Musings

Our hood at 11:15am; car was in the shade all morning. Brr, yet nice in the sun.

Here’s a stab at the layout of Bilbilis (sometimes with accent), a Roman fortified town on a hilltop and slopes. You can see the city wall clearly in this reconstruction. The forum is the rectangle with the red circle-numbers. It’s close to north-south, with the nose looming over the valley to the south. This location controls a major pass to the east, which today includes the important train route from Madrid to Zaragoza, and was a significant transportation corridor well before the Romans arrived.

Looking southwest across the forum and into the northeast-ward flowing Jalón River valley.

View west from the northwest corner of the forum, down into the amphitheater, which is nested into what would otherwise have been a ravine. A sign indicated there was a previous Roman structure of some sort here.

We set off to check out the eastern hill of the settlement, and looked up to see that we were disturbing a herd of grazing Iberian ibex. What a treat. The harem-boss is fourth from the left facing us, perhaps trying to stare us down. He’s got a large set of back-curving horns.

The Romans apparently built this as a cistern, and later Christians repurposed it as a chapel by creating a doorway, and no doubt adding interior features.

Back in the main part of the site, north-northwest of the forum, is a modest bath complex. This is the only one in this prosperous city—it even had a mint—due to the hilltop locations. The Romans built three cisterns to provide water just for the baths (not only for bathwater, but also for the steam-heat.)

View west of the east hill, with the cistern-church to the left and what looks like another chapel with a round window hole to the right…not discussed on the signs likely because the site managers didn’t want tourists visiting it.

We thoroughly enjoyed our hotel’s restaurant’s prix fixe lunch to recover from our Bilbilis adventure. It included a first and second course, dessert, and a choice of beverages. I chose the ¼ liter of red wine, and was surprised when a whole, full (opened) bottle (a local garnacha) was delivered…I asked, eyes wide I’m sure…she said, just drink two or three glasses, whatever you like, that’ll be fine. Okay! With tax, all of the above for €16. A fine deal! BTW, that’s my dessert, a sorbet of lemon with a few drops of vodka.

Late in the afternoon fortified from our fine luncheon (and a nap for one of our duo), we drove up to the main castle above Calatayud, formally: Castillo Mayor del Emir Ayyub ibn Aviv Lajmi, named for the official mentioned late in yesterday’s post. It’s a darned narrow castle, as that’s all there’s room for on the sinuous hill. The curved side is facing downhill to the Río Jalón valley.

Here’s the west end from dead on. Ignore the nasty lights, far more acceptable before everyone was taking so many photos and instead watching and oooh-ing and aaah-ing at the night-time display.

Here’s the view of the east end from the northeast, a massive structure against the sky—and what a sky!

Returning to our hotel for the night, we spotted these storks circling and returning to their nests (two to the lower left; one high, just below the cone). I had to ask the ever-helpful Sandra, the afternoon desk person, what the Spanish is…cigüeña, pronounced something like see-gwain-yuh, very strange spelling for Spanish. Too long for Wordle, fortunately.

Posted at 4:32 PM | 2 Comments »

Towns, cities, even small communities, have a plaza (say: plah-thuh here in Spain). In all but the smallest communities, it seems to me, the largest is the Plaza Major (say: mah-yore (kinda)), that is: the biggest plaza. In Medinaceli, it is substantial.

Medinaceli is more famous for this Roman triple-arch—the only triple surviving in Spain.

As near as I can tell, all the row-crops we saw today were this, which I think is winter wheat, that is, planted in the fall, and probably hard/bread wheat. This is what mono-cropping can look like.

Here’s a smaller community’s main plaza, a place called Deza.

This church presides over a playground for small children with two of those ride-a-critter-on-a-spring toys, plus a combo soccer and basketball court for the older kids. The plaza is behind the church from this location, and is about the same size as the one in Deza. This is Mazaterón.

Meet Peñalcázar; peña means cliff. We tried to get to this Medieval ghost town atop an amazing landform. The wind was strong and gusty, too much to fight our way along. If we’d had a 4×4 we probably could have made it up the two-track you can barely see, at least to the outer wall.

The landform won here, too. We tried to climb to the Celt-Iberian settlement that was above us, and controlled this lovely valley, now partly reservoir. We made it about twice this high before we quit. I estimate we were about a third of the way to the site, but it could have been less. Great views, however.

The site is called Aratis, and it is most famous for the several stunning bronze helmets found I believe by metal detectorists. They date to the later Iron Age, probably the 1st C BC. By this time, the Romans were beginning to swarm southern Iberia and Iberia’s Mediterranean coast. Aratis was inland, and at that time safe from incursions.

At our feet were these spiny plants, Genista scorpius, I think. We also trod on what smelled exactly like sage.

We popped up over the lip of a hill, having climbed out of a valley with a large mill complex, now abandoned, that looked like it was in use into the latter half of the twentieth century…and look what we spotted. The configuration and paint job is traditional in Spain (at least now). Outside of Malanquilla.

What a moon as we left our hotel to do some errands. Almost 6pm in Calayatud. The name is a corruption of the Arabic Qal‘at ’Ayyūb, meaning fortress of Ayyūb. Ayyūb is the equivalent of Job, which at least at that time was a common Arabic name. This Ayyūb was Ayyūb ibn Habib al-Lakhmi, the walí, or, roughly, governor, here of al-Andalus, an official reporting directly to the sultan, or, in this case, the emir of Córdoba. There’s a fine hierarchical bureaucracy.

On the top of the list was to scare up some eats, as almost all restaurants in the city are closed on Monday. We went to a large modern supermarket (skipping Aldi). I spotted this offering, probably about 10 different brands/types on offer. [I edited the hooves from the photo; you’re welcome.] I did not look at the prices, but I suspect they were substantial.

Posted at 3:32 PM | Comments Off on Architectural forms, history, eats: plus…

Four of us enjoyed a delayed holiday meal today, with a turkey-dressing theme…missed the cranberry sauce…I’m glad the gravy turned out so tasty.

Posted at 10:05 PM | Comments Off on Postponed yumminess

We dined this evening on hoppin’ john slightly re-imagined, which I sure hope still qualifies to give us good mojo for 2025. The black-eyed peas were fresh, mmmm. I lightly cooked the collards. The grain is off piste—it’s wild rice, which of course isn’t rice botanically…. The broth of all three was from some turkey thigh bones I held back for this evening.

Posted at 9:05 PM | Comments Off on Fiber-loaded augury

I arose before the sun (I know it’s relative), and thought, this is the last dawn I’ll see of 2024.

When we were out doing our final errands, I chose some red food…that’s pickled beets and duh raspberries. I haven’t tried the former (yet), and the raspberries, uh, almost flavorless…but gorgeous (eat with your eyes doesn’t really cut it sometimes).

Posted at 8:28 PM | Comments Off on V late 2024

As the household menu-planner (mostly), I’ve been trying to move us away from red meats and toward fish and non-meat proteins for dinners. This is one of our current favorites….

Posted at 7:50 PM | Comments Off on Not your grandma’s salmon salad

Oh, and the new coffee maker is a Ninja! I can’t figure out how coffee-making fits with a mercenary warrior, but the device makes lovely coffee.

Posted at 10:08 PM | Comments Off on Footnote to yesterday

The morning routine began as normal: measure water into the electric drip coffee maker, measure ground coffee, assemble machine, poke on-button, watch the blue light illuminate, return to morning fog—wince and check a few headlines.

Cock ear toward pot…hmm. No gurgling. Glance. Yup, there’s the blue light. Wha?

Despite off-on restarting, gentle shaking, etc., still no heat.

Hmm. Plan B.

I dug out our souvenir Moka Pot, and remembered that it always takes a long time (to me) to heat and brew. Still, it did so, and I sipped fine hot coffee. Whew.

I invaded the Guru’s fog with the news…and he sipped the substitute coffee, and surfaced…. By noon we had researched electric coffee makers in our preferred price range, (no, not paying $400 plus tax—or more), and fetched the chosen model home. By one, we’d unboxed, done the two water-only brews to clean the new machine, and had actual coffee brewing.

Serendipity followed by mission accomplished.

Posted at 7:28 PM | 1 Comment »

We walked around the corner to a coffee shop and I had an artistic matcha latte…

…sitting in the sunshine by the sidewalk under autumn leaves.

Posted at 8:47 PM | Comments Off on Street tea

Nothing quite looks like a rambutan…with those aesthetic spinterns in a variety of greenish and rosy hues.

Posted at 10:20 PM | 1 Comment »