Bilbao to St Jean

Bilbao & St Jean Pied a Porte

 We enjoyed Bilbao! Two visits to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, filled with David Hockney stage settings for Yorkshire seasons. Lin & Rod arrived to our tiny B7 B above the busiest cross roads in old Bilbao. Everyone out for paseo between 6 & 8 pm, kids playing, lovers parading entwined, old people chatting, new babies being shown off – everything you would want. Wonderful tapas and wines dangerously easy to drink. The Guggenheim has rejuvenated the city by replacing dead docks and shipyards in the mid 90’s with a great tourist draw-card. New buildings have sprung up and the largest Basque city has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Spain.

Traveled with Diego, our guide for the next fortnight and Ivan, both from Galicia through San Sebastian. These northern rivers break out of their mountains into deep estuaries with safe anchorages and room to grow fish and shellfish. At the end of summer, the vegetables are fresh and juicy. There is plenty of jamon and other tasty tidbits to staple to a piece of bread with a toothpick to make a pinxos. Two or three with a beer and coffee make an adequate snack to last until the earliest dinners at 8.30 pm.

St Jean Pied de Porte is the last French town on the route Napoleon that leads over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles. A Roman road led over the pass, used extensively by medieval pilgrims and most recently for smuggling in the Spanish civil war and WW2. Now huge numbers of walkers set off up the steep slope to Spain. Obtained our credenciales to collect our way-stamps on the Camino and followed up with a magnificent dinner served by a waiter with a great sense of humour.

Ceramics in Seville

The ceiling of the Hall of the Ambassadors at the Alcazar in Seville always blows my mind. The brilliantly coffered surface is designed to be a starry sky. The domed ceiling is set at the end of the Courtyard of the Damsels, with enough mudejar plaster and stonework to rival the Alhambra. Takes your breath away! But it is Seville’s love of ceramic tiles that makes it special.

When the rivers of gold began to flow from South America into an austere feudal society based on land, religion and war with the Muslims, the effect on the economy was remarkable. Lots of religious paintings were created, a few remarkable palaces and thousands of tiles to carpet the walls in brilliant coloured patterns. The traders and the intelligentsia were mostly Jewish or Muslim, but they had to leave, much to the damage of the Iberian economy. So the gold and silver flowed in by the ship-load and flowed out in demonstrations of military, religious and material display.

Over the 16th century, the northern Italian city states, the Dutch and the English competed for trading empires and built their own economies that outlasted those of Spain and Portugal. When Seville was the capital of the Spanish Empire, she glistened and glowed with tiles and mudejar encrustations. A wonderful memorial to an austere medieval society that learned to live with luxury but no middle class to create a personal ambition!

Caliphs in Cordoba

In the tenth century Cordoba/s wealthy multicultural society was at its zenith. It was the largest city in Europe (~100,000) with a reputed library of 400,000 books. Abd al- Rahman III had proclaimed himself Caliph and therefore responsible for both political and religious leadership to counteract the new Shia Fatimid Caliphate of Cairo. Al Rahman extended the wonderful pillared mosque of Cordoba and, to project his political power, built a new royal city nearby. Al-Zahra, the city of Brilliance, used a Roman aqueduct to supply water to three terraces above Cordoba to capture cooling breezes. Visiting dignitaries could not fail to be impressed by the public rooms and gardens and the vast parade ground. Around the vizier’s and the prince’s quarters, the bureaucrats ran the government, with al-Rahman at another level higher up. However, al-Zahra barely outlived its creator and its treasures ended up in palaces from Seville to Cairo. Within a generation, his centralized government had broken down because
of a palace coup and fragmentation of his subject kingdoms. In turn,
this weakened the Muslim grip on power and allowed Christian
supremacy to progressively replace the Muslims Despite the almost

deliberate official neglect of things Muslim since the reconquista,
the Muslims knew how to manage the hot dry climate. We stayed in
a boutique hotel built around a courtyard and cool despite the 36deg
temperatures. Kerry overdosed on courtyards and we now need some
shade sails over ours at Woodend. We relaxed in the hammam and
gawped at the magnificent mosque near the roman bridge. The
Christians have built a cathedral crammed with baroquerie in the
middle of the mosque, but can’t destroy the magic of the wonderful  
mihrab. Nearby, where Maimonides was a child, we visited the
medieval synagogue and watched flamenco.

Textures in Toledo

High Muslim culture of Baghdad of the 9th & 10th centuries gave the barbarian West such a kick start with ideas, skills and their implementation that they triggered the renaissance of the twelfth century. Toledo in the 12th century. was one of the routes of our transformation.

The walled city of Toledo is a palimpsest of textures from the Roman Tolentum, Visigothic capital, Ummayad stronghold and Christian reconquista in 1084. Each culture has left their mark in stone and re-used pillars and capitols. The water heating system of the Roman baths remains but the caldarium is a plaza and the tepidarium has been incorporated into a residential courtyard. The church of S Salvador had been a mosque whose builders had re-used visigothic pillars and capitals. The beautiful mosque of Christo de la Luz uses brickwork to develop a textured tactile surface that changes as the sun moves its shadows, reminiscent of Bukhara. The church of Santa Maria la Blanca with wonderful Ummayad arches was a synagogue. Samuel Ha-Levi, Jewish poet and thinker, and also treasurer to a 14th century Spanish King, left us another stunning synagogue in Mozarabic style. Even the vast Gothic cathedral is built partly on a visigothic foundation and the visigothic Mozarabic Liturgy is still authorized for use in this most Catholic of countries. 

In the harsh sunlight, the deep shadows do not relieve the heat of the afternoon or the press of tourists. But in the early evening, the paseo of locals takes over and families and young people take over the narrow cobbled streets and lanes, built for foot traffic or donkeys or the horses of the nobility. Thirty thousand people lived on top of each other when it again became the capital of emerging Christian Spain and Alfonso the Wise sponsored the translation movement.

(Written by Gordon, moved from comment to blogpost by Ab)

Intro

This is Ab, setting up a blog for my parents, so they can inspire envy, I mean, keep us informed of their most recent travels. They leave today for seven weeks in Spain and Italy. I'll let them fill in the details!