Roman morning, big lunch, castle: whew
Tuesday, 14 January 2025
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.
