El dominguero (The day-tripper)

A few days without a blog post I know... a busy weekend so now I’m playing catch-up.

I’ve spent my first two weekends in the Spanish capital visiting cities other than Madrid. This isn’t at all to say there’s a lack of stuff to do here; rather, that we are surrounded on all sides by some of the most beautiful cities in Spain... Segovia, Toledo, Aranjuez, Salamanca, Ávila (to name but a few). Spain has always been seen as a cultural treasure trove, and these are some of the country’s finest jewels. Collectively they represent the crucible of the Spanish language and culture we know them today.

Now they are within easy reach of the madrileño day tripper thanks to the wonders of Spanish high speed rail – the AVE network. AVE is one of those clever little acronyms of which large organisations are so fond these days. While the initials stand for Alta Velocidad Española (literally, ‘High Speed Spain’), the word ave itself means ‘bird’. Clever, that.

The two cities I’ve visited so far were Segovia and Toledo. They felt vastly different, yet both were similarly infused with the rugged, dusty beauty of Castile – Spain’s ideological and geographical heartland.

Segovia sits about 90km northwest of Madrid, on the high plains overlooked by the snow-capped Guadarrama mountains. Like most ancient Spanish sites, tourists are primarily lured to Segovia by its castle, the Alcázar (from the Arabic, ‘al-qasr’). The original castle, again like most ancient Spanish sites, was destroyed by Napoleon – but its 19^th century replacement has all the visual spectacle of a Disney castle, perched romantically on a high promontory with battlements, turrets and dreaming spires.

The city itself is something of a one-horse town, its main street essentially linking the castle at one end to the breathtaking Roman aqueduct at the other. As a tourist you stroll from the aqueduct to the castle, marvel at the sights, eat some nice food and then get on the train home. It felt like an unusually systematic environment, one which gave up its treasures perhaps too easily... both to the camera and the imagination.

Toledo was the complete opposite. Once you plunge into the winding medieval streets of this former capital, rarely does a camera-friendly vista open up before you. Navigation in the maze of alleys is a nightmare; the city does its utmost to hamper any kind of planned itinerary, preferring instead to traps the unsuspecting day-tripper in its atmospheric streets until you start to understand the silent, baking hot magic of the place.


Toledo was, incidentally, the home of celebrated Spanish painter El Greco. (He was, as the nickname suggests, more Greek than Spanish  – but this is kept largely quiet). I cannot recommend the El Greco Museum highly enough; located in a specially-restored replica of the artist’s house, it made for an intriguingly different setting in which to discover new works of art when compared the sterile, air conditioned galleries of the capital.

The problem with day trips is that they only last a day. You board the train and are whisked home to the concrete megalopolis before beauty and silence have had time to soak into you. I’m still looking for that patch of serenity here – I feel the Retiro park may be a good place to look.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

The fairytale spires of the Alcázar in Segovia

The silent, dusty magic of Toledo's narrow streets

Spanish of the Day

no estar católico - to feel unwell. Again, the influence of Catholicism on the Spanish language is evident.

otra manera de darle la vuelta a la tortilla - another way of looking at it. (Literally, 'another way of spinning the tortilla'.)