Return to Espelunciecha

It's been a while since we've been able to go to the mountains, but we managed a little excursion on Saturday, to the Tena Valley, right up near the border with France.
At the highest point we reached almost 1900 metres above sea level, and we saw some lovely wild flowers.

Globe flowers

Gentians

 Primula hirsuta

Narcissus

I think these are bluebells

...in a brewery

In English we have an expression: "He couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery!" meaning someone is incapable of organising the easiest event.
It really was pretty simple to arrange; a question of deciding a date, booking tickets online and locating the brewery (I can't claim credit for any of it; my husband did everything)
Well, it was yesterday and apart from one of the group not being able to come, it was a brilliant two hours, totally successful and well-organised.
Cervezas Ambar, La Zaragozana is currently right in the city of Zaragoza; we pass it without realising it every time we walk to church on a Sunday, but if you don't know it's there you wouldn't guess. I say currently because in a few months the main brewery will leave the hundred-plus-year-old works to their out-of-town location in La Cartuja. They are not abandoning the site completely, however. It will be dedicated to small, specialist brewing, tasting and as an industrial museum.
The first thing we had to do on arrival was to put on overalls.

Brown coats, like the brewers!

And then we had to cover our hair.

For an hour we were taken round the works. We sampled malt and hops, saw the various machines and vats.

 The last part of the tour was the outside tanks. 

After that came the really fun bit: the tasting. Our guide, Daniela set up a bottle display on the bar.

The bottles on the left are the standard beers; that's what we tried first, but not like in a wine tasting where you swill and spit: proper glasses filled from the bottles, and snacks to line the stomach with.

The IPA (India pale ale) was delicious, and the dark beer was a bit caramel flavoured. 

Last and certainly not least came the "Ambiciosas" -half litre designer beers. These are limited edition, some a bit wierd, but we chose a really nice rye beer. 

https://ambar.com/ambiciosas/en/find-them/

In the photo you can just see the postcards and bottle-openers we were all given. 

A thoroughly recommendable visit!

https://ambar.com/mas18/?redirect_to=https://ambar.com/en/

La Rioja

My first job in Spain was in Logroño, La Rioja. I lived there for two years, but we left in 1990; quite a log time ago. Logroño is not two hours from Zaragoza, although the motorway is very expensive. As a special treat, we had a voucher for wine-tasting in a winery of our choice, so we chose Lecea in La Rioja and booked a hotel in the same village of San Asensio.

Lecea is a small family business in the wine-making district of San Asensio. The buildings are old and stone-built. Apparently the hill is riddled with cellars from the many businesses that used to be there; everyone who had vines would have a cellar and when they needed more space they would dig more. We were taken on a tour of the cellars and had the processes and history explained to us. Everyone was given a long-stemmed glass to taste the wine in.

One of these is my glass.

Lecea use traditional methods; some of their wine is made by treading grapes in a big tank. 

Later the same day we went to Briones. This is a village set on a hill.

There are some interesting old buildings.

After Briones, which didn't take long, we went to the wineries town of Haro. Down by the river are some wineries. You have to climb up a steep hill for the residential part of the town. Wine and its making are the most implorant thing here.

Shoe-shine boy

Horn player

View from the hotel in San Asensio. There are almond trees in flower.

Zaragoza weekend

Yesterday we went to the Pablo Serrano museum in Zaragoza. This is a massive building not far from the bullring. It has four massive floors where art can be displayed, connected by escalators and lifts. 

The ground floor had an exhibition of the photos of Daniel Mordzinski. Here's a link to his work. Photos of writers; really good! http://www.danielmordzinski.com/fotografias/espania/

 The next floor had bronze heads by Pablo Serrano, which were fascinating.
On the third floor was the exhibition we had come for: Balenciaga. He was a designer born in the Basque Country in 1895 (the same year as my grandparents). His designs were iconic for many years. There were about twenty outfits and lots of really wonderful photos. Perhaps my favourite was the cream-coloured dress in the photo below, which is thick lace-net with a beautiful fall to the skirt; although I have to say that some of the slightly droopy hems bothered me. However, they are half a century old, and even designer dresses may give with time and wear!

In the afternoon we went into the old part of Zaragoza to see a church which had been closed for 17 years. It's called La Magdalena, and outside it's got to be the best example of Mudejar in Zaragoza. Only on the outside. Inside is 18th century, I would say, and not particularly interesting.

Snow days

On Saturday we drove to the Tena valley. These views are a frozen reservoir, Bubal, I think,  and Peña Telera

This is Foratata, taken from Formigal, a village that thrives on the ski industry. It was crammed full of cars and buses! the snow came very late this winter and so people are desperate to take to the slopes!

Pyrenaeum Música IV

Now in its fourth year, Pyrenaeum Música is becoming an institution in Jaca. The oldest of the local choirs, the Orfeón Jacetano organises a masterclass with a reputed composer-conductor. We spend Saturday working on three of his/her songs, and in the evening present our work, conducted by our teacher in the cathedral. This is followed by a renowned guest choir to treat us all to a really good concert.
Probably the bulk of the participants are from the Orfeón Jacetano itself, but the classes are open to anyone who cares to enrol, and people come from various places and choirs locally, nationally and even internationally.
Last Saturday we had a great time with Josep Vila i Casañas as our teacher. He has an exquisitely sensitive ear and worked with us with great patience and good humour.

Official reception in the Town Hall

It was a cold, rainy day in Jaca; in the inside of the Carmen church it wasn't much warmer than in the street, but we had a great time with Josep and our singing companions

After a rest we started a concert in the cathedral with the three songs we'd been working on, to be followed by the lovely women's choir, VokalArs, conducted by Nuria Fernández Herranz.

Here's our end-of-course effort-whole class participation.

Nuria and VokalArs

Journey to the Low Countries

...and now for something completely different.
For a special holiday this year we went to The Netherlands and Belgium. I pre-booked tickets to the Rijksmuseum, which was somewhere I really wanted to go to, thanks to the publicity they put on Facebook.
It was actually the first place we visited, being dropped in Amsterdam and told to entertain ourselves for a few hours. The tickets cost €17.50 each-I think it's the same if you queue for them or buy online. Amsterdam is a vibrant, lively place and the Rijksmuseum is the same. I'd have liked to see the High Society exhibition but it had finished. https://frieze.com/article/high-society-rijksmuseum-gambling-carousing-and-clothes

The Night Watch is the centrepiece of the Rijksmuseum, and it's a much more gratifying centrepiece than, say, the Monalisa, which is so small you can hardly see it!https://kottke.org/18/10/why-the-night-watch-is-rembrandts-masterpiece

This is a great setup they did a few years ago.

The next day we were supposed to have a boat trip, and due to a misunderstanding we missed the boat and had to take a taxi to the diamond factory which was the next stop. On the way we saw a monument that we just had to come back to the next day. Maps of Amsterdam show the Rembrandt statue in the square of that name. A few year ago they amplified the monument. It's brilliant!

Amsterdam has an important historic Jewish quarter. When the Sephardic Jews were thrown out of Spain and Portugal, many came to Amsterdam. The Ashkenazis came from eastern Europe. They built synagogues and made an enormous contribution to the wealth of the city. Many were deported and killed by the Nazis.

An interesting and thought-provoking visit.

Volendam

A small fishing village engulfed by tourism. We were taken to a "cheese factory" which was really a farm shop. There were loads of cheese shops, selling the many variations of the waxed balls of cheese.

If you look at the horizon you can see the low-lying land

Choir in traditional costume

A good threat!

Also in the Netherlands we went to the exquisite Delft-well, it would have been exquisite except for the fairground in the main square. 

Another city of canals

bridge that lifts to let boats through.

The Hague

Administrative capital, dripping with money

Parliament courtyard

Rotterdam, where they took us to a giant covered market.

Where we found this!

We walked along the historic docks a bit. Basically a city of skyscrapers

The next stop was Antwerp. A big, rather decadent town; the hotel we stayed at wasn't wonderful, but the old city centre is spectacular! It has that lush gaudiness of what they call civil Gothic, which emphasises just how rich and powerful the Low Countries were.

Antwerp cathedral is spectacular both inside and out. It has a very high tower. Here is what Wikipedia says about it: 

The belfry of the cathedral is included in the Belfries of Belgium and France entry in the list of UNESCO World Heritage SitesThe Cathedral of Our Lady (Dutch: Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Antwerp, Belgium. Today's see of the Diocese of Antwerp started in 1352 and, although the first stage of construction was ended in 1521, has never been 'completed'. In Gothicstyle, its architects were Jan and Pieter Appelmans. It contains a number of significant works by the Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, as well as paintings by artists such as Otto van Veen, Jacob de Backer and Marten de Vos.

The tower, they say, is 123 metres high, which makes it higher than St Paul in London's dome.

The pulpit was the first of the super-ornate carved ones we saw in Belgium.

There was a nice monument outside to the workmen. Unfortunately there was a safety fence round it.

You could tell we had arrived in Belgium by the Tintin posters!

Bruges, where we stayed in this street and had a lovely evening on terraces drinking nice Belgian beer

From Bruges we went to Gent. The centre is monumental in the civil, Belgian way.

The cathedral, which we didn't have to pay to go into, had the skeleton of a whale hanging up in it. Slightly wierd.

And on to Brussels, stopping briefly at the Expo site on the way in to do a photo with the Atomium.

The typical shot is, of course, to stand as if you were juggling the balls! The Atomium looks much better 60 years after the 1958 Expo than it did when I saw it on a junior school trip in the 1960s. I have a memory of terrifying escalators-I've never been very good at them. 

This is what Wikipedia says:  

The Atomium ( /əˈtoʊmiːəm/ ə-TOH-mee-əm) is a landmark building in Brussels, originally constructed for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). It is located on the Heysel Plateau, where the exhibition took place. It is now a museum.

Designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn and architects André and Jean Polak, it stands 102 m tall. Its nine 18 m  diameter stainless steel clad spheres are connected, so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. Tubes of 3 m  diameter connect the spheres along the 12 edges of the cube and all eight vertices to the centre. They enclose stairs, escalators and a lift (in the central, vertical tube) to allow access to the five habitable spheres, which contain exhibit halls and other public spaces. The top sphere includes a restaurant which has a panoramic view of Brussels.

In 2013, CNN named it Europe's most bizarre building.

                                                                          

                                                                        Brussels

Here are a few shots of the magnificent main square

Really crowded with tourists!

We did go and find the Mannekin Pis but he was wearing a tracksuit and was rather underwhelming.

Louvain

Our last day we were taken on a morning trip to the university city of Louvain. Here the group is looking at a college complex.

From here we were taken to the city centre. The guid gathered everyone against a wall and then took us round a corner where this appeared:

It's the town hall

Our last afternoon was free so we followed the GPS on my phone to go to the Horta Museum. This is a kind of Modernist shrine. Since you can't take photos there and it was too rainy to take one of the outside, I've put this link: http://www.hortamuseum.be/en/Welcome

It costs €10 per adult to enter, there was a queue out in the rain, and we had to put all our stuff in a locker; actually, I like being able to walk around without being loaded with bags and coats, and nobody taking photos. It's magnificent! Very impressive. 

Then we walked back to the historic centre of Brussels. In the main square they were doing a reenactment, or celebration, we weren't sure if it was the Napoleonic battle (Waterloo is a suburb of Brussels, I believe) Anyway, they told people to disconnect their earpieces and there was some shooting

Latvia visit in the rain

Bravely playing and singing in the rain!

I can't remember who he is but he looked suitably cold!

Spain square is also called Marsupilami square! If you look closely you can see him on the plaque.

Well, really the rest of the story is rain; we were very lucky with the weather for most of the week, and travelling. The coach picked us up to take us to the airport at 9.30-ish, we checked in, and flew back rather bumpily through the rain clouds to Madrid, where were kept waiting a whole hour for our luggage; they got a bad rating for that!