Friday the 13th! An inauspicious day for a vacation. But it didn't turn out to be particularly unlucky.
In the morning, after picking up our laundry and getting breakfast at a German bakery, we headed for Segorbe, a town about 60 km north of Valencia. Along the way, I noticed a cluster of buildings a little way off the road, that my GPS identified as the town of Sot de Ferrer. But what caught my eye was the building on the hill with the zigzag road leading up to it:
I did some Internet research when I got home, and discovered that the building is the San Antonio de Padua hermitage.
The attraction in Segorbe was an Olive Oil Museum, a museum housed in a former olive mill, featuring multimedia exhibits describing the cultivation of olives and the production of olive oil. I didn't get a picture of the museum, but I snagged this picture from Google Street View:
From Segorbe, we headed back towards Valencia, to the town of Sagunto (w), where the main attraction is the ruins of the Roman fortress at the top of the hill. As we approached the town, I took these pictures along the road:
We got into town, found a place to park at the town's central plaza, and started walking up the hill, through the old town, to the fortress. At one end of the plaza, I spotted this monument to the composer Joaquín Rodrigo (w), who was born in Sagunto:
Rodrigo is best known for his composition Concierto de Aranjuez (w) for guitar and orchestra. We have a recording of the Concierto in our album collection, and it's quite lovely. Also, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis plays a trumpet arrangement of the second movement of the Concierto on his album Sketches of Spain, which we also have.
As we walked through the old town (narrow, winding streets again), we passed a building which was identified as the Almudin, a Moorish wheat exchange. Here's a picture of Terry inspecting the door:
It's a long, hard uphill climb to the fortress. We stopped for a breather on the way, and Terry sat down on a stone wall. Upon closer inspection, the stone she was sitting on appeared to be an old millstone which had been recycled:
Continuing upward, we came to the base of the fortress. A path runs around the base, and I walked around for a short distance, and took these pictures:
I never did find out if those caves in the second picture were natural or man-made, and if they were man-made, what their purpose was.
A litle way below the fortress was a Roman theater, which is currently undergoing restoration. The guidebook said that the restoration was "controversial," and I could see why. Instead of restoring it to its original state, it's being restored with modern seating and sound and lighting systems:
When you get to the top of the hill, there are great views looking down:
...and of course, lots of ruins to poke around in:
On our way down, I took this picture of a set of stairs leading from the street we were on to another street lower down:
We then picked a restaurant at random from several on the main street through the old town. When I went to read the menu to Terry, I discovered that it wasn't in Spanish, it was in Valencian! So we told the waiter to surprise us with typical local dishes. First, he brought us three dishes of various concoctions, all of which appeared to have chopped up bits of fish as their main ingredient. They were good, but all three were heavily salted. He then brought us a plate of various open faced sandwiches. Again, they were good, but somewhat unusual. One was tortilla española, which isn't actually a tortilla at all, but a kind of potato and onion omelet, which is very tasty, but... on a sandwich? Another was ensaladilla rusa, which is a Spanish potato salad, made with tuna and olives. Again... on a sandwich? This was definitely one of our more unusual meals.
There was music playing in the restaurant, and we heard several songs by a female singer who we couldn't identify, but who we enjoyed very much. We asked the waiter, who told us the singer was Andrea Echeverri (w). We were so impressed that I went online (I brought my laptop on this trip) and ordered one of her albums. Whenever I go on a trip, I like to bring home music that evokes memories of where I've been - although in this case, Ms Echeverri turned out to from Colombia, not Spain.
And that was the end of the day's wanderings. We drove back to Calpe, had dinner, and started packing for the next day's drive to our next location.
Here's a map of where we were the last couple of days:
