A beautiful island 30 minutes further on from Murano. Picturesque streets and waterways with brightly painted houses.
Burano is the home of the lacemaking which used to be renowned across Europe. Now, a lacemaking museum is all that is left – fashions change.
We stayed four days in Venice visiting museums and galleries and generally soaking up the atmosphere.
Another visit to this fantastic museum/gallery which is a definite must. It’s quite small so very manageable and has a lovely garden with sculptures. It is also right on the Grand Canal.
Palace where the duke (doges) resided. Very palatial.
We left Sanlucar de Barramada and our visit to Anne and Neil’s lovely house and entered Portugal, travelling to Evora, the capital of Alentejo, a place I’d visited many years ago in the 60s and 70s and has remained in my memory ever since.
Evora is a medieval walled town. It was a centre of trade during the time of the Moors and had its hey-day in the 14 to 16 centuries when it was favoured by the House of Avis, as well as artists and scholars. Then in 1580 Spain seized the throne, the royal court left and the town started to waste away. Its very fine old centre has been left undeveloped.
The narrow windy streets have white washed houses with either blue or ochra painted around the windows and doors.
Towering in the old town is the Templo Romano which is said to be a temple to Diana. It’s extremely well preserved and was apparently walled up in the Middle Ages to form a small fortress and then used as the town slaughterhouse! It’s pretty impressive. Throughout the whole Alentejo region you can find loads of Roman remains.
The Termas Romanas is easy to miss as it’s inside the local town hall. It was only discovered in 1987, includes a nine meter laconicum (steam room), and in 1994 they discovered an open air swimming pool! It’s quite surreal as you go into the town hall and there’s the laconicum and there are windows into people’s offices so you can look across and see them working and of course they have a window into Roman times.
All over Alentejo they have quite recently discovered both Roman and Moorish artefacts when carrying out developments.
The Capela dos Ossos is a very strange place. It’s within the Igreja de São Francisco and is a room lined with the bones and skulls of about 5000 people. It’s said it was the solution to overflowing graveyards decided upon by three 17-century Franciscan monks. It’s fairly creepy.
The Igreja de São João is a beautiful little church and well worth a visit. It has extraordinary azulejos(wall tiles) from the 18-C. It also has an underworld of an ossuary full of monks bones, and a deep Moorish cistern.
We stayed in the campsite on edge of town. It’s one of those quite old tired campsites but it was perfectly ok and an easy 20 minute walk into town. There was also a sports area nearby where we could go for a pleasant morning jog!
The last time we visited Córdoba we discovered it was the day of their White Night when the squares all over Córdoba have flamenco all night. We wandered around all night and it was fantastic.
This time we’d discovered that for the first two weeks of May there is a ‘best patio’ competition, and all over the city people’s private patios are opened up to the public. So of course we had to go.
And then we re-visited the Mezquita – a beautiful mosque dating from 784 AD which has had a cathedral plonked in the middle. But the beauty and magnificence of the building still remains.
Just a quick visit and then off to Cabo de Gata for some walking
Toledo is a fascinating place to visit. A completely walled hill top city with windy narrow streets, beautiful stone houses and architecture from various influences. Before the expulsion of 1492 there was a large Jewish population here with ten synagogues. After the Jews departed these were taken over and made into churches. Two have been restored. One is now a museum for Sephardic Jewry and the other is an exquisitely beautiful building with rows of arches. Apart from just wandering around the streets we visited the two old synagogues, the El Greco museum, a tapestry museum and the cathedral. Here are some photos (click on a photo for an enlarged image)
Synagogue
Museum of Sephardic Jewry
El Greco museum
The museum was thought to have been El Greco’s house and some of the rooms have been furnished with furniture from that period in addition there is a large collection of El Greco’s paintings
Tapestry museum
This museum is connected to the cathedral and contains wall coverings and also garments worn by the priests.
Toledo Cathedral
We stayed three nights in Madrid mainly to visit the museums.
We re-visited the Reina Sophia to see Picasso’s Guernica and a multitude of other modern artists including Salvador Dali, Georges Braque and Madrid-born Juan Gris. The Prado gave us the Spanish painters – Goya, Velazquez, Ribera and El Greco gets included), and then we went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum for the first time. What a collection! Here are a few photos.
If you are going to visit these galleries and you’re over 65 take your passport as you’ll get in half price.
We stayed in the Osuna campsite which had mixed reviews but we found it absolutely fine and positively leafy.
We got the metro into town very easily.
And of course not to forget the Sunday morning market
Fortunately for us it continued until 3pm .
Stayed a couple a nights in Segovia which I definitely recommend for a visit. It has a Roman aquaduct 900m in length built in 50AD. It also has an Alcuzar which looks like a fairy castle (it was rebuilt after a fire) and evidently Walt Disney used as the basis for his castle in Sleeping Beauty.
But apart from all that it’s a lovely place to walk around. Small enough to manage and at this time of the year not crowded with loads of tourists (only a select few).
We wandered around the old Jewish quarter (the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella) Where they have a permanent exhibition in a Jewish centre.
Stayed overnight on an Aire at the bullring- very pleasant and just a 10 minute walk to the centre
Near Varkala beach is the 2000 year old Janardanaswamy temple. When foreign tourists visit you have to wait at the bottom of the stairs while the man at the entrance sets off a fire cracker for each visitor, presumably to give warning of our visit.
The walls around the inner sanctum have hundreds of oil holders which are filled each day and the wicks are lit at 6:30.
We went for an early morning walk along the long long beach to a fishing village. The fishermen were hard at work bringing in their canoes.
We decided to explore the village and found a little place selling chai. So of course we had some sitting outside on the step. Then the lady suddenly brought out an appam on a plate for us, and then a second appam, and then some sambar. So unexpected and it was delicious
We stayed outside Jodhpur in a village called Narlai and one of the staff from the hotel took us on a village walk showing us around the village and taking us into some family homes.
This village has a population of about 3000 but had over 300 temples! The first we saw was tiny and built into the rock. You had to climb over 100 steps to reach it.
Then we saw another large temple built onto the side of the rock
and then we saw their newest temple built from white marble which was pretty spectacular
Evidently quite a number of families now live in the city and have more money, just returning for holy days. The whole village paid for the new temple which took five years to build.
We also visited three families going into their homes.
Cooking over wood fires is the norm.
The women in this area commonly completely cover their heads with their dupattas.
