July 2019 – agaaga

PNPE 27 Brez Hike

Crazy sounding name for one of the best hikes we’ve ever done! We went through so many different landscapes on this hike.

Road into the village – only locals are allowed to drive in. If you’re doing the hike, you park just outside the village.

All three holding hands – a very rare sight these days.

We’re still on track (small print to the right of the arrow).

Daring each other to pick up the black slug.

They were conspiring to convince me to follow the dry creek bed …

Dry creek bed the kids want to follow up into the mountains.

Turns out there’s cold clear water with lots of mini waterfalls beneath those rocks.

Lots of time was spent at this waterfall. See the clip.

See this video for the cause of his reaction.

It was tough to tear the kids away from the creek to continue our hike.

These backsides resulted in an extended period of hilarity.

After this, we head downhill, back to the village of Brez. See the video of the kids racing.

One of Felix’s favourite fruit. Blackberries! [He didn’t pick them.]

Every village has a church. See and hear the kids ringing the bells.

The official circular hike is 5 km, we went 8.2 km in total.

The kids and I took a short drive along the narrow windy mountain roads to try the hike by the dam we spotted the day before. Some of the trails are apparently pretty old, and were used by shepherds thousands of years ago.

A portion of the trail parallels the narrow mountain road we used.

We decided to take the path that went upwards.

We could definitely imagine this path being used in the Middle Ages.

Those buildings are close to where we parked.

Checking out various critters along the way.

The clouds were moving in across the valley but it remained warm on humid until the evening.

Neil getting a chance to come out in the evening.

It cooled off significantly enough in the evening for us to start a fire. Thank goodness for the tankless water heaters everywhere we’ve been – there’s no shortage of hot water for evening showers!

Lafuente

We arrived late after a bus ride, flight, and a long drive so it was pretty much straight to bed.

We’re at the end of the road. Every few days, a van shows up to sell bread and other food. This is a very secluded village.

Heading out to explore our little village.

The Church of Santa Juliana is at the entrance of the village, and was built in the 12th century. It restored after it was burnt down during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Ancient traditional granary that have been converted to stables.

Mill and La Llosa spring. It’s right beside a little brook.

La Corralada House – on Lafuente’s main street.

One of two stone heads at the entrance to the La Corralada from 1623. The inscription refers to the passage of funeral processions, translated to “So many go past who shall not return!”

After our walk, we decided to take an exploratory drive to see if we could find a hike.

*Old medieval road from La Hermida to the villages of Alto Peñarrubia*

One of the four hydroelectric dams along the Nansa River.

Fueling up with fresh bread for sandwiches.

Castillo de Berón – it’s apparently privately owned by a German family. That wooden bridge is apparently neglected and not to be used.

Segovia’s Aqueduct

Segovia’s aqueduct bridge is one of the most well-preserved Roman elevated aqueducts and was a must-see while we were in Spain. Fortunately, it’s on the way from Madrid to Lafuente.

Very early start to the day, with a walk to the bus station.

Cuddles and a nap on the way to Seville’s airport.

Goodbye Seville, we’re flying to Madrid where we’ll pick up our rental car for the drive through Segovia to Lafuente.

Somewhat blurry, but this is probably the Solúcar solar farm, which is 20 miles west of Seville. Over 1,800 mirrors are pointed to concentrate the sunlight on the concrete tower, which heats the water in the tower to make steam. The steam is forced through pipes to make electricity. (Lara explained how all this worked to us since she did a project about it at school.)

First look at our car for the next 4 weeks. This was also the largest parking spot we saw through our travels! Onwards to Segovia.

Segovia’s city walls – these are on the north side and the road goes through the San Cebrian Gate.

The wall is thought to have been built in medieval times to protect the city from the Moors. Spot Neil’s head!

The wall runs about 3.5km around the city, with an average height of 9m and about 2.5m thick.

It’s built of granite blocks and reused gravestones from an old Roman necropolis. Felix is hiding in there too!

The wall has 8 towers, 5 gates, and a number of doors.

Segovia’s Aqueduct was built in the 1st century AD and is still in use today to deliver drinking water from the Frío River to the city of Segovia, a distance of 16km.

It has 165 arches that are more than 9m high.

This is the only aboveground portion, which is 728m long and crosses a 30m deep valley. Most of the aqueduct is buried.

It’s built using about 24,000 granite blocks *without* mortar!

Its source is at 1255m. Along its run, the engineers had to adjust for a 75m descent over 553m.

Alcazar of Segovia, supposedly the inspiration of Cinderella’s castle in the Disney film.

The Segovia Cathedral was the last Gothic cathedral built in Spain.

It was a short stop at Segovia as we still have another 4 hrs of driving to Lafuente.

Typical view of road tunnels during our drive.

Life in our Seville apartment

We spent four weeks in Sevilla. Aside from walking 480 km in our explorations, we also spent many hours relaxing in our airbnb apartment and rooftop courtyard.

Living, dining, and kitchen. Kitchen hosts the fridge and freezer (far left), dishwasher beside the fridge, sink, garbage collection under the sink, washing machine under the 2 burner electric stove.

Folding bed in master bedroom, where Felix slept.

Neil’s workstation – it’s folded up nightly to make room for Felix’s bed.

I’m pretty sure the beer only came out late in the afternoon

And the wine close to dinner when he’s done work

Second bedroom. This is how the kids start and end their days. Thank goodness for kobos from kijiji – they went through so many books, all borrowed from the Toronto Public Library every 2-3 weeks.

Yoga in the evening didn’t happen as often as it should have (but the mats sure were handy as a laptop stand for Neil…)

Exploring in our apartment building (sadly the stairs end at a locked door)

We usually had the place to ourselves – it did get blisteringly hot in the afternoons here even with the shade.

So the kids spent almost all their time on the roof splashing each other to cool off.

3 kg bag of juicing oranges -the kids take turns lugging a bag home once every few days.

And very dedicated to getting as much juice as possible out of every orange.

Our apartment didn’t have a balcony – in fact, there were no exterior windows. It came with an all-in-one washer-dryer in the kitchen! It’s small, so one day’s worth of clothes for 5 fills it completely. The only downside is that it took SIX hours to complete both a wash and dry cycle!

This giant table is Neil’s work table completely folded open.

Multifunction table: meals, travel journals,

Almost done! Amazing what they could do with the things we were recycling.

Testing it out on the rooftop courtyard.

These kids got pretty good at putting simple meals together on their own.

Lobby area on the ground floor where one or more kids would wait for the rest of the family.

Shopping in Seville

One of the fun activities has been exploring the different markets around Seville. Aside from the phenomenally fresh produce, there are sights that prompt outbursts and questions from the kids.

Lamb brains. Lots of excitement around this, but we never did try it.

Stands like this are in every grocery/convenience store.

Chorizo – what you get in Toronto is nowhere near as good!

Fresh figs – SOOOO amazingly delicious. We had no idea figs could taste so good.

Padrón peppers. These are so tasty fried in a bit of olive oil until charred.

Rabbits sold whole. We didn’t try this either.

One of our favourite fruit and vegetable stands.

Lamb brains on the left, lamb tongue on the right.

Our regular stop for merluza (hake) and other seafood.

The Spanish eat these raw – Nolan and I were given these to try but we prefer our shrimp cooked.

Clams – so tasty fried with some garlic and ginger.

Fruit for the day: flat peaches, nectarines, apricots, figs, and plums. We were extremely spoiled with the fresh produce.

Looking back, it seems that we have a pretty strong focus on food 🙂

Royal Tobacco Factory

This was our last full day in Seville. We spent the morning exploring the Real Fábrica de Tabacos, followed by packing and cleaning in the afternoon.

The first tobacco manufacturers were established in Seville. At the time it was built, the factory was the second largest building in Spain, and is situated just outside a gate of the city walls. The location was the site of an Ancient Roman burial ground.

The factory began production in 1758, and is the inspiration of Bizet’s opera Carmen.

The building is bordered on 3 sides by dry moats (we walk by them frequently) and is now the headquarters of the University of Seville.

Painting of the interior of the Tobacco Factory in 1911. The factory started out with a male workforce producing cigars and snuff. Since the quality was inferior to other factories that had switched to a female workforce, and males had to be paid more, the factory switched to an entirely female workforce by 1829.

Then it was off to Triana to meet Neil (and Felix) for lunch at the tapas bar.

Back at the Triana tapas bar so Neil could check it out.

Anchovies. Incredibly SALTY! Kids declined to eat, so after Neil finished his beer, we moved on.

To the next tapas place, where Neil had another beer!

Tapear-ing

Some things we learnt off google about going for tapas in Spain like a local – ‘tapearing’:

if it’s a Spanish menu or all-day tapas, it’s likely catered for tourists – we wanted a more traditional experience
only Spanish is spoken in the restaurant
busy with locals

We headed into the Triana neighbourhood where the restaurant barely had enough room for us to squeeze into. Check!

No English was spoken and when we tried to speak English, we were not understood. Check!

Tiny little place in the Triana neighbourhood. Empty outside as it was crazy hot, but busy inside.

We waited until a bunch of people left to snag a place at the bar.

Cazuela de Salmorejo (cold soup of tomato and bread), which Lara now makes at home.

Can’t remember what this one was. We also had the Anhoas Imperiales (anchovy on toast) and Jamón Ibérico (Iberian ham on toast).

When we left the restaurant, Nolan worked to convince that we should not go out for tapas here again. His reasons were that we paid €1 for a whole loaf of fresh warm bread from the panaderia and €2 for a package of tasty Iberico ham from the grocery store. We paid €3 for ONE slice of cold bread topped with ONE slice of ham – not a good deal Mom.

In addition, he saw the woman prepare the salmorejo and she poured it out of the bottle you can buy at the grocery store (about €1 for a litre) and stuck it in the microwave. We paid €3 for the little bowl. Really not a good deal, Mom!!

Las Setas at night

We had already visited Las Setas on ground level and below ground level during the day. This visit is on top of Las Setas and during sunset.

Atop the world’s largest wooden structure.

As the sun sets, famous buildings are lit.

2.3 km – as you can see, most of it on top of Las Setas.

Museum of Art and Popular Customs of Seville, Roman columns

Finding new things to explore at Maria Luisa Park on the way to the museum.

The museum is in the Mudejar Pavilion, built in 1914.

The kids watched a video about cork harvesting and another on the production of lime. There were exhibits of different types of traditional Spanish foods before we moved on to the most interesting exhibits for the kids.