Castles and clean teeth: Olite!

My dentist back home as a book in his lobby- one of those coffee-table kind of books with lots of glossy pictures- of castles and palaces round the world. So far a few years now, my biannual trip to the dentist included a little trip down memory lane flipping through the chapter on Spain and seeing places I'd been to: the Alhambra, the Bellver Castle in Mallorca, the Escorial, the Alcazar in Segovia, while I mentally added the others in the chapter to my Spain bucket list. There was one in particular that caught my attention -Olite -although I doubted I would ever make it to middle-of-nowhere Navarra to go see it! Well, I now LIVE in middle-of-nowhere Navarra a short half-hour bus ride away. Saturday I finally made the short trip north to see the famous castle and it was just as beautiful as it looks in the pictures!

Tourist in my own town: the Tudela cathedral

This week I decided to take advantage of my free afternoon (instead of taking a 3 hour siesta which was my other option) and visit one place in Tudela I haven´t seen yet: the cathedral. The cathedral is the definining piece of Tudela´s skyline. Everywhere you go, It seems I´ve spent months know looking at this building from every possible angle except for inside!

From the puente romano, the bridge over the Ebro River

From the streets of Tudela

From the Torre Monreal, on top of a hill overlooking the city

From the statue of Jesús, on a hill on the other side of the city

From the Plaza Vieja, just outside the cathedral

And from the main entrance to the cathedral

I´ve seen a LOT of cathedrals at this point, so it takes a lot to impress me. And though the Tudela cathedral feels very small-town, and is clearly not on the same level as Toledo, Santiago, Sevilla, it made up for it in other ways.  I´m used to visiting cathedrals that are full of tourists. I was the only one in the Tudela cathedral, though, except for two nuns who were cleaning some of the altars when I first arrived! It was incredible for me that little old Tudela has such a beautiful cathedral, since you certainly couldn´t find anything like this in Durham or Atkinson or any other place I´ve called home!

This is it... the longest I´ve ever been away from home

My sister always reminds me of a scene from Lord of the Rings when we´re traveling, the scene when Sam stops to note that "if I take one more step, it will be the farthest I've ever been from home."

138 days.  3300 hours, 198,000 minutes, 11 million seconds. That´s the longest I´ve ever been away from home. Until now. (Well technically about a week ago but close enough.)

I guess it explains why I've been more homesick this week, can't stop thinking about people and memories, home. This road has swept me up off to some incredible and unexpected places in these 138 days, and I know more await me. So to celebrate my longest stay yet in Spain, here's a list of the 9 things I love most about Spain, the things that will make it so difficult to ever say goodbye to my adopted country.

10) Tomates feos (ugly tomatoes). These are a game-changer in the tomato field. I was never particularly fond about tomatoes but these bad boys changed that. Now I would eat them breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I could. Huge, ugly, but loaded with delicious flavor and none of that seedy watery stuff you find in regular tomatoes.

Less seeds and mushiness, more tomatoy goodness

Yes that is a normal sized wine bottle,
yes they really are that big

9) Drinking culture. I love how alcohol is so destigmatized here. It´s no big deal to see groups of old men having a beer at the neighborhood café at 11 am, and wine with lunch is acceptable and even expected. Even when 6 or 7 am rolls around and the night comes to an end, you won´t see anyone stumbling home or even visibly drunk. Drinking is about socializing, not getting drunk. They even sell zuritos, tiny little glasses of beer so you can tapas crawl your way around the city without drinking too much. It´s much healthier than the US prohibition mentality.

8) Eating schedule. Lunch at 3 and dinner at 10 just makes more sense.

7) Walkability. I love the town layouts here. Even though I live in a small town, there are lots of buildings that are 6 or 7 stories tall and everything is organized in city blocks with sidewalks, parks, stores and shopping. It feels like a neighborhood from a larger city was picked up and dropped here in southern Navarra! I love how compact everything is and how walkable towns are here. I live across the street from the post office, next door to a bakery and coffee shop, a block away from the gym, two or three blocks away from my school, two supermarkets, a fruit/vegetable shop, a fish market and several more cafés. The city center and most of the shopping is still only a maybe 10-minute walk away. The thought of needing a car to get to the supermarket or to work every day is just crazy!

Small town charm, big city feel

 6) Good, cheap wine. The thought of spending more than 3 euros for a bottle of wine kills me. Maybe if it's a special occasion I splurge and spend 5.

5) Cafeterias. Coffee culture here is amazing. First, there's the cafe con leche, which ruins all other coffee for me. It doesn´t matter where you go. It´s almost impossible to get a bad  coffee. Then there's the price, 1.20 for a cup of coffee is the norm here (the one place that charges 1.30 gives you a free croissant so I'm ok with that). Mostly I just love the cafeterias themselves though. There's no to-go coffee (or at least it's rare). Every one sits down, chats, reads a paper, and stops to enjoy their morning coffee (or other beverage of choice).

Madrid coffee break

4) The weather. There are many things I love about New England, but there is just no competition here. Spring, summer, and fall here mean beautiful blue skies, lots of sun, and lots of time spent outdoors. And cold winter means 40s every day (although windy and foggy, which makes it feel colder!) with no snow. The thought of a New England winter makes me want to curl up under every blanket I own and hibernate.

An OCTOBER day in Northern Spain

3) The scenery. My absolute favorite thing to do in Spain is take long train rides around the country. The variety of scenery, the constant mountains, olive groves, cute villages, I don't know if I'd ever tire of it.

2) The history around every corner. I love that there is a nearly 1000-year-old church within walking distance of my apartment. The history is inescapable. Everything is old, the streets are still cobble-stoned, I love it.

Iglesia de Santa María Magdalena, 12th century

1) Jamón bocadillos. Jamón is Spain´s gift to the world, and the best way to enjoy it is with a hunk of fresh bread, some olive oil, and the previously mentioned fantastic tomatoes. Heaven.

Whirlwind tour of Belgium

Once upon a time, I was a junior in a Renaissance Art seminar that I only signed up for because I´d just come back from Spain and needed some Europe in my life. Just past the add/drop deadline I realized the Renaissance never really happened in Spain so I spent the next months learning about Flemish Masters and Florence instead (and then wrote my final paper about Spain anyways). I remember the class where we studying the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb painting, and my art professor described in vivid detail her trip to Ghent to finally see this painting in person. Swept up in the moment, I remember promising myself I would go to Ghent one day until reality set in about a second later and I realized that out of all the places in Europe I wanted to see, the chances of me ever actually ending up in Ghent were rather slim. 

Life has a funny way of working out though. Fast forward to this fall, and I found myself looking for cheap flights from Zaragoza, the nearest airport to Tudela, to anywhere in Europe. It turns out Ryanair flies to only two places from Zaragoza, and, you guessed it, I was looking for hotel reservations in Ghent and Florence (preview of coming attractions, I'll be there in early March). I think my art history professor must have rigged the flight schedules or something. 

My quick tour of Belgium started with the briefest of stays in Brussels. Almost exactly 12 hours, and most of that was spent sleeping, left only enough time to see the central plaza and Brussels' most famous statue, Mannekin Pis, before leaving for Ghent. (We happened to be there on the 20th anniversary of this particular outfit, so there was a big ceremony going on and everyone was dressed in cloaks with banners. Brussels is a weird city.) 

Brussels' Grand-Place

 First stop in Ghent was, of course, the famous painting. Seeing a photo of the painting projected on a screen in a classroom is a very different experience from standing in front of the enormous, original, 600-year-old painting.  After a visit to the cathedral, we climbed the hundreds of steps up to the top of the Belfry tower for some beautiful views of the city and then took a boat tour of the canals to end our afternoon of sightseeing. Ghent is cute, the type of city (town?) you want several long luxurious days in to slowly take in the sights. The best parts were strolling around the city, people-watching from the second-story of an organic, earthy cafe while we ate breakfast (a BLUEBERRY muffin, one of the foods I miss most here in Spain), a night-time stroll along the canal, warming up with a small serving of fries with curry sauce, mussels in a garlic cream sauce that were so good I forgot that I don't like mussels, and beers at a bar/brewery, Gruut, that uses an interesting blend of herbs along with hops in their beer, which is brewed right in the bar.

Tasting the blond, brown, and inferno beers at Gruut.