After two weeks of throwing ourselves off hillsides, a few days of luxury at the Parador de Carmona are very welcome. We arrive on Saturday afternoon and Carmona itself seems to be almost closed down. The only place we find open has one harassed waitress who appears to have made it her life’s work to ignore us. When she does bring drinks, the ice for our café con hielo has dirty black specks in it. We pay the bill and leave, thankful that we hadn’t placed a food order. We find out later that a local shopkeeper was fatally stabbed that evening in the town trying to stop a shoplifter. It’s shocking to think that this happened just down the road whilst we were safely sequestered in the tranquil surroundings of the Parador. It seems to have been a tragic, freak occurrence and certainly we don’t feel at all unsafe during our stay.
The Parador is a former fortress with stunning courtyard and central fountain. An outdoor pool in the hotel gardens provides a perfect spot to cool off. It’s so beautiful that for a moment, we consider sacking off Seville and just chilling out here for a few days, letting our bumps and bruises, from two weeks of paragliding, heal. But we were never very good at just relaxing, so we hop in the car and head into the city – we can’t really miss out on the capital of Andalusia. We take in the Plaza de Espana (but give the dirty looking boating canal a swerve) and enjoy just wandering round the Parque de Maria Luisa. After two weeks of being up in the air, we decide not to mount the stairs to the top of the bell tower (how could you beat the views we have had over Andalusia from the air) but we spend lunchtime booking in online to visit the Alcazar (thus avoiding the long queue of people without prior bookings). We take lunch at Bar Giralda, by the Cathedral, which has been recommended to us by Jose at Zero Gravity. It’s a great shout, delicious food and very reasonable prices. Back at the Alcazar we opt to check out the gardens first as the skies threaten to open at any moment. Once we have exhausted ourselves outside, we head indoors to marvel at the amazing interiors.
We’ve merely scratched the surface of Seville and would like to return, staying in the city next time to check out the evening atmosphere as well as some of the less obvious sites.
But for now, we move on to Cordoba and to a modern Parador, built on the site of the summer palace of Abd-ar-Rahman I, but now very much with all mod cons! The hotel is some way out of the city centre so we bus it in to check out the sites. Our first stop is the food market where, freed from driving, we tank up on Montilla and Pedro Ximenez to the extent that we nearly decide to miss the rest of the sights in favour of a park-based snooze. Oops! We force ourselves to take in the Roman bridge and then chill out in the orange gardens surrounding the Mezquita before calling it a day and heading back to base. Luckily, we have another day here, so we return bright and early the next morning to check out the interior of the Mezquita first thing as it is free of charge (and more importantly, free of tour groups) from 8.30am – 9.30am. The building was initially a huge open mosque but during the Reconquista a cathedral was built inside the structure. Due to this, it lacks the astonishing cavernous space of say the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul but, like that building, it does retain some impressive Islamic decoration. We approach one set of arched doorways and notice, through the ajar doors, that a man is working at a desk on the other side. It blows my mind that people are lucky enough to have this amazing space as their office on a daily basis. At 9.20am we are ushered out as the morning service is due to start, and, 15 minutes later we are sitting down in a nearby cafe with breakfast, listening to the deafening bells calling people to take the Eucharist.
Our next stop is the Alcazar, which, here, is much smaller in scale and more manageable than say the Alhambra or Seville Alcazar. This is reflected in the entry fee which is only a few euros. It’s still worth a mooch around, particularly for the gardens. It manages to take its toll on both of us, however, from a perfect storm of yomping up steep, high steps, followed by a period of inactivity as we take in the view from the top of the tower, followed by more high steps which gives both of us leg cramps, one after another! The only cure is a delicious lunch at Regedera, with food that is a world away from the usual tapas bar staples of patatas bravas and croquettas.
One thing we have encountered during our stay in Cordoba are parking guerrillas – people who hang around empty spaces pointing them out as you drive by looking for a spot. They then claim that they have ‘helped’ you out once you park and demand a tip. We avoid them each time and find our own free space, but it’s a strange and unnerving experience and we half expect to return to find the car vandalised from not paying up.
From Cordoba we strike out North on the five-hour journey to Segovia. Beck takes the second leg of driving and is enjoying the serenity of the empty roads when we take a junction and turn straight into a wall of cars. We’ve found Madrid! Negotiating Spain’s answer to the M25 we are soon out the other side and back onto empty highways. It will be a shock to the system driving on British motorways again in a week or so.
As with the Parador de Cordoba, the Parador de Segovia is located quite a ways outside of the town centre, but this has the benefit of providing an amazing view of the cathedral and aqueduct, both across the valley. Annoyingly however, whilst the hotel has two pools, a heated indoor and unheated outdoor, neither are open; the former is only open on Friday evenings and weekends and the latter is only open later in the summer. It’s frustrating as Beck has been swimming to exercise her still tender ankle, but it’s just another example of weird Parador bureaucracy. Another example comes when we order coffee and pastries for breakfast instead of taking on the full blowout buffet. When the bill arrives, we have been charged 3 euros more than expected. It’s not a biggie, but it turns out that this is because the offer we have seen is only available after lunch, not before. We are apparently, just supposed to know this. Go figure! The hotel itself is another modern venue and it feels a bit like Dr Evil’s lair (but in a good way!)
In the evening we try out the number 1 rated restaurant in Segovia according to Tripadvisor, Restaurante Taberna Lopez. It’s a very formal restaurant (they sweep the table for crumbs between courses) and we find it to be just ok – certainly not out of this world, but maybe that says more about the competition in Segovia than the restaurant itself. We order the local delicacy of half a pig which is seriously rich. We decline the opportunity to eat the ears, even though they are meant to be delicious. The next night we go to the other end of the dining spectrum and hunker down in a locals bar in San Marcos when a massive thunderstorm sweeps through. The food is just as good (giant prawns for Beck and tuna for Ben, plus a salad to share) as the previous night, yet this place languishes at number 33 on the Tripadvisor list. It just confirms that the site CANNOT BE TRUSTED!
During the days in between, we check out the Aqueduct, which is seriously stunning – a massive two thousand year old structure which dwarfs everything around it; and the exteriors of the Alcazar and Cathedral. The former was rebuilt in the 1880’s after the original palace burnt down. Its Disney-esque exterior is fun but we are a bit Alcazared out by now, so instead we continue on to visit the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso which happens to be free on a Thursday afternoon if you are a European citizen (getting it while we can!) The gardens, in particular, remind us of a cross between Chatsworth and (admittedly a much smaller) Versailles and are a pleasant place to spend an hour or so wandering.
From Segovia we head back into the mountains of Picos de Europa. The drive is around four hours so two hours in we stop to switch drivers, hoping to get some lunch at a roadside bar in a small hamlet. It’s dark inside with two tables of locals playing cards and hitting the hard liquor. They yell for the bar tender who arrives in the form of an aged lady. Coffee appears to be off the menu (well it is after midday!) but she is persuaded to make us two cups of warm milk and provide a sachet of instant decaff each. We don’t even try to ask for food! It’s an experience that both we and the occupants of the bar will probably laugh about for a long time after.