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.

Extremadura Day 2

So the conference I was attending was a combination of a national Spanish conference generically related to computer science alongside an international workshop on gerontechnology. The first couple of days, the technical talks of the conference were entirely in Spanish. So we participated in the social events but spent the time of the talks doing some sightseeing. On Monday (Labor Day), we rented a car (manual transmission!) and drove to the towns of Trujillo and Guadalupe.

This first view is of the walk up into Trujillo after parking at the bottom of the hill.

We started by visiting the castle in Trujillo. It has a very interesting history starting as an Arab fortress in the 9th century and then rebuilt in the 13th century. There are some sweeping views of Trujillo and the Extremaduran countryside from up here (which looked surprisingly familiar to us).

Inside one of Trujillo's churches...

More views of walking in Trujillo...

This is the Plaza Mayor in Trujillo. One of the interesting things about Extremadura is that it is the region of Spain where many of the conquistadors hail from. In particular, Pizarro is from Trujillo (we visited an interesting museum in his home). So this statue of Pizarro graces the main square. However, the statue was originally carved to be Cortés as a gift to Mexico. Mexico, understandably, didn't think all that much of Cortés so they rejected the gift, which was then repurposed to be Pizarro in Trujillo.

From Trujillo, we moved on to Guadalupe. Which is known for being the original hometown of my host in Cáceres and also for the site of The Royal Monastery of Santa María of Guadalupe. We had lunch in the monastery's restaurant, which was located in the cloister in the secular part of the monastery (where the royalty stayed when visiting).

After lunch, we took guided tour of the monastery (in Spanish). No photos inside, and it was beautiful. We were allowed to take photos out front and in the main cloister.

We drove back (the long way!) to Cáceres for a dinner Monday evening in the city.

Extremadura Day 1

The week of Labor Day, Tim and I took a trip to Extremadura. I was visiting some potential collaborators and giving a talk; Tim was tagging along. We arrived to Madrid then had a car to take us the three hours' drive to the university town in Extremadura. It's called Cáceres. We arrived in the mid-afternoon. The first day we arrived, we spent the evening walking around Cáceres.  It was quite lovely ... and deserted. The old town of Cáceres is itself a UNESCO world heritage site. The old town sits right adjacent to the much more modern Plaza Mayor and the more vibrant areas of the city. Everything was easily within walking distance.