December 03, 2008

(Italy)…News comes in of Venice, which in the week beginning Nov. 30 is suffering from its worst flooding in 22 years. The height of the water in some places has reached 1.56 metres above its normal level. I was in Venice last month, and on two days when the moon was at its fullest, the streets were covered with a foot of water. It is quite entertaining to the tourist, but to the residents and the city itself, such continual attacks are a threat to this beautiful city, which was settled, it is thought, by refugees fleeing from the Germanic horde. I was staying at the home of good friends, Francesco and Ivana, the former a Sardinian, the latter an Italian of Slovenian descent. Much walking is required of this place in order to have at least some of it remain with you when you leave. There are some major thoroughfares (narrow ones) that visitors troop along to get to the Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge, and if you want to avoid these, then a detailed map is needed, along with the idea that you will walk and walk and not get very far. Often a street will look like a dead end, only for the smallest of arches to appear that leads to a small bridge and…etc, etc.
I loved everywhere here, but one special, beautiful spot is the Ponte Chiodo on the Fondamenta di San Felice, in Cannaregio district. It is one of only two bridges in all of Venice, including its lagoon isles, that does not have side railings. It leads only to a door of a private house, the Palazzo Chiodo (whose residents no doubt were teetotallers, or walked very carefully).
The other example is the Ponte del Diavolo, on the island of Torcello, which has two attractions: a Cipriani restaurant and the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, in which are the relics of Croatian Saint Heliodorus and a very faded, hard-to-decipher plaque dating from 639 that is the earliest mention of Venice. The walk back to our friends’ home from the Ponte Chiodo would take us past the imposing church of the Fondamenta Madonna Dell’Orto, near to where are four statues of moors, one of which over the long passage of time has had his nose rubbed down to a grey shine. Not surprisingly, this is called the Campo dei Mori, and the artist Tintoretto lived here. Indeed, he is buried in the Madonna Dell’Orto. One excellent bar in the area is Al Timon, on the Fondamenta degli Ormesini, which serves excellent tapas, known here as cicchetti. 
Another hot spot for these is the Do Mori, on the Calle dei do Mori, which is not near Campo dei Mori but next to the wonderful Rialto Market, which sells fruit, vegetables and fish. Francesco has been going to the same fishmonger here for years and calls him “maestro,” which is a touch I like, for the man surely picks out scallops and cod like Giuseppe Verdi picked out notes to suit the seasons. Do Mori purports to be the oldest bar in Venice, and its patrons come in for two or three cicchetti and a glass of house white before tackling the crowds again. And there are crowds: 60,000 residents and some 25 to 30,000,000 tourists per year. Back at Al Timon, the walk home would be then across a small bridge with a guard turret, which was closed at night to keep the Jews inside their ghetto (spelt gheto in the Venetian dialect, in which John is spelt Zwane, the slangy derivation possible here if you say Giovanni very fast without too much care to pronounce each syllable).
The ghetto—founded in 1516, the Jews were not subject to the curfew only after Napoleon invaded La Serenissima in 1797—has five synagogues, some of which it is difficult to spot. On one corner is an office run by the Jewish Chabad Lubavitchers community who are the latest arrivals and perhaps its most vocal one, in which every time I passed I saw a video playing of its dear Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who I remember seeing once in Brooklyn in 1993 driven in a limousine. I was also in Venice, apart from sightseeing, to run the 23rd Venice Marathon. Jokes abound of how it is possible to run 42.2 kilometres in a city that ostensibly has no streets.
The course starts outside of the city (a-ha!) at the 18th-century Villa Pisani, which through a gap in the wall I could espy its maze, whose labyrinth of hedges lead to a small tower wrapped by a circular staircase and on top of which is a statue. The race runs along the Brenta Canal, through some quaint towns and the not-so-quaint Maghera and Mestre industrial areas, in which some of the largest boats and cruise ships are made, and out into the Parque San Giovanni. By this time, runners are tired, but soon coming into view is the skyline of Venice. The last five kilometres are in Venice itself, and over the top of 14 bridges are placed ramps so that steps are not required to step up. There’s even a special pontoon bridge to get competitors over the Grand Canal, and this can only be run—actually, by this stage of the event, walked—by official marathoners, which is a delicious sense of entitlement if you’re a traveller. It was the day after that I visited Torcello and the other Venetian islands, letting the vaporetto water taxi do the work, not my hamstrings.
Murano is famous for its glass, which on the rare occasion can be seen in its manufacture, the blowers preferring the cool that comes in through open doors to the gawks and stares that also enter. Of the sellers of these expensive creations, Venini is the most expensive and has a beautiful shop right where the vaporetto stop is. Wandering far away from what is certainly a touristy spot, we found the sterling Ai Bisatei osteria, on Campo San Bernardo, where we ate a local, hard-to-find specialty, spleen seasoned in lemon and pepper.
Burano is famous not for glass, but for lace, as well as for its colourful houses. A local told us that this is a relatively new concept and that the bright colours actually harm the brick buildings, which would originally be whitewashed only. The penultimate island—before Torcello itself—was Mazzorbo, which is the quietest by far and is connected to Burano by one bridge. Right on the far corner is the 8th-century Chiesa di Santa Caterina, which has the most wonderful worn marble floor. Within a roadside shrine, on the way to the church I saw the small painting of Christ that is the subject of the photo above.

October 22, 2008

(Portugal)…I decided to get off the main E-4 motorway in northern Portugal at the town of Mirandela. There was no rhyme or reason for this, just that I had become bored, even though as far as motorways go, Portugal has to have some of the world’s emptiest. I was heading into the lonely region of Tras-os-Montes, all those esses pronounced with drawn-out esh sounds. I took a lonely road, and then I took a lonelier one and found myself in a space of a short time in two villages not even on my map. The first was named Soeima, the second Gebelim. There is little information to be found on them, other than the first has a population of 180, the second, 259, and that the name of Gebelim derives from an Arab word jabalain, which means “between two mountains.” The village’s crest was wonderful, two intercutting mountains and a black boar beneath two olive sprigs. A Roman bridge is in the area, and its church is dedicated to St. Martin.
It did feel that this region hugging the inside of the Spanish border was twice removed. Firstly, it is in Portugal, not Spain; secondly, it is difficult to get to if you do decided to make it to Portugal, as inevitably one first goes to either Porto or Lisbon. This is a realm where bear and wolves still exist and the locals play a form of bagpipe, together with their cousins in the Spanish province of Galicia to the north, called a gaita, played by a bagpiper called a gateiro and made from the wood of fruit trees: apple, cherry and olives.
The mountains I was passing through had the name of the Serra de Bornes, which added to the sense of the imposing country I was in. I strolled around both Soeima (the subject of the photograph above) and Gebelim. This is the land that tourists want to see—stubble-chinned ancients trying to pull stubborn mules off hay carts parked beside stuttering fountains and widows dressed in black shawls and headscarves tapping across cobblestone lanes with canes. 
A considerably larger town was Mogadouro, which has both a castle and a church and a name suggesting I was nearing the area’s famous wine-producing valley. When Mogadouro first got its start, the Douro River was a narrow river with occasional rapids. Today, it has changed dramatically, with heavily terraced vineyards and a series of dams that flooded the valley and allow pleasure craft on wine-tasting adventures access all the way into Spain and its Duero River (same river, different spelling). After a very comfortable night at the new Aquapura Douro Valley hotel (www.aquapurahotels.com/douro), I went back to my idea of remoteness and visited two monasteries a little farther west, in the villages of São João do Tarouca and Salzedas.
To reach the first I went through another little village called Mondim, where nearly every house is undergoing renovation. This is because the wife of the most successful Portuguese banker is from there, and together they practically brought the village. São João lacks the money but is blessed in other ways. Its cathedral with ruined Cistercian monastery (although some priests do live adjacent) dating to 1113 boasts a nationally famous painting of St. Peter by Gaspar Vaz, a student of Grão Vasco, also known as Vasco Fernandes. A very similar painting hangs in a museum in nearby Viseu. It is noteworthy for its depiction of Portugal’s then king dressed in pontifical purple, his face made to resemble a peasant, with rough features and a bold statement that where the regal power lays so does the religious.
I almost tripped over the tomb of Pedro Afonso, who as well as being the Count of Barcelos (where the country’s famous painted roosters are carved in tribute to the legend of an accused murderer being spared at the eleventh hour) was also the illegitimate son of the country’s King Dinis and the author of a work on the old enemy Spain entitled Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344. I like the idea of history books dedicated to just one year and written by someone not from the country chronicled. I think this should be encouraged. Have the history of, say, Canada chronicled by someone from Swaziland or Papua New Guinea, who may or may not have been there. Portugal’s noble laureate in literature, José Saramago, came here and wrote in his travel book on the country, “In spite of which, the traveler knows he has never been here before, knows he has never visited São João de Tarouca, has never crossed this tiny bridge, never seen these hollowed-out grassy riverbanks or the ruined building in front of him, or the arches of the aqueduct (and now, as he writes, he is not sure he has seen them this time either), this short incline leading firstly up to the church door, then down again to the town.” On the way to the second monastery, I stopped in Ucanha, which has a relatively steeply arched bridge dating to the 12th century that crosses the River Barosa.
Part of the bridge has a stone roof under which is a long line of stone seating where monks from the monastery in Salzedas used to sit and collect tolls from travellers. In the church in Salzedas the wooden pews where the priests lined up also had seating, ingenious wooden protuberances that would allow the priests to spread out their cassocks over so it still appeared as though they stood throughout the long masses. The monastery at Salzedas is more fascinating and crumbling than the one in São João and like so many times experienced by Saramago, I, too, had to search for the villager who had the responsibility of holding the key.
When he arrived, it solved one of my long-standing questions as I have travelled around Iberia—where do all the old men who stand around outside cafés and churches comes from? Well, here was living proof that there is a steady stream of up-and-comers biding their time to take the place of the nonagenarians. He was pleasant, and as the heavy wooden door creaked open, we stepped into a musty quadrant of chipped stone, invading plants and broken paving slabs. It dates to 1168. Supposedly, there is a renovation project under way, has been since 10 years ago, it’s just that no one has got around to doing anything yet. An English couple owned one room off the quadrant, I was told. There was nothing special about the room, any more so than the calm, decayed wonder of all of it, so I asked why they—anyone—would want to own this particular spot. The guide had no answers, and then it turned out that the owners’ family came to Portugal in 1752.
It is true that many of the grand port- and wine-producing families of the area (if the room is owned by one of these) originated in England, and the Netherlands, and tend to marry to members of other vintners, but it seemed odd yet magnificent that they would be described as English when there would be in most probability little difference between them and anyone else in the area. Salzedas also has a crumbling Jewish quarter. It is small, three or four minuscule alleys and a heap of rooms piled on top of one another. The sewage system smelt as it would have done—or worse—than when the monastery was built. Only one small flat looked as if though it had had some attention. When you stepped out of the quarter back into the square in front of the church, the light was blinding.

October 07, 2008

(Maine, New York, etc)…I recently took two trips north of New York City, so as to see parts of my “backyard” I’d never seen before. It has always fascinated me that Americans at the drop of a hat can decide to move from Los Angeles to new York City, or vice-versa, while in England—at least when I was a kid—eyebrows were raised if you decided to move from South London to North. “You’re moving where…? Well, good luck, it was nice having know you.” It was considered far less odd if you moved from Bexleyheath to the United States, than if you moved from Bexleyheath to Belsize Park, which my friends Shaun and Scott did.
It is President Dwight Eisenhower who Americans have to thank for their healthier attitude, as it was he who signed the Interstate Bill that upgraded and built the country’s web of fast roads. England, meanwhile, has a few major motorways that support thousands of kilometres of Roman lane. One of my recent trips was to Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, a state that measures 141,299 square kilometres, as opposed to England’s 130,423—which might explain why New Yorkers and all Americans need to drive farther and cannot be constrained by internal notions of what is and is not “home.”
The Adirondacks is the last true wilderness in the Northeast and in effect stretches all the way from the northeast of Pennsylvania, along the Appalachian Trail, across New York (where its bulk lies), across the Green and White mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, respectively, and out into the deep woods and endless lakes of Maine. Lake Placid itself is famous for hosting several Winter Olympics, the last being in 1980. It is wonderful to see how small and unimposing its Olympics facilities are in this age of hype, explosions, floating architecture and corps of 1,000 drummers. The town—one street really—is trendy in an escape-from-New-York-City way, while the lake surprisingly is off the beaten path. A smaller lake, Mirror, in the town often is mistaken for Placid, and vacationers paddle around it with smiles on their faces, maybe ignorant of the mistake.
We took a kayak and paddled around Placid, watching the Great Northern divers (known here as Common loons) surface, beads of water dripping off their striped necks. There are three islands in the lake, two large ones—Buck and Moose—and one small one—Hawk. We tied up at a tip of Moose and swam in the cool water. One female Mallard took a liking to us and followed our kayaks.
 Next to where we stayed was a Howard Johnson hotel, which maintains one of the very few HoJo restaurants still in existence. The ski jump is formidable, and why anyone would want to go down one is beyond me. Being English, I have embarrassed and fond memories of our own ski-jumping star, Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, who angered and delighted spectators with his antics at the Calgary Olympics, at which one Italian commentator termed him not a ski-jumper but a “ski-dropper.” But the fact is he could go down the ski jump, where I certainly could not. I believe a film on his life is coming out next year, starring Steve Coogan. The thing that impressed me about the ski jump is the very small space that exists as you get off the steps and onto the launching pad.
We took a beautiful hike along Indian Pass from the original Adirondacks hiking base, the Adirondack Loj, the last word spelt not as “lodge” but in a phonetic manner pleasing to its creator, Melvil Dewey, one of the original wilderness supporters and the inventor of the Dewey Decimal Library Classification System. (Was his name spelt Melvil, rather than Melville, because of his parents’ shared belief that trickled down to the son?) It is by Heart Lake, which also is cold and has more than a hint of vegetal matter when its bed is stepped on.
My second trip was to visit as many of the Shaker communities of the Northeast United States as I could—this was in a week of $4.50-per-gallon gasoline prices. I have always been interested in the Shakers (full name: The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) since reading an article on them in the September 1989 issue of National Geographic. Our first stop was Sabbathday Lake in Maine, which is the only remaining community. The only male Shaker left—there are five left today, although there are strong hopes of one more joining up soon—is Brother Arnold, and when we arrived, he was sweeping leaves in preparation for the upcoming tourism season, which runs there from May to October (www.shaker.lib.me.us). He chatted with us. A team of volunteers helps them maintain some 730 hectares.
This is a small amount compared to the Shakers’ heyday, in which there were more than 30 communities in more than 15 states, including a short-lived, all-black community. Sabbathday Lake has a calm that I will not even try to describe here. It is a place to sit and think and feel. Farther down the road is Alfred, Maine (www.ficbrothers.org), which until 1931 was a Shaker community but is today owned by the Canadian-based Brothers of Christian Instruction. We were accompanied by one of the brothers as we walked to the small Shaker graveyard there, and he asked if we wanted to hear him sing the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts, which was written there. It was a touching and beautiful moment and again screamed out simplicity.
From there, we headed to Canterbury, New Hampshire (www.shakers.org), and luckily we approached it along New Road from the east, which gives a wonderful view of this large community—the last one to give up operating—from the bottom of a hill. It, too, is a joy to walk around, but a nearby motorbike-scrambling course with accompanying engine sound rather destroyed the ambiance. More peaceful and far less known were the former Shaker communities of New Lebanon in New York and the nearby Inn at the Shaker Mill Farm (www.shakermillfarminn.com), which was a Shaker mill and now is an inn (that should be obvious from its name, no?) and sits by an idyllic waterfall. We stayed in a B&B, Hitchcock House (www.hitchcockhousebb.com) that was built by the Shakers as a private home. It was very pleasant (minus the statue of the comic Bald eagle in the front yard), and one of the owners, Ted Delano, told us that he remembered the Shakers when he was a very young lad.
Our last stop was in Hancock, just across the border in Massachusetts, which is a tourist attraction but adequately shows the live of the Shakers and explains how they cared for their every need, a concept that the director said amazed certain elements of today’s youth.
Two hikes lead from this living museum, one to the top of a hill called Mount Sinai, where the Shakers went during a brief stint when it was their fashion to receive visions, the other to a wood where they collected wood for their famous boxes and furniture. As we walked along this second path, a bear was spotted. When I finally saw it, I was convinced in my urban manner that it was a statue placed there to inform other urbanites what the country looked like. When it growled, we realised that it was indeed a Black bear and made a hasty retreat, ignoring most of the rules that are supposed to be adhered to when a bear is seen.

August 15, 2008

(Denmark)…I was in Denmark recently and made a beeline to the coastal town of Dragør. It was the second time I was there, both times on the number 30 bus, which leaves Copenhagen, crosses to the city island of Christianshavn and then travels to the suburb of Amager and onto the island of the same name. The scenery soon turns into countryside, and the houses become more spread out. Close to here is the country’s international airport, which can be walked to from Dragør but does not fill it with noise, perhaps because of wind patterns.
The first time I read of this attractive town was in a short piece of writing by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in his book El Libro de los Abrazos (“The Book of Hugs”)—“Durante más de un mes, la abuela vomitó desde la cama un incesante chorro de insultos y blasfemias de los bajos fondos. Hasta la voz le había cambiado. Ella, que nunca había fumado ni bebido nada que no fuera agua o leche, puteaba con voz ronquita. Y así, puteando, murío: y hubo un alivio general en la familia y en el vecindario. Murío donde había nacido, en el pueblo de Dragør, frente al mar, en Dinamarca. Se llamaba Inge. Tenía una linda cara de gitana. Le gustaba vestir de rojo y navegar el sol” (“For more than a month, the grandmother spewed from her bed an incessant stream of insults and blasphemies of the coarsest language. Even her voice had changed. She, who had never smoked or drunk anything stronger than water and milk, was playacting with a raucous little voice. And as she was playacting, she died; much to the general relief of the family and neighbourhood. She died where she had been born, in the town of Dragør, facing the sea, in Denmark. She was called Inge. She had the beautiful face of a gypsy. She liked to dress up in red and sail around the sun.”)—my apologies for any mistakes in translation.
The first time I visited was in an early December, and it was chilly. I found warmth and coffee in the Dragør Bistro, on the corner of Kongevejen and E.C. Hammersvei, which inside has three rows of sketches of local characters, presumably its customers. I walked around the pretty village, which has small, well-kept houses, narrow lanes and cobbled squares, and I said one day I’d come back when I had more time. That time was last month. The weather was perfect as I walked across its marsh, the Øresund bridge in the distance which, and only since recently, is the only road link between Denmark and Sweden. This marsh is where I first saw a Dragør goose.
The town boasts thousands of them, but the living ones have been “exiled” to an area known as the Goose Republic betwixt marsh and fort, honking away in a large, free area of chicken-wire fence and wooden barricades and scuttling after one another in long lines. They are mainly an off-white; in the old part of the town, geese can be seen in wooden carvings, as weather vanes, on an old packet of local salt I saw in its small museum (which has a twisted roof that in its guise as a former town hall was supposed to stop snoopers from sitting on the roof and listening in on secret conversations), on shop signs and in garden ornaments. They far outnumber the humans. The low fort is by the beach, and a line of humble yachts border a breakwater that ostensibly moats the battlements.
It was built during World War I together with four other fortresses, which I will list just because I like their names—Flakfortet, Kongelundsfortet, Mosede and Taarbæk—and has a restaurant inside it; when I was there, a company called Humanic (www.humanic.dk (only in Danish)) was putting on what looked like a Crazy Olympics. Helmeted contestants—and all were men—threw themselves along a greased runway as human bowling balls to knock down skittles; other were tied into a human-size Fussball game, and others dressed in padded costumes that made them look like human hamburger rolls negotiated an obstacle course.
The old part of the town consists of a fishing port (almost all activity ceased now) and the aforementioned narrow lanes and cobbled squares. There is an interesting history. It first came to importance in the 14th century when the Hanseatic League of tradesmen gave it certain business rights in regards to salting fish (the salt came from Lübeck, Germany), which it was a little easier to catch from here than elsewhere in the region, the fisherfolk occupying the place between August and October.
Boxes of herring were marked with one, two or three rings, depending on their quality. In the 16th century, the Swedish King Christian II—known also to a few as By the grace of God, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the Wends and the Goths, Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn and Dithmarschen, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, but only to a few, invited the Dutch, who were at the time far better farmers than the Danes, to settle there, and 25 families took him up on the offer. Traces of them still remain, even though when Christian II died in 1523, that was it for the 126-year-long Kalmar republic, which brought together—never easily—Denmark, Norway and Sweden. He might have been beneficent to the Dutch farmer, but he also was known as The Tyrant. He took over Sweden following the notorious Bloodbath of Stockholm in which scores of people—mainly those supporting the Swedish Sture political party, who favoured the peasantry at the expense of the nobility and clergy (a belief never likely to succeed in medieval Europe)—were executed.
The defeated party’s leader, Sten Sture the Younger, was injured in the mêlée and died on the icy wastes of Sweden’s Lake Mälaren as he was being taken back to Stockholm. His widow, Kristina Nilsdotter of Tullgarn, still considered a hero to the Swedes, took over the defense of her country but was herself finally defeated north of the Swedish capital at the Battle of Uppsala. Did this all come about because of herring? Perhaps.
The inner section of the town is a joy to walk around, and hollyhocks of every colour grow literally everywhere, as numerous as are the geese. The houses have steep, thatched roofs and often an ochre or dark blue colour, while dotted around are old advertising, water pumps and ironwork. It exudes the calm of a warm September weekday afternoon.
I then walked, first passing a tumulus covered in large rune-like boulders, to the neighbouring village of Støre Magelby, which I was told was where the Dutch set up its community. There were no Dutch names in the church’s cemetery, which I reached after walking along a main road but then ducking down some narrow, grassy lanes bordered with neat bungalows. Støre Magelby has a small duck pond, a few thatched cottages and—best of all—a rusting card with a round, rusting sign that said Dragør Sportfiskerforening, which I think means Dragør Sports-fishing Association.

July 08, 2008

(Netherlands)…Realising the road had run out and that I had no choice but to put my car on a ferry filled me with more joy that it should have done. I could see that I had just missed it as well, but the river was not so wide, and it was due back in 15 minutes. When it returned, the captain threw down a small ramp, and after two cars drove off, three cars and two bikes got on. I sat on a balcony (no more than five steps leading to a thin walkway) and saw the hamlet of Kop van t’ Land get smaller behind me and the marsh of Die Biesbosch loom larger ahead, leaving the province of Zuid-Holland and arriving in Noord-Barbant. The river was the Nieuwe Merwede, and I was in the Netherlands. I had traveled to the Netherlands (to be precise, to Rotterdam) from Southampton, England, aboard the new MV Eurodam, the newest ship in the Holland America Line. This was my first real experience on a cruise liner, and it was an enjoyable one. Some people I spoke to on board where cruise ship-groupies, and I enjoyed their enthusiasm, although not fully sharing in it myself. My posts might suggest that I am someone who would not want to be restricted in a cabin. 
The Die Biesbosch marsh is a wonder, and immediately I was rewarded by seeing my first ever Common spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia), a bird that is not at all common in the United Kingdom. I spoke to one Dutch birder who told me that he had heard that morning a Golden oriole (Oriolus oriolus) and seen a White-spotted bluethroat (Luscinia svecica cyanecula). Intoxicating were the long, thin, straight Dutch roads through avenues of poplars and the subtle but invigorating rolling of the countryside that is broken once in a while by a windmill. I was reading Cees Nooteboom’s so-so novel In the Dutch Mountains, and the irony of that title (although I have not been to Maastricht in the Netherlands’ south, and they do say there are at least some hills there; plus the title of the novel was an invention for the English translation, for the original version goes by In Nederland) was apparent. 
I soon reached the town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which is famous for its small system of canals, neat houses and restaurants, impressive Sint-Janskathedraal (St. John’s) Cathedral and being the birthplace and workshop of that Medieval portrayer of the woes of Purgatory, Hieronymus Bosch, who in 1463 witnessed a devastating fire in Den Bosch (as it is known) that destroyed it and might have led to his choice of artistic subject matter. It is a pleasant place, and for lunch I ate the traditional raw herring, holding the salted fish by the tail and eating it from the head down with a spoonful of diced onion. My next stop was to the enclave of Baarle-Hertog. This is a piece of Belgium completely surrounded by the Netherlands.
I adore visiting these geographical oddities. It is small, but two or three bars with outdoor seating border a busy junction, and it is enjoyable to sit there. Much is made of the strange nature of this place, and a broken line goes right through the middle of one restaurant, so that it is possible to have your coffee in the Netherlands and your croissants in Belgium (or would that be better, gastronomically, the other way around?). Actually, to say that this Belgian village is completely surrounded is not true. Within the main section of this Belgian enclave are six pieces of the Netherlands, while its other main chunk has one Dutch piece in it; then again, there are 14 minute pieces of Belgium also dotted amid the Dutch soil, which collectively is called Baarle-Nassau. Residents pay taxes dependent on where their front door is, so the position of doors constantly is changing from town to town without actually changing house.
This all came about following years of regional warfare and the 1843 Treaty of Maastricht, which attempted to resolve all that and that secured the boundaries of the Netherlands and Belgium following Belgian independence from its neighbour in 1831. That obviously did not work absolutely everywhere. A further attempt was made in 1875 to settle the issue of this fractional enclave, but the governments of the two countries refused to recognise any findings; in 1996, one more attempt was made, but by then everyone realised that it was better to let the tourists revel in the historical oddity. One more wonderful find—back in the Netherlands, but very close to Belgium—I made was the small town of Wouw, which I stopped at solely because I like the look of its name on a road sign. I am so glad I did. It has a neat central, grassy square with a white restaurant at one end and a huge church that appears much larger if viewed from a cobbled entry lane of trees.
A local spoke to me—he said they got few visitors—of the German bombing it received at the end of World War II. “That building went, as did that one, and that one over there. Also that one, too,” he said, as though everyone in town knew of every atrocity dumped on it. In turn, I told him of how my infant mother went for a walk with her parents and sisters in the early 1940s in southeast England, only to hear the sirens warning of German attack and hide in a bomb shelter. When they returned, their house in Barnehurst had been destroyed, resulting in them moving to the house in Crayford that I knew when I was born and which my grandmother lived in the rest of her life.
I particularly liked a frieze of Noah’s Arc atop one house. One building in Wouw rebuilt since those dark days used to be a brewery, and today a sculpture of a swan holding in its beak a gold star (the former brewery’s symbol) graced the roof and a line of old bottles found on site had been plastered into a wall.

June 11, 2008

(Peru)…It’s been 10 years since I visited Peru. Will I ever get back, is the question? Perhaps this is one of the conundrums of a traveller. Do you consistently tick off new, exciting destinations, or return to a favourite spot to relive its magic? And this is a notable question, since I meet many people who go to the same place every year without fail. I have never understood the appeal of a timeshare, notwithstanding the nightmare of being offered free golfing weekends as you spend too many hours with a teenage salesperson desperate to remain in Torremolinos, rather than Tottenham or Tranmere. Or do a little of both. I was glad I went to Peru and its most-famous attraction, Machu Picchu, in the late ‘90s, as nowadays it seems increasingly difficult to reach. I reached it by train from Cusco, after first travelling on a longer stretch of rail from Puno, near Lake Titicaca.
The train to Machu Picchu leaves the Estación San Pedro (as opposed to the Puno train, which comes into the Estación Wanchac), which we reached after walking down the wonderfully named Street of the Deserted People, known hereabouts as Calle Desamparados. For the first 60 minutes of the four-hour journey, the train gets no farther than a mile from Cusco. This is because, due to the steepness of the hills around this beautiful city (it’s higher in altitude than is Machu Picchu, which surprises many people), the train has to perform a complicated pattern of switchbacks, puffing so far up the slope, only to then slide back down for a few minutes before building up another head of steam and moving a little distance higher than it did when it came to its first halt. Finally, the train moved forwards and in no other direction, chugging past mile after mile of trackside slums. 
The first main stop is the town of Ollytantambo, which is where travellers alight to either catch a bus to other towns between there and Machu Picchu, or to the Sacred Valley along the Urubamba River, which flows into Aguas Calientes, the small town at the foot of the famous monument. I will not deal too much with Machu Picchu, which is rightly written about in flowing purple prose, but concentrate instead on Aguas Calientes. This is a town that seemingly comes from a novel by Gabriel García Márquez, a ramshackle affair with no main street. Its principal thoroughfare really is the train line, which is paralleled by two raised walkways lined with equally ramshackle shops, although one of them did have Internet connection. (Those of you who shrug your shoulders at this revelation probably are under 25 and do not realise that in 1998 finding an Internet café in Peru was not so far removed from Francisco Pizarro believing he could find El Dorado in the same country in the 16th century.)
A walk along the rail (except for a couple of times a day, there is no danger, and the trains move so slowly in this, the last stop, anyway, that there really is no danger at any time) leads to a small square with a statue of the first ruler of the Kingdom of Cusco, one Manco Cápac (in Quechua, Manqo Qhapaq which means “splendid foundation”), who, among other achievements, is said to be the Incan ruler who abolished human sacrifice. The killjoy! Seemingly annoyed at this puritan act, no one bothered with him during the days I was there, the whole town being far more interested in that new god, the TV set, which was turned up loud enough so that the proprietor of the food shack across the square could hear it while in a back room amid noisy cooking apparatus. 
This town of approximately 3,000 people really does have an amazing setting, teetering on the edge of the swiftly moving Urubamba River and against the side of steep, verdant cliffs (see photo). It is up one of these cliffs that the Peruvian government keeps threatening to construct a funicular, which would disappoint both those of us who believe that travel should not be too easy all the time (yes, I know, Westerners like me have the luxury of requesting such ecologically sensitive things such as that) and the Hello Boys, Peruvian youngsters who run down the hillside in a direct line to continually intercept the tourist buses negotiating the 14 hairpin bends down from Machu Picchu, each time saying “hello” and hopefully collecting tips at the bottom of the descent. A paved street went up the other side of Aguas Calientes, essentially to give access to the rustic spa waters that give the place its name in Spanish, “warm waters.”
It was up this street, as I paused, that I saw the wonderful and motley parade seen in the corresponding photograph. Who is the man with the bandaged face? What could he be representing? So I asked. The reply was that the procession was to ward off earthquakes, which do happen here. In Cusco, there is every Easter a procession in honor of El Señor de los Temblores, The Lord of Earthquakes, which celebrates a painting from the 17th century that supposedly saved the city from disaster. Perhaps the wrapped man survived an earth tremor? But then again I was here in September? The spa itself is an outdoor affair and was struggling to come back to life following a recent landslide. I have heard that now, 10 years later, things are much better. Seven years ago another Incan ruin farther up the valley was discovered—Qoriwayrachina, which is Quechua for “where wind was used to refine gold,” while just two weeks ago, reports circulated that Machu Picchu was not in fact discovered in 1911 by Yale scientist Hiram Bingham but 40 years previously, by a German businessman (looter?) named Augusto Berns.
The argument goes that he did not boast about his claim, as he wanted the site of his ill-gotten treasure to remain a secret, while Bingham was under no such compulsion.
The same argument has been used before: The Basque fishermen wanted their secret of discovering rich cod fisheries off the coast of North America kept a secret, while Columbus couldn’t wait to announce his find, even though he was, if all truth be told, completely lost searching for Japan.
I was lucky enough to stay in a hotel that was then called the Machu Picchu Pueblo, which in my estimation was a wonder not too far below that of Machu Pichu itself. It had its own spur line, albeit 100 metres or less, into which pulled special tourist trains of well-off daytrippers.
Today the hotel is the Inkaterra Machu Picchu (www.inkaterra.com/en/machu-picchu), but I suspect it is none the worse for wear. Its beautiful rainforest grounds contain more than 375 species of orchid, a love of one of its earliest managers, and gorgeous places to dwell and watch local farmers and wildlife.

April 16, 2008


(Honduras)…Flying into the scruffy but enjoyable town of Coxen Hole, the erstwhile capital of Honduras’ Bay Islands, on the island of Roatán, I was struck by how green the isle was; and that it had some topography, a definite sylvan spine running down its middle. After the scrubby flatness of Antigua & Barbuda and the Bahamas, I realised I had been luckier picking out first Jamaica and, now, Roatán. It has two main tourist spots, with the more upscale hotels on West Bay Beach and the backpackers and scuba crowd in West End. It is possible to walk between the two, but not at night, as some guidebooks suggest, there being two stretches over rocks close to a cliff face and a steep, metal bridge that crosses a small canal entrance and is missing one or two of its wooden slats.
I am not a beach-lover, but the strand at West Bay, especially in front of the new Infinity Bay Resort (www.infinitybay.com), is gorgeous and has all the criteria that I require: it was curved for starters; had a sandy floor, was warm and had fish of several colours swimming metres from the shore. Iguanas patrolled the sharp jags of the coral to one end, while to the other were two good restaurants, Las Rocas and Bite on the Beach.
Jesus lizards (Basiliscus plumifrons) scuttled around on their back legs like Keystone Cops. To get to the other, eastern end of the island, it is necessary to catch two buses, one from West End to Coxon Hole, the other from Coxen Hole to Oak Ridge, which was hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. It seems to have recovered in the subsequent 10 years. It also has mangrove swamps, but neither claim to fame had me accepting the offer of a ride in a boat. Instead, I wandered down a narrow lane that leads to the breakwater that curls back by the sea.
Here I discovered a great little bar and restaurant called BJ’s Backyard (www.roatanonline.com/bj_backyard), which is run by a couple from Alabama, who, I strongly suspect, have been on this island for more than 30 years; and I returned a few days later in the wonderful company of Liza and Pedro, who I met on the island. Its small outdoor, wooden patio sits on the harbor mouth, zipping through which are numerous taxi boats full of schoolchildren. It is a community of both blacks and Hispanics, while up the hill is Barrio Lempira (named after the Honduran currency), in which only Spanish is spoken. I had a Port Royal beer there while waiting for a bus to take me over the top of the spine to Pollytilly Bight, the name of which had me making a beeline for it. This is Garifuna country (more of which later).
The mountains by the nearest mainland city, La Ceiba, are very dramatic, and I was lucky enough to stay at the wonderful Lodge at Pico Bonito (www.picobonito.com), which has kilometres of trails winding up the mountainside behind it. I went swimming naked in mountain pools and was fortunate enough to see two amazing species of birds here, the White-collared manakin (Manacus candei) and the definitely-needs-to-be-seen Lovely cotinga (Cotinga amabilis), which it took me four efforts ranging over five hours to get a sight of. The highlights of this area is walking up the Río Cangrejal, in which you need to wade through water, clamber over rocks and jump off boulders into the swift current. Assuming the safety position of knees up, arms out and feet forward, I maneuvered downstream to where I started whitewater rafting (www.jungleriverlodge.com/rafting.html) on class I to IV rapids, although I suspect that the water level was not as high as it could have been to make it truly terrifying.
The second must-do is the train journey (the last one in Honduras) from the dusty town of La Union to the wildlife refuge at Cuero y Salado (www.cueroysalado). I was told that the true benefits of allowing tourists, not cattle, to use this remaining stretch of track have not been fully realised by the locals, most of whom are not, understandably, patient to wait a full 10 years for the tourism master plan to unfurl in all its developmental glory.
The reserve is a peaceful place, especially the watery passage the locals called Mirror River.
The Bay Island of Útila is not as pretty as Roatán, but it seems more laid back, if more laid back is possible. Two dusty roads lead away from the only town, also called Útila, but disappear into a beach and swampy wood, respectively. 
That said, people come here to scuba dive or learn to scuba dive, it being the cheapest place on earth in which to become PADI-certified. I searched for Whale sharks with no luck, but I did see a group of 50 or so Spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris), some of which did spin on their tails. Equally aquatic was the inverted grotto that was the Jade Seahorse (www.jadeseahorse.com), a hotel in which the owners have gone to no imaginary expense to decorate: Small pieces of tile of every colour, plastic bananas, seahorse, bottles, shells, arches, a treetop bar, mirrors, you name it, it is probably in this wondrous pile somewhere. 
It only has six rooms, all wonderful, too, but in the ones next to mine were Barrett and Heidi from Seattle and Joaquin (Norway) and Cyncia (Italy) who met in London and now live in Rome. Fantatsic company.
Back on Roatán, I attended the 211th anniversary celebration of the Garifuna people’s arrival on the isle. I was told that originally the Garifuna (actually, technically, Garinegu is the correct plural term) came from the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, but when the British took over these islands and following some clashes with the locals, the “blacker” members of these people (like all populations there are those who have darker skin, those who have lighter) were shipped off to Honduras. Of the 5,000 who started the journey, only half survived.
The celebration—we saw Honduran president Manuel Zelaya Rosales (known to everyone as Mel) leave in his helicopter—is in the first settlement that they reached, Punta Gorda, which remains their base. The women were dressed up in colourful dresses and skirts, and a man, wearing an elaborate headdress of reeds (see the photo above) that reminded me of photos I had seen of dances in West Africa, sang a song on a stage. The dance they performed is called a punta (which might explain the town’s name, although in Spanish it can be directly translated as “fat point”), and the music is referred to as bunda, which means “backside” in the West African Mandé language. It was all dusty and wonderful and the perfect soundtrack to my latest journey.

March 24, 2008

(Jamaica)…The word in a certain type of magazine has it that Jamaica might possibly be the most dangerous place in the world. I did not find this at all, well, after I got past the vultures who work the car-rental agency. They told me right away that they were here to “work with me,” which is a curious use of English and possibly means the complete opposite.
Probably, if a bad reputation is warranted here, it is because a certain type of traveler clashes instantly with those out to make a dollar (and there are 50 Jamaican ones to every American one) from them in such places as Montego Bay and Negril. Possibly, the locals feel resentment at seeing tourists “protected” behind the walls of resorts, a number of which—ugly ones—are beginning to mar the coastline east of Montego Bay. I headed a little west of Montego Bay and then south to the wonderfully named Anchovy. I was told that there is no place in Jamaica where you will not see a person, and it is true, except for a stretch of sugar-cane fields between Jackson Town and Clarks Town in the north. Everywhere, heads pop out from behind hedges and roadside stalls to see what is going on. As the roads became worse and more winding, the people became more pleasant, helping me with directions as I drove through the night on the way to Ferris Cross, Black River, New Holland, Spur Tree Hill and my final destination of Mandeville, where a Greek cousin of my girlfriend lives with her Jamaican family.
One part of the drive went through Bamboo Avenue, where drooping clumps of high bamboo touch each other in the middle of the road and workers threshed bamboo cane into a brilliantly lit combine-harvester. Mandeville is off the tourist map. Bauxite mining seems to be the big industry, and I drove along many orange-rust-coloured mining tracks, ostensibly on a search for a group of botanists who were members of a natural-history club. Christalia—the cousin—and I were glad we did not find them to much later on, as it transpired that they had been looking at and talking of hydrotropically grown lettuce for 120 minutes in a spot near Swaby’s Hole.
I love nature, but I have my threshold. A lunch of jerk goat at the Top Class restaurant (no sign, so look for the blue and brown-painted shack on the left as you reach the petrol station when driving five or so kilometres away from Mandeville) restored our commitment, and the afternoon was spent happily at two beautiful gardens in Mandeville: Bonnie View and—the best—the Levy’s Garden, which was full of hummingbirds, euphonias and elaenias. More birding was on the next day at the well-known Marshall’s Pen.
Also in Mandeville, I got access at 6 a.m. through cousin-acquired contacts, and it is a superb spot for Jamaican woodpecker; Jamaican tody; Red-billed streamertail (Jamaica’s national symbol, aka the Doctorbird), White-cheeked thrush, Orangequit, Jamaican oriole and Arrow-headed warbler. It is a beautiful spot, but there has been tragedy here, with a robbery-gone-wrong that ended fatally. I must have driven up Spur Tree Hill seven or eight times, but there is much to see, and I drove through Bamboo Avenue again, although this time during hours of light. I saw on the map a place called Lower Black River Morass, which sounds like my kind of place. A tour of the brackish river there is the highlight, although the small-boat captains all seem to know a little too readily exactly where the crocodiles are waiting.
The nearest we came to being bitten is when he inspected a crabbing pot and one of its contents managed to escape to the boat’s floor. The owner back on land seemed very disappointed when we paid him the resident rate, rather than the tourist rate he was expecting to earn from one black child, two white children and two white adults. We reached YS Falls, a beautiful spot that apparently rivals the world-famous Dunn’s River falls near Ocho Rios, with little time to enjoy the tiered falls, but there were sufficient minutes to swim and swing off a rope. As we left on the tractor-pulled train, the rain crashed down, but the light was beautiful, and the red-billed streamertails flocked around the hummingbird feeders.
A short cut across country turned out to be a long cut, but everyone—and I mean everyone—however far away, instinctively knew the directions to a seaside seafood restaurant called Little Ochie, which when I returned home I saw was the subject of an advertisement for Jamaica in a high-end travel magazine. The road never seemed to finish, winding around the Santa Cruz Mountains and creeping along cliffs. Towns we passed included Leeds, Malvern, Hermitage, Southfield, Top Hill and Junction.
There still was one more moment to make a mistake, as we made a wrong right to head to Port Kaiser, where we disturbed Antillean nighthawks roosting in the middle of the road. The food at Little Ochie, in Alligator Pond, is wonderful. You buy it by the pound and then decide how you want it prepared. North of Mandeville—I stopped off in Williamsfield, a suburb of Mandeville, to get a tour of Christalia’s husband’s (John Jay) Pioneer Chocolate Factory—the road climbs, and again there were people everywhere.
I stopped at the fabulously named Wait-a-Bit (the photo above is from near there) and the attractive Albert Town. The road suddenly becomes faster (it was 50 kilometres an hour most of the way before) when one nears the sugar-cane lands of Clarks Town and the coast. It also gets noticeably warmer. I stopped at Falmouth, which retains a little of its former colonial grandeur and some interesting, rusting cast-iron machinery behind a Rastafarian restaurant. On the motorway towards Montego Bay, it was a shame to see that apparently the Success Beach restaurant is no longer operating. It is the last glimmer of hope before the tacky sprawl of Mo’Bay begins.

February 04, 2008

(Bahamas)...Four days in the Bahamas to escape a Northeast U.S. winter is an excellent idea, and a fantastic opportunity to go to a new Caribbean island. I have only been to one once before—Antigua & Barbuda (see posts passim), so off to Nassau on New Providence I went. I was there essentially to see the new Sheraton Cable Beach (www.cablebeachresorts.com/sheraton), which is the first part—together with the existing Wyndham hotel—of a new megaresort called Baha Mar.
That hotel, to open in 2012, they hope, will also include a Caesars Park Hotel & Casino and properties W, Westin and St. Regis, which means—so the developers gushed—the largest cluster of Starwood-branded properties in the world. So there. The sea was a magnificent shade of turquoise, and the beaches are attractive. I was very interested in an abandoned, dilapidated horseracing grandstand, which stood slightly inland from the hotel.
I assume this will finally disappear, rather than slowly doing so, when Baha Mar’s golf courses (of course!) are finished and West Bay Street (the coastal road) is re-routed.
Or at least I assume it was for horse racing, although I do see that betting on horse racing is illegal in the Bahamas. In fact, it is illegal for Bahamians themselves to bet on anything. Only foreigners are allowed to. Anyway, the track—if such it is—could be reached fairly easily. No sign barred one’s way, and there were no security personal stopping you tearing up your legs on the brambles as you hack your way through. On the road out, there is a large shed full of old juckanoo costumes and floats. We went to the Junkanoo Museum in Nassau, which chronicles this Bahamian Mardi Gras-style parade that is held at Christmastime. All the costumes are made from pieces of paper or card, and the costumes reminded me of Dogon costumes and masks from Mali (or at least, pictures and photos of Malian costumes and masks that I’ve seen).
The different teams that compete for bragging rights have names such as “Roots,” “Fancy Dancers” and the “Valley Boys.” Seemingly, European warrior races are popular for names, too, with both the “Saxons” and the “Vikings” doing battle. Away from the port and its huge cruise ships (also avoid the terrible Straw Market and its cheaper-than-cheap souvenir schlock), Nassau—the capital of the Bahamas—does have a pleasant feel. Everything seems to be named for Queen Victoria, who never went there. The police walk about very smartly, and all the government buildings are pink.
One wonderful stop was the Graycliff restaurant, on West Hill Street, which I did not eat at. It is expensive in any way you could calculate it. It has, we were told, the world’s most-expensive wine cellar, which extends beneath the road, the world’s most-expensive collection of cognac and the world’s most-expensive collection of single-malt whiskies from Scotland. The one I saw was a 1948 bottle of Macallan, which sells for $5,800, or in a restaurant, probably at $11,600; apparently, also there is a bottle of Château Lafite going for the princely sum of $250,000. The restaurant’s building is beautiful, and its gardens and courtyards serene (see the photo above), a far cry from its original 1740’s days as the home of John Howard Graysmith, the pirate-captain of the schooner Graywolf. (I guess that Graysmith and Graywolf are not suitable names for restaurants.)
I got wet at Stuart’s Cove (www.stuartcove.com), where on one day I went scuba diving, the second day, snorkeling. The highlight of the first day was seeing delicate Tiger cowries (Cypraea tigris), while the highlight of the second definitely was bobbing over 40 or so Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezii). We were allowed 10 minutes of doing this (10 minutes from the first person jumping in, not the last). After 10 minutes, the sharks (who have worked in tourism for many years) start getting restless and moving slightly nearer the surface.
After I had got back on to the boat and turned around, the sharks’ fins were breaking the water, and when some dead fish were thrown in, they positively went crazy. So did the gulls, and I was told it has been known for the sharks to grab one of them, despite their preference for scavenging food, rather than hunting it. It is confined to Caribbean and northern South American waters and is not considered dangerous to humans. Back at the dock there is a photo of actress Selma Hayak looking suitably unimpressed by being photographed while she is trying to enjoy herself scuba diving.
The most authentic Bahamian thing I did was to walk to Arawak Cay, where are several rows of shack restaurants cooking up local cuisine. Collectively, it is called the Fish Fry, and when I passed it on a bus one morning, I did not have high hopes for it. But it turned out to be fun. I chose one that had a crowd of local workers eating their lunches. An argument (from what I gathered, it was concerned with what was better, Electricity or Water; I suggested getting a large bucket, filling it with water, sticking an arm in and then, with a lead in a plug, shoving something electric in it to test their theories) was conducted in very loud voices. The radio was tuned to a religious programme, and the news told of four murders that weekend in a depressed neighbourhood of Nassau called Over-the-Hill. These murders were apparently drugs-related.
At the other end of the cay is an abandoned aquarium that looks the perfect place for one of James Bond’s arch-nemesises to live, a round, white structure atop a small base and topped with a high white spike. This aquarium was put out of business when the Bahamas’ other megaresort, Atlantis, opened; I wonder if that was the same fate that befell the track mentioned above. Now this former aquarium sits on a smaller cay of its own, the only people living there those paid to keep others off.

January 09, 2008

(Spain)...I started Spanish conversational classes this week. After taking a 60-question test and writing a letter, I was judged to be of the intermediate level, which is perhaps a little too ambitious for me. I can chat in Spanish relatively well, but my comprehension is poor. I hope to change that. Spain remains my favourite country. My last visit there took me directly out of the new terminal at Madrid’s Barajas airport to the town of Alcalá de Henares, where Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote de la Mancha was born. His house was there, as if to prove this, although everything in it has been re-created. A statue of the great dreamer and knight-errant is outside. (Oh, I am studying Spanish with the very nice people at New York City’s beautiful Instituto de Cervantes (http://nuevayork.cervantes.es) centre.) My aim was to get to the Alcarria region of Spain, a seldom-visited area close to Madrid. Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela immortalised the area in his 1948 book Viaje a la Alcarria (“Journey to the Alcarria”).
I was able to recognize the small fountain at one end of this small town by using a photo in Cela’s 60-year-old book. All was activity, as young people in t-shirts of the same colour were busy securing off side streets and drinking beer. Barred metal doors blocked off routes, and we soon realised that a running of the bulls was about to happen. Obviously, the Pastrana event is not as famous as the St. Fermin one in Pamplona, but it was my first, and I was excited. Sitting on a wall, we watched the bulls tear down a narrow street as the town’s Young Turks taunted them before leaping out of the wall. This was fantastic to watch, at least for the first two or three passages of the bulls through Pastrana, but after this number of passes, the bulls tired.
By the end, they were suitably disinterested in goring anyone or anything. I had the succinct impression that a very different build of bull is reserved for Pamplona and its irk. Pointed out to us by the locals was the window where the imprisoned and one-eyed—but still considered beautiful—Princess of Éboli was allowed her only contact with others, following a love affair that turned into scandal and exile from Madrid by Philip II. That was in1573. I drove the car through some of the places—Brihuega, Cifuentes, Mondejar, Sacedón, Trillo—that Cela wrote about, and once in a while saw ugly housing developments of bleached-grey sidings that were certainly not present when he walked here.
The countryside is only on occasion dramatic. I wanted to drive along the valleyside Carretera de Roa Burgos to visit the small hilltop village of Anguix, because I liked its name, but the entrance road mysteriously was blocked off, so we made do looking down at the valley from some ruined sentry towers. By the end of the evening we had arrived in dramatic Cuenca, where houses propped up on huge wooden legs literally sit out over the gorge. These houses are known as Casa Colgadas, literally, Houses that Hang. Were Spanish Civil War prisoners thrown over its edge? I am sure so. I know they were in the Andalusian town of Ronda, which has its own superb gorge, along its River Huécar. Deservedly so, this is a UNESCO World Heritage site. A large central rectangle with a fountain cascading down a flat wall at one end leads to all manner of beautiful and interesting streets (on one of which I saw walking the little, dressed-up girl in the photograph above).
Most fun are the narrows streets that hug the edge of the cliff, which lead to minute alcoves where one could sit all day. Our hotel was equally perfect, the Posada de San José (I’d like the think that the choice of hotel and its name were influenced by Señor Cela, but then again, José must rank as one of the top-five names in Spain; www.posadasanjose.com). Built in the 18th century, it has an interior than in some spots are modern but in others are wonderfully old and full of more alcoves. I sometimes view Spain as a country that is held together by Valencian bomba rice and the sheer weight emanating from its millions of alcoves. Perhaps, Italy is the same, if you replace rice with pasta? Another mysterious corner, or alcove, of Spain awaited us. Rincon de Ademúz (in Valencian, Racó d'Ademúz) is a part of the province of Valencia that is completely surrounded by the province of Aragón. It is, therefore, an island, a forgotten fragment, and thus we were drawn there. Truth is, this town of 3,000 souls has not much to it, except on that day its running of the bulls.
 I was beginning to see that this was the season for such events, which rather took the gloss of what we thought was our accidental find in Pastrana. Of more interest was the small hilltop village of Castielfabib, the name of which surely is Arabic, as is the name Ademúz. (I branded Ademúz the “alcovian” capital of this area.) Castielfabib, at the end of a road that leads nowhere else, is a perfect place for a warm afternoon’s stroll. A narrow entry road leads steeper and steeper to a minute central square that has an imposing church to one side. The central square had all of two parking spaces.