Extremadura Day 3

On our third day in Spain we again availed ourselves of the rental car and a free morning and early afternoon to take in Mérida. This place must have the largest and most well preserved set of Roman ruins outside of, well, Rome. It was HOT on this day, but we spent the lion's share of it walking the entire city of Mérida to see the ruins spread all over.

This was really impressive to me. It was a large footprint of a "suburban" Roman house (built just outside of the city walls). It was enormous and many pieces of it were extremely well preserved.

We ducked briefly into the Mérida bull fighting ring. (Yeah, that poster says Trujillo, but I swear this photo was taken in Mérida.)

The remains of an old Roman road. We contrasted this with the one underground in Tridentum in Trento. This one was more impressive, primarily because it surrounded...

... this amphitheater.

And that amphitheater was adjacent to this theater...

It was a long hot walk to get out to the Circus Maximus, but you only live once, so...

Not sure what the bright red decorations all over town were about, but they were pretty.

Tim found some octopus for lunch...

 

This was the Temple of Diana. Which was apparently, it turns out, never really a temple to Diana, but it got that name and it stuck. For a while it was a temple of some kind, then basically the city pulpit, then a mansion (see the piece in back).

More pretty city decorations...

There's this famous aqueduct outside of town. We had to drive a bit to not die from heat exhaustion, but we managed to sneak into a nearby parking spot and take a quick walk around it. Incredibly impressive.

So that's a stork nest. They're EVERYWHERE in Extremadura.

We headed back to be in Cáceres in time for the conference social event. The group went to see the Vostell Museum. We also had a tour guide for this. The tour was also in Spanish. But my host was there to translate this time. My understanding is this Vostell guy was an artist. He visited Extremadura and fell in love. With Extremadura and with a woman. Long story short, after a brief stint back in Germany, they settled in Extremadura. He was looking for a city to effectively sponsor him, and after being turned down by others, Cáceres basically said "sure, we could use a resident artist", and they landed here, just outside of town. The space is beautiful, with lots of naturally occurring boulders dotting the landscape. We visited the museum first (very interesting if eclectic), then took in the surrounding landscapes.

After the museum, we headed to a nearby village, where their main square had been taken over by tables for the conference attendees. We were served dinner in the open air. The umbrellas are apparently a permanent fixture, I guess to provide shade over the entire plaza. It was quite picturesque.