for valley!) Dani secured us a room for 30 euro, a nice space up two flights of stairs and overlooking a quaint square with two restaurants, a fountain, and a pub below us.

We stowed our bags, took a deep breath, marveled at being able to so easily cover a mile with our packs, and headed back into the streets. We walked back down to the South of town to Casa de Cervantes, where the famous Spanish author of the Don Quixote texts finalized the first part of the book and drafted the second. The display covered two stories: a lounging room, Cervantes’ work room complete with first edition and drafting desk surrounded by books and overlooking the park in the yard, two separate sleeping areas for Cervantes and his wife, and a dining area with kitchen. The furnishings were admittedly more luxurious than Cervantes was actually able to use at the time, but it certainly gave the feel of a man at work and the time period in which he lived.
Back up North, we headed into the grocer’s for some bread so we could have our ensalada that night and decided to enjoy a menu del dia. The Caballo de Troya was packed for lunchtime, so they asked us to return at 3:45 PM, which gave us a chance to decompress back at the hostel for a while. We arrived right on time to enjoy a sincerely fantastic menu del dia–verduras naturales (hmmm … green things) and pimentos stuffed with cheese and potato under a red sauce for Dani; a lusciously rica bean soup with ham hock and tasty, tender pieces of beef with potatas fritas for Martha … followed by cheese cake and lemon mousse, respectively … all accented by ‘marshmellow-like’ bread and a jarra of vino from the Ribera region. Delicious! We also spent a good half an hour conversing with Paco, Emilia, and their son (residents of Madrid who have a home in Valladolid for the weekends) about Spanish and American politics. It got heated at times, but generally we all agreed that the current status of American ‘diplomacy’ does not make any of us happy campers. It was wonderful to meet this family and especially thrilling to be able to actively participate in Spanish-only dialogue!

From lunch we headed East to Casa de Colon, which was not really a house anymore, but marked the place where the great mariner, Christopher Columbus, died. It was a museum aptly describing the great explorer’s four voyages to America with a strong lesson on Colon’s downfall from hubris. Models of his sailing vessels, copies of letter sent to and from Colon, and memorabilia of his voyages cluttered the very-new exhibit hall, with its movie screens and peek-a-boo drawers filled with (no lie) unicorn horns and peacock feathers. We paid one euro each to get in, which was cheaper because we had been to the Cervantes home, and considered it well worth it, especially to see the routes that Columbus had sailed to cover so much of the Americans and claim so much land and wealth for Spain.

Still not finished hitting the free museums, we trekked a bit West to the sculpture museum to see the religious relics, bull fighters, and a tremendous display of the nativity scene set in the 18th century with artisans, beggars, and pub crawlers littering the streets. We had agreed not to stop and stare at every little detail on this visit, but enjoyed seeing the three-dimensional representations of many of the painting topics we had been studying.

Martha had about had it at that point; it was close to 9 PM, and time for her to take a nap. We walked by the cathedral before heading back to the hostel, where she napped until Dani woke her up around 11:30 PM so that we could go back to the Plaza Mayor. You see, Valladolid is the birthplace and home of Fray Tomás Torquemada, who was a chief investigator during the Spanish Inquisition. He put close to 2,000 people to death during his work to rid Spain of all Jewish and Islamic people who had not converted or only pretended to convert to Christianity during this dark period in Spanish history. So we headed to Plaza Mayor, where many were sentenced to death, to check out if any ghosts would appear! After about an hour, no ghosts visited (probably because the people had actually been put to death after being paraded down the main street of town to Plaza de Zorilla just in front of the Campo Grande that lay between us and the bus station). Plaza Mayor was also the bullfighting square back in the day, and we were thankful not to see any ghosts of bulls! This is definitely more of a business and living-in town, as Plaza Mayor had no students and tourists sitting in the middle of the plaza drinking cheap beers, instead the outdoor cafes were full along the edges of the plaza. The youthful party must have been elsewhere, but we were too wiped out to try to find it, and headed back to bed a little after 1 AM. We discovered that the party was actually right outside our lovely balcony in the plaza from about 2 AM to 6AM.

Sunday, June 24, we got up around 8 AM, enjoyed the fantastic shower in the community bathroom at Hostal de Val, and were out the door a bit after 9 AM. We pumped those legs back to the bus station to buy our tickets on the 11:45 AM bus to Leon. Dani wanted to walk along the river for our stroll back up to pick up our packs, and Martha really wanted a café con leche. Walking along the river was not the picturesque view we had anticipated: it was littered with graffiti and rubbish, broken windows with cats hopping through to lounge in the empty space, and many many drunk people just coming out of the pubs into the Sunday morning light. This is the first time that we had seen so many drunken folks anywhere in Spain (of course, it was also the earliest we had been out of bed on a Sunday, too!), and we wondered if this phenomena was just more common in this town than in others.

We walked away from the river to find some coffee, stopping in a shop where we sat next to a nicely dressed woman and gentleman. Dani thought, Oh, finally, someone dressed up to go to church. But, no, she was smashed, grabbing a bite to eat before crashing from the night’s partying. We paid the two euro forty cents for our cafes, leaving the customary tip of about 10 percent, continued our strolls through plazas, and made it back just at 11 AM as intended. By 11:10 AM, we were headed back to the bus station, tickets at the ready, packs and bags loading us down once again. The walk seemed shorter than our walk into town, and we made it in about the same time as walking without our packs.

The bus was late! Never before had this happened, so Dani hopped up from our seats at one point to check out what was the delay, and if perhaps we were at the wrong spot. We were not, there was simply a delay from Madrid. Soon, we were safely on the road again, once again somehow ending up with seats on the side of the bus that would allow us to look out the window for our packs. We have also taken to strapping them together to give any would-be absconders an extra bit of an “OOMPH!” in any attempts to move the big lugs.

Martha had the window seat this time, and watched the wheat fields go by, scattered among grassy open spaces and other spots that seemed to be ‘sleeping’ with wildflowers of red or yellow instead of soil-nutrient-consuming crops. Dani let the lull of the bus take her into sleep after the loud night’s rest.

We arrived at the Leon bus terminal around 2 PM, just a half hour later than expected. We walked less than a mile along the river, passing a set of tents staged for the festival that had begun the very day of our arrival in celebration of Saints Pedro and Juan!! Fiesta!! Lucky for us, the Hostal Bayou had an open room just off the main street for just 30 euro for the night; we got settled and headed back out into the street life and museums. First we returned to the river area to enjoy a Cuba Libre beverage and a small plate of Cuban-style rice as the tapas (wishing Charin and Ely could have been there) at one of the tents—each dedicated to a different country’s social group in Leon, such as Brazilian, Senegalese, and the aforementioned Cuban groups—before hitting the museums that were open in town.

A swift walk North took us past the main government building and the music center of Leon and up to the Museo de Arte Contemporario (photo to left), a fantastically huge building with windows the colors of the spectrum. Oh no, thinks Dani, not more modern art! Admission was free (bonus!), and we started with a display of fireworks that crafted into a young girl’s head and a movie about a female singer’s journey as her soft soprano was discovered, and into a room with another surreal movie that made little sense to us. With our backs against the wall, Martha enjoyed taking some photos of the odd scenes (photos were allowed, again, without flash) while Dani fell asleep.

We wandered through some more exhibits before finding ‘the one that made it all worthwhile’—a fantastic collection of photos and movies taken by Angel Marcos during a 2007 visit to China. The social context of the images was easily understood: he showed the towering skyscrapers of new construction in contrast with the hobble homes of many in Shanghai, as well as the common folk digging among thrown-away pieces of plywood to add to make-shift towering structures held together by chicken wire. The movie collection in one of the rooms held our attention for a good half-an-hour as the artist set up his camera to capture five-minutes at-a-time of common life in China, from a woman hanging her clothes to dry on one of the many laundry lines that clutter the sky between apartment buildings to a man working to scale and fillet fish on the street (many of them still alive even after he finished). These videos had quite an impact on Dani, who has been called to help with the social and cultural outreach in our church, giving her ideas and making the trip to the museum immensely rewarding.

From the museum, we headed back into the heart of town, through the old wall of the city that still stands, through the less-lived-in back streets of town, and down to the great Catedral in Leon, which was closed at the time as young children and their parents gathered in bleachers before a carpet with chairs and guitars awaiting their musicians. Festival!! It was time to get dressed for the nighttime, especially since Martha had been rebelling against European style all day by wearing her tie-dye T-shirt out of the house!

On our way to the hostel, we found another stage set, ready for some festivities to begin at 10 PM; already older folks cluttered the grounds before the large stage, leaning against the police railings or sitting on the walls surrounding the plaza. People were lined up for ice cream or popcorn and everyone was headed into the heart of the city around the Catedral area. Soon, we were among them again, headed back to see what a Spanish festival had to offer, and learning that it was a LOT! We stopped for a drink at a small pub called El Abanico that seemed full of locals, Dani enjoying a glass of the region’s wine while Martha sipped a beer. The first free tapas was a plate of fried potato chunks and bits of fried rabbit. We decided to stay for a second drink and were rewarded with the Garlic Soup as our second free tapas. This is definitely a recipe we’re going to attempt when we get home! The restaurant, which we highly recommmend should you ever be in Leon, was hopping as all of the locals were enjoying the week of fiesta, so we headed back out to the crowds.

The Plaza Mayor had a rock band stage for the younger crowd (the opening act was from Austin, Texas, the main act was a Leon local band), which is where we stayed for most of the time. We did wander back by where the older folks were hanging out (someone was talking and talking, so we moved on), and down once again to the river, where the jovial were dancing to different music styles from each cultural group and a DJ was set up on a big smoky stage getting young and old out to salsa and otherwise show off some fancy steps. We hiked back up to the old district of Barrio Humedo where the Plaza Mayor is located, and got lost in the backstreets while looking for somewhere to get some late night dinner that wasn’t fried. We were left hungry, alas, as we finally headed back to the hostel for some sleep.

Much love,

Martha and Dani