Orange Juice

If you've ever seen the British film 'Brassed Off', you'll have seen and heard a Yorkshire brass band performing 't'Concerto d'Orange Juice'. It's actually the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo, and it's one of my absolute favourite pieces of music. As it happens, Aranjuez is a pretty little town about 50 km south of Madrid. It is home to a Royal Palace with associated formal gardens and several other places of interest. The area is known for its production of strawberries and asparagus. Each Saturday and Sunday during the summer, a restored steam train makes the trip from Madrid Atocha to Aranjuez with volunteers in period dress handing out strawberries. It's called El Tren de las Freses (it used to be how the farmers of Aranjuez got their goods to market in Madrid), and we tried quite hard to get on it. Sadly, it was full, so I think you may need to book more than a day in advance.

Aranjuez has always been on our hit-list of places to visit, but we were given a bit of impetus by a friend of MamaDuck's who was going there today specifically to watch a concert. We took the Cercanias (suburban train), which leaves Atocha every half-hour, and takes forty minutes. We eventually met up with our friend, had a nice lunch, wandered around the Palace Gardens, had a drink in the sunshine, got to the Palace too late to do the tour, had another drink, and then tootled off to the station to get the train home at about 7pm.















I can't believe the last picture!

The Prado, At Last!

A few days ago, we passed our ten-month anniversary of being in Madrid. And we had lunch with two of MamaDuck's colleagues, one of whom is definitely leaving, and the other one is thinking about it. We were talking about the things we'd all done in Madrid, and the things that we hadn't. One of the things that none of us had done was to visit the Prado.

In case you don't know, the Prado is one of the world's top art galleries. MamaDuck and I had always had it on our list of things to do, but never actually got round to it. We would walk past it on Sundays (when entrance is free to everybody) and be discouraged by the long queues.

As the teaching year winds down, MamaDuck found that she had a long morning free today. And she suggested that we spend it at the Prado. We would have to pay €6 each to get in. That's a bit less than the price of a cinema ticket. So we went for it. The seemingly long queues to buy tickets and to enter the galleries turned out to be clumps of Japanese tourists waiting for their guides; not part of any queue at all. So getting in was actually quite painless.

MamaDuck and I have quite different ways of looking at art; she likes to spend about three centuries looking at every single painting, while I just whizz past each one. She had a plan for this visit; she wanted to focus on Velazquez. So we found the main Velazquez room, and I did it in about five minutes. Not because I don't admire his work - he was a superb painter. But he was hampered by being Court Painter to the ugliest king (and rellies and offspring) who ever lived. I see enough ugliness in real life, and I really don't want my day spoilt by looking at more.

The Prado has a bunch of Rubens, some Van Dycks, some Brueghells, and a ton of stuff by dudes I'd never heard of. It also has a lot of El Grecos, which I did not care for at all. So, we spent an enjoyable couple hours, exclusively on the upper floor. Next time we'll do the ground floor.

Cercedilla and Cotos

We had a brilliant day out today, to Cercedilla which is in the mountains to the north, on the way to Segovia. MamaDuck had been told about this place by some of her work colleagues. Their advice was that when you got off the train, you change for a smaller one that chugs its way higher into the mountains. This line ends at a place called Cotos (remember this, it's important), but we jumped off at the first stop, Cercedilla Pueblo.

What we needed to do was
a) Have coffee, and
b) Buy some bread to go with our picnic.

Wandering around the pretty pueblo, we discovered that there were no cafés, and no shops. So we walked back down the hill to Cercedilla proper, had some coffee, bought some bread, and then headed off up a pine-wooded mountain. It was fantastic to be away from the city, to see cows, to be surrounded by green stuff and country noises rather than city noises. Much of the noise was generated by the grazing cows, whose bells would bong whenever they chewed a mouthful of grass.

We clambered around the woods for a few hours, and headed back to the railway station around mid-afternoon. There was a certain amount of confusion at the station. Nobody there, including the RENFE station manager, knew which platform the train for Madrid would arrive on. We were advised to listen for announcements. There were a couple of dozen boisterous and happy students on the platform with us. By default, when you leave the ticket office, you are on platform 4, and it is theoretically possible that Madrid-bound trains could stop there. But they could also stop at platform 1 or 2, which are reached via an underpass.

When we were about 10 minutes away from the departure time, the RENFE signature tune was played over the speakers. Everyone fell silent to listen. The pre-recorded voice said 'proxima tren por...' (next train for...). Then the station manager said 'Cotos'. And then the machine-voice said 'via tres' (platform 3).

This was repeated a few times, and our companions heading for Madrid began making jokes about it. Hell, we all desperately wanted some advance warning of where the Madrid train was going to be - everybody had rucksacks, some had guitars, a few had mountain bikes. The last thing anyone wanted was to have to do a twenty-second dash through an underpass.

Announcements for Cotos continued. Probably two dozen in all. Someone compared the announcer's accent to that of failed Presidential candidate Mariano Rajoy. The next time the announcement was made, the Rajoy joke was extended to reveal that the name of the little girl (la niña) who spoke to Rajoy in his dreams and was his inspiration during the election campaign was... 'Cotos.'

It was all screamingly funny, and yes, about one minute before the train was due, we were told it would be on platform 1, so we all had to do the tunnel-scramble. Although there was a bit more confusion because Cercedilla station has both a platform '01', and a platform '1'.

We all boarded the train. As it happened, MamaDuck and I were in the same carriage as the students. There was another group of students and a mountain of rucksacks already in place in that coach. At the next stop, a third bunch got on. It was fun to start with, but after about ten minutes of the noise I would have quite happily jumped out of the window.

Finally we arrived at Madrid. We had overheard that most of them would be getting off at Nuevos Ministerios, the stop before ours. They all managed to get off with their kit, and there were a few minutes of silence. Then the train announcement said 'Proxima Parada...' (next stop...), and the remaining students all yelled 'Cotos!'

Oh, how we laughed. But I don't think anyone who was waiting for the 1534 to Madrid at Cercedilla station today will ever be able to hear the word 'Cotos' again without cracking up.

Toledo

It's Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Spain, so MamaDuck is off work and after spending three days more or less asleep and recovering from the rigours of the last term, is now bright and breezy (and blogging profusely). So we went for a day-trip yesterday, to Toledo.

What an amazing place! Toledo is about 80 kms south of Madrid. It used to be the capital of Spain, and is known as 'the City of Three Cultures': there is Islamic influence, there are two synagogues, many churches and a Cathedral. The old city sits on a high promontory surrounded on three sides by the Rio Tagu. It is exceptionally well-preserved/well-reconstructed, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

If you ever get to Spain, and can make a day available (actually two or three would be better), get thee down to Toledo. I promise you, you will love it. We went by the Avant train from Madrid. This is a fast train, not as fast as the AVE, but it gets you there in 30 minutes in total comfort. One of the things I love about Spanish railways is that they are incredibly reliable, and when you buy your tickets for inter-city journeys, you get reserved seats. If there are no seats left, the train is full and you can't go on it: no standing in aisles allowed! Simple. The fares are reasonable, and if your train arrives more than five minutes late, you get your money back (this never happens).

So, here's a bunch of pictures of Toledo. I took about 100 pics, but this is all you're getting!



I did a web search for info on Toledo and found a very useful piece of advice. The railway station is outside the old town. You can walk it, but unless you are a glutton for punishment, you would be better off taking the number 22 bus from outside the station. It's 90 centimos well-spent, and delivers you at the top of the mountain in Plaza Zocodover - a good reference point.



Alcazar dominates this end of town. It's actually not that old, but it is important.

Moving into the centre, you'll stumble upon the Cathedral. It isn't the prettiest building ever constructed, but it is huge, and has had lots of additions and extensions over time. I found the neo-classical portico entrance on one façade to be particularly anachronistic on a mostly Gothic building: then again you might find a late 20th-century plain granite-faced addition on another façade to be equally weird.







It's not possible to get the Cathedral into one shot, unless you brought your helicopter.

Toledo is very much a Medieval city: winding, narrow lanes, mostly closed off to traffic. It's also hilly, and we were grateful for our acclimatisation to this in Madrid: if you arrive here as a car-driving couch-potato who doesn't do exercise, you might find Toledo challenging.















Toledo is in Castilla-La Mancha, the setting for Don Quixote. Wherever you go in Toledo, you see images of DQ, and there is a wonderful statue of Cervantes, the author.



Toledo retains a real sense of a walled city. The walls still stand in many places, and they are incredibly tall. The old city could be accessed only by two fortified bridges.



Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Segovia

A little over a month ago we went on our first adventure outside Madrid. There's an ancient little town about 50km to the north called Segovia. The Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it really is quite amazing. My interest in it started when I read that the Guardian Hay Festival would be held there at the end of September. In case you don't know, the Hay Festival began as a kind of book fair in Hay-On-Wye in Wales about 20 years ago, and has expanded considerably since then. I just loved the idea of stepping off the train in a Spanish town and asking someone '¿Hay Festival?' (hay in Spanish means 'is there?').

The Festival was on for four days, but because of BetterArf's work schedule we could only go on the last day. None of the literary events scheduled for that day appealed to us, but we went anyway because I'd been looking forward to it. It turned out to be not the best possible day to go: the weather was overcast and stormy-looking, BetterArf was coming down with a cold, and the Director of Planning (moi) had neglected to check the train times. I mean, you would think they'd be every half-hour, wouldn't you?

We arrived at Atocha station and we had just missed a train. We stared in incomprehension at the timetable. The trains run every two hours! Worse than that, it takes two bloody hours to get there. Unbelievable. When it came, we discovered that this Cercania (regional train) had the hardest seats ever designed, stopped at every village on the way, and had a real hard time dragging itself up the mountains. Some of the scenery was stunning, and I would have taken some photos had it not been for the fact that every single (polycarbonate, I presume) window had been scratched to buggery with the names of some cretinous vandals. Grrr.

When we finally arrived at Segovia we had a quick look round, and then it was well into lunchtime. What you have to have for lunch in Segovia is Cochinillo, roast suckling pig. This we duly did, and then headed back to the railway station. The station is a fair way from the old town, and we attempted to catch a taxi but there were none to be had and we had not allowed enough time to walk there. Bugger! Another train missed. So we spent a fairly dismal hour and a half in a not very nice bar opposite the station. We did see a poster at the station promising that a fast service to Madrid would be starting in December.

All in all, a pretty crap day out, but the town itself is absolutely gorgeous and we'll definitely be back in the spring. Here's some not very good pictures:






Did I mention the Roman Aqueduct?

It's over 1 km long, over 100 ft high and held together by gravity. Absolutely amazing.