Like most of us not named Jay-Z and Beyonce, my wife and I had an itemized budget for our trip. Given that I banged up the rental car a bit on my last trip, this time I decided to go with “less car, more insurance.” That said, when we arrived I did not expect to see a vehicle that had the qualities of a car, but more closely resembled a dust-buster crossed with an albino mouse. It took very little time to discover that this Seat “Mii” was a distant, pigmy cousin of Dinkus – the odd little hatchback I had last year. It even had the super-fun dinging noise when the speedometer passed 40 and 100 km/hr that earned Dinkus his name. Therefore, it is my pleasure to introduce you all to “Dink.” He has his very own three-cylinder engine, wheels the size of cookies and maxes out at 70mph! Whee!… I’m driving a Mii!!!

I don’t mean to be too hard on Dink though. For a city car we drove him in some rough terrain, and there were several times I was glad that Dink wasn’t even an inch wider because I was driving him on the sidewalk. We drove him from Madrid to Toledo, down to the “Campo de Calatrava” for daily trips up to the top of Calatrava la Nueva, out to Valencia for some high-stress city driving, down to Xativa, more daily trips to the castle of Montesa, and finally back to Madrid for our flight home. Listening to him whine and drop speed every time we got to a hill on the highway wasn’t exactly a white knuckle experience, but he did bring out my inner Rutgers basketball coach on occasion. Dink is not “The Little Engine that Could.” He is the little Dink who can’t unless I threaten to put him in second gear on the highway.

So here we are a month and a half after the trip and I am finally writing a travel blog now? And I open with my rental car? What is that all about? Well, I’ve been busy and since the luggage arrived without issue, I didn’t NEED to use the blog as online therapy. I really did want to write updates when the memories were fresh, but I realized pretty quickly that with Jocelyn along, I had a lot less down-time to write the blog. This trip was a ton of work, and as you can see from the map above this was not the road-warrior kind of trip I did last year. Instead of 1-3 day visits over the entire peninsula in six weeks, we worked for 5-6 days at each of two sites, and went on three weekend-trips over three weeks. I am not going to try to jam all of that in this post, so consider this entry Part 1: Hydroplaning through La Mancha.

For anyone who has heard me talk about Madrid before knows that outside of the Prado Museum, I’ve never really been too crazy about this city. This time was a little different. Jocelyn and I went back to the Prado, and it was awesome as usual. I was kind of excited to see Jocelyn become a bit overwhelmed by it. We started in the Medieval area on the lower level, but Jocelyn got a little tired of all the crucifixion paintings so we ping-ponged through the museum in the most inefficient manner possible, but saw a lot more than the greatest hits. I’ve been there four times before, but I probably enjoyed it the most this time.

We also got to wander around the city and pick through the menus. The weather was gray and cold, but we huddled up and managed to find at least three great bars and two nice restaurants that I would go back to in a second. If we found a restaurant that was even close to as good as the ones we found in Madrid, we would both have looked like this:

Hungry Woodchuck

Disclaimer: Spanish food can be very good.

What guidebooks don’t tell you: Most of it is nasty

The food we found after we left Madrid was either out of our price range & exotic, stale bocadillos, or scooped out of whatever “Swamp Thing” uses as a bed.  Seriously La Mancha… when you don’t live near the coast, you shouldn’t just pickle that stuff and toss it in as an unforeseen, leaking side dish “surprise.” The story Jocelyn has been telling involves a plate of “patatas bravas” that was unexpectedly heaped with split sardines with eyeballs the size of pennies.

Since I appear to be on a roll with my complaints, this is as good a time as any to get to the main character on this trip: RAIN. No one wants to read about someone bitching about the weather, but this was noteworthy. The rain started when we got to Toledo, and it barely stopped for more than three hours until we left La Mancha for the partly cloudy skies of Valencia nine days later. Since the entire purpose of the trip was to take thousands of photographs of two mostly open-air sites, the weather was the source of a lot of anxiety. Weather predictions while we were there were completely useless, since the wind was blowing so hard that clouds would blow into the hillside and leave every twenty minutes. On the positive side, when it wasn’t pouring rain, the cloudy, diffused light was perfectly suited for photogrammetry. Over five days, we hid in the church at Calatrava la Nueva until a cloud moved off of us, then we ran out to shoot as many photos as we could. The diffused light meant that the photos matched to each other without needing to re-meter and adjust for light and shadow nearly as often as we moved around the site.

These photos demonstrate the kind of meticulous, boring shots we had to take while producing our photogrammetric “scan” of the building. The images were not composed before releasing the shutter as much as our movements of the camera were mechanically adjusted to ensure proper overlap with the previous photo. While we were not completely robotic about maintaining a perfect “base/height” ratio of 1ft of lateral movement per meter from the wall being shot, we did try to take these pictures roughtly 6-9ft away from the walls. That meant we took a single sideways stride between positions, and shot pictures with the camera turned 45 degrees left and right, up and down per position. Jocelyn had never used a DSLR camera on manual exposure before this trip began, but as you can see, she took to it very quickly. To put this process in perspective, when we left Calatrava la Nueva I counted 20 thousand 12-14 megapixel images of that site. We split the site up into pieces and often met in the middle of the same wall. Jocelyn was using a Nikon D90 we borrowed from IATH, and I used my Canon T1i. I am not sure what this means, but I also counted that Jocelyn and I took almost exactly the same number of photos at both sites.

These are Spainbows – Another positive side-effect of getting rained on so much in La Mancha. Two of these were shot from the base of Calatrava la Nueva looking out at the castle of Salvatierra on the opposite hill. The other was shot on the way to our second hotel in this area. While this second hotel was very nice, [The Hotel Casa Palacio] the town [Santa Cruz de Mudela] was rather shabby and will probably just be remembered for their mutant sardines. The first hotel was much closer to Calatrava la Nueva, and I thought it was a lot of fun being out on a man-made lake out in rural la Mancha, but the wifi was almost non-existent and Jocelyn wanted to move to a town (She learned pretty quickly that most of the little towns in this area are not really a “plus” part of the Campo de Calatrava experience.)

The best part of the rural hotel was that we were greeted by a pet sheep named “Nadie” who banged his head into our bags as we carried them in the rain and then tried to get into the ranch-style hotel when the owner opened the door. Apparently this was a theme. I also have to break from my earlier statement to note that while we did feel more like houseguests than patrons, the food cooked by the owner of this little rural hotel was very good and the wine was top notch. I totally recommend this place [Casa Rural La Laguna] if you ever want to get a look at Calatrava la Nueva. It is the best hotel within 40 miles of the site.

This may be a bit out of chronological order, but this is the best time to show what I have been doing since I got back from Spain. With the help of several computers at IATH, my own laptop, and a PC built by UVa’s UVACSE group in Computer Science I have been processing thousands of photos. I have just scratched the surface of the 30 thousand images we took at both sites, but with the help of a Czechoslovakian photogrammetry web-service that Wayne Graham discovered, I can show you a youtube video depicting 765 of Jocelyn’s original photos juxtaposed with the resultant point clouds, shaded polygonal model the textured model. If you get motion sick easily, I would scroll down toward the end because the camera follows the ever-shifting directions of the images fed into it. It is a lot easier to follow near the end. Keep in mind that this is only one part of the model, and less than 1/20^th of the photos that will go into the final model.

Calatrava La Nueva – Partial Exterior Model

Last time out, I took a ton of photos at architectural sites ranging from Barcelona to Portugal, and nearly everywhere in-between. Starting March 1st, I will be taking thousands of photos of just two sites: Calatrava la Nueva, and Montesa. These two sites were well covered in my first visit(s), but this next campaign is a totally different animal.  This March, my wife Jocelyn and I are going to be using simple DSLRs to capture dense 3D point cloud data using a process known as photogrammetry. Rather than go into a lot of detail about the process here, I will just give you my favorite definition, and show you a few screenshots of photogrammetric point-clouds and models. Photogrammetry is best described as a reversal of the photographic process that captures the three-dimensional world in two dimensions.

The first image in this gallery is a Photogrammetry point cloud of Southwell Cathedral that was created by processing more than 1400 photos taken by my advisor, Lisa Reilly during two trips in 2007-2009. Each triangle outside the point cloud designates the location and focal length of one photo in the collection. The other images are described in more detail in the Photogrammetry section of this site.

By moving the camera around the site and shooting overlapping images, the newest photogrammetry software is capable of automatically matching common features between the photographs. Several stages later, the software triangulates the photos so that these features can be placed in 3D space as clusters of points. The process also corrects for perspective and barrel distortion in each of the individual photographs. This cluster of points is usually known as a “point cloud.” Until recently, large, expensive, and stationary laser scanners have been the most common tools for collecting this kind of data.

Laser scan of a nave bay at Southwell Cathedral. http://www.medievalarchitecture.org/

When the fall semester started, the only point clouds I had ever come into contact with were derived from laser scanning. I did some 3D modeling from laser scan data at IATH as part of the Southwell Minster project in 2009 that was later published in my advisor Lisa Reilly’s article “The Medieval Design Process at Southwell Minster” bound in Ashgate’s New Approaches to Medieval Architecture.  When the fortress-monasteries of Montesa and Calatrava la Nueva emerged as my key case-studies I thought I would have to get my hands on a laser scanner in order to capture enough data from the ruined walls to build a faithful reconstruction of each complex. So when UVA’s Digital Media Lab purchased a new FARO Focus3D scanner, I was psyched. The downside was I realized this fall that there s a lot of red tape involved with borrowing a $30K instrument the size of a toaster and bringing it to Spain as a carry-on. In the end, the forms involved, and the lack of a secure place to store the scanner when I was not using it made me decide not to bring it afterall.

I wasn’t disheartened for long, because in photogrammetry, I found a cheaper, more mobile, less anxiety inducing data-capture option that would not only produce a 3D point cloud, but would yield a fully textured model at the end. After trying out a bunch of different software options, IATH purchased a copy of “PhotoModeler Scanner.” This software will be the primary package I will use for my photogrammetry work in Spain. I have also had a lot of success with Agisoft PhotoScan and the open-source VisualSFM. My introduction to the process came when Wayne Graham at the Scholars’ Lab showed me his first experiments with Autodesk’s 123D Catch. I would recommend this service to anyone who is just beginning to try photogrammetry, but once you get serious and you don’t want Autodesk to own your work, you should consider one of the previously mentioned packages like Agisoft PhotoScan or VisualSFM.

OK, so now I am a photogrammitist. All I need to do is shoot pictures with a consistent focal length, focus and exposure with proper overlap and the computer does the rest. What could be simpler!?

So why did I recently catch myself packing a new 6 ft. duffel bag with two painter’s poles, a remote LCD screen, a new tripod, a 7 ft. wide kite, 1000 ft. of string,  five scattering laser-pointers and a bizarre looking metal contraption known as a “picavet?” The easy answer is that I can’t let something as lame as gravity keep me from getting the shots I need. Photogrammetry is more portable than laser scanning, so what am I doing taking pictures down here on the ground like a sucker!?

Go to www.flickr.com and search for “Pole Aerial Photography” and you will see some awesomely geeky hobbyists advise each other endlessly on how to get a camera on the end of a pole. The rigs they build are not very complex, but there is an obvious threshold when each one of them has to ask himself “Am I willing to convert my Honda into a 70 foot mast with wheels, or do I want to stay married?” In most cases they decide to stay with over the counter painter’s poles and some sort of digital or analog shutter release they can operate from the ground. While I never considered a mast, I logged enough hours staring at telescoping poles online that I did begin to wonder if “pole use” might send the wrong message on my CV.

Unfortunately for Jocelyn, Pole Aerial Photography (or PAP if you want to be short and gross about it) is just a gateway drug. If you want to meet a consistent group of basement-dwelling, newly divorced “tinkerers” just search “Kite Aerial Photography on Flikr. These “Kappers” start with a simple question just like the pole people: How do you attach a camera to a kite string so you can get higher altitude shots? If Kappers agree on anything, they all agree that a “Picavet” is the best answer to this question.

At its most basic level, this device has a cradle of strings that will adjust on the fly and level the camera that hangs beneath it. When in the hands of a Kapper, this thing gets pulleys to reduce friction, radio controlled servos that rotate and tilt the camera in any direction, video relays, and a flux capacitor. While I stopped at pulleys, I built the Picavet and cage from 30 or so pieces bought during a couple of epic “build it in the cart” trips to Lowes, and supplemented with some stuff from Amazon. This thing has sat on our coffee table or hung from a hook above the loveseat in our TV room for about a month. Jocelyn says I adjust or re-string the picavet so much I am making the poles jealous. She also says I spent a week somehow working the word “picavet” into most sentences.

Due to some Amazon shipping errors, I only received the kite last week, but our tests last weekend went very well. Thanks to Kelly Johnston and Chris Gist at the Scholars’ Lab for getting me up to speed on the kites. Kelly took a few pictures while we were out at Darden Towe Park that are worth seeing. The last image is the latest addition to the mix – a home-made kite reel I drilled out and built on Sunday.

The kite thing is not the end of my photogrammetry evangelism. Thanks to Louis Nelson’s Field Methods in Historic Preservation course, I am helping to teach digital capture methods along with Wayne Graham at the Scholar’s Lab, and Will Rourk at the Digital Media Lab. This is the kind of course that I would love to take if only I wasn’t teaching it. Louis Nelson is training the students on how to create traditional measured drawings, Wayne and I are showing them photogrammetry, and Will is demonstrating the FARO laser scanner. Louis found an excellent site 20 minutes outside of town called “Little Mountain” with 18th, 19th and 20th architectural features. I am heading up to the site on Thursday, so hopefully I will have some aerial shots for the next blog.

Jocelyn and I are leaving in just a couple of weeks, so there is a lot of preparation left and not a lot of time. Thanks to a check from Iberia Airlines, I have been able to replace a lot of the things that were in my lost suitcase from the first trip, but I am definitely not going to bring as many clothes on this trip. The really difficult part is going to be convincing Jocelyn to do the same. If there was any way that I could possibly make this trip without checking a bag, I would. Alas, the picavet is metal, there is no way in hell I am getting a 5ft telescoping pole into an overhead bin, and Jocelyn isn’t exactly the “backpacker” type.  I’m not sure I have the cash, but I am considering some sort of tracking device for the long duffel bag that could be OK’d by the TSA. I will at least have a very durable tag on the bag this time. Wish me luck. I will need it.

On a personal note, I am excited to be able to show Jocelyn some of Spain, even if we are not necessarily going to the most interesting tourist spots in the country. I want to show Jocelyn Toledo on the way south to Calatrava, and I have never been to Valencia, so we should at least be able to see some cool stuff while the fortresses are closed. I have always thought of this as primarily a travel-blog, so there will be a few more posts in March outlining the adventures of Ed & Jocelyn in Spain. If you have been to the site before, you may notice that there have been some content changes also. All my digital work is getting collected into its own page, and I am trying to do a better job of wordpress-cleaning. I will be adding more examples of my work, including samples from my 6+ years at IATH, and whatever comes out of this last trip to Spain.

Finally, I was recently interviewed by the Chronicle for Higher Education for an article written by Stacey Patton titled “The Dissertation Can No Longer Be Defended.” The Chronicle’s version of what I do is outlined in a jump-page titled “Three Ph.D. Candidates Who Are Doing Digital Dissertations.”

If you are at an institution that can get behind the paywall, you can find the article at www.chronicle.com. If not, here are two links should work temporarily:

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Dissertation-Can-No-Longer/137215/?key=SjlxJQNrbiRDYHoyb2wWZTlWbH0%2BYk51ZSNAYnghbllRFQ%3D%3D

Profiles:

http://chronicle.com/article/3-PhD-Candidates-Who-Are/137223/?key=Hj4gKQNrYHZBZHoxNG0WN2wAaiFiMUl6MiZBbnxwblFdEg%3D%3D

It was exciting to be part of it, but a little worrying as well. I try to do my best to make my work approachable in this blog, but I had difficulty finding the right level of terminology for the Chronicle’s intended audience. The lesson I learned is if I don’t have the best “low-tech” placeholder terms at the ready, only the bluntest things I say in the interview will be quoted. For instance, I am not surprised that my offhand comment about historians attempting to link medieval Spain with 9-11 became an even broader generalization about all of Christianity and Islam and led the profile. Still, the profile was fun, and I hope it leads people to this site where my obsessively controlled message can bore its way into more brains. Think about it. Don’t you have an odd itch to buy a kite all of a sudden?

<Rubs hands together and smiles.>

At this point I have been back from Spain & Portugal longer than I was away. Judging by how long it took me to cap off the travel blog, you might say that I took more than enough time to adjust to being back. This is partially true, but I don’t want to give the impression I have been sitting around in old glory pajamas, eating hamburgers and listening to a constant loop of Born in the USA.

Part of the reason I came back a little early was because I had two huge events lurking on the horizon, and I couldn’t prepare for them with my netbook and a handful of bound sources. After I returned and slept off the jet-lag I spent many late hours preparing for my paper at the 2012 ICMS in Kalamazoo, MI. Four days after I left Michigan, I gave a long presentation for a great crowd at the Scholars’ Lab at the UVA Library as the final requirement of my graduate fellowship in digital humanities. With those two things settled, I picked up our 3D projects at IATH and I have been working full time on those ever since. Obviously the travel blog was last on my list of priorities, but I can’t stand seeing that old post at the top of the page. It is long past time that I concluded the blog and gave a hint of things to come.

The remainder of my time in Spain was generally uneventful. I had never been to the palace-monastery of El Escorial, and it was geographically between Segovia and Madrid, so I spent one night in this very small but insanely touristy town called San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Just as a word of warning: driving in this town is a bitch. There are maybe two roads leading in and out of town, and the dead end at the enormous monastery complex. Every other street is steep leading up the hill away from the monastery, and they are all one-way. I looped around several times before finding my janky Best Western hotel. In the end I had to idle the car outside the place because I was going to be damned if I was going to loop all the way around to park the car in a garage if it ended up being the one that was partnered with the hotel. I checked in quickly, was told there was no parking, and I had to find something on my own… this is not what was written at booking.com. Just as I walked out, someone was trying to give Dinkus a ticket for idling but I mumbled some stuff at them and pulled away before it “stuck.”

I’d love to show some pictures of El Escorial, but it is basically a top-notch museum and there were no pictures allowed. I would absolutely recommend taking a tour at your own pace, but don’t expect much from the audio. It is expensive to rent the audio device, and the dialogue is pretty short and poorly written. Most importantly, the curators only chose to describe the most famous paintings, but I have to say they generally were not the most interesting ones. This is not my area of expertise, so I will have to leave El Escorial at this: go see it, don’t stay in town, travel there by bus and don’t get robbed by the terrible hotel and parking options.

Madrid was really pretty rough and Dinkus took the worst of it. I stayed at the Hotel Mexico in a really cool part of the city very close to the Prado Museum, the Botanical Gardens, and two of the biggest parks in the city. Unfortunately for me, I was not getting a lot of help from the GPS, and I really didn’t do a very good job of checking out the map before I got within the crazy hustle-bustle of the city. People also drive in Madrid like they have bumper cars. At one point I was on my third “Look kids!, Big Ben, Parliament,” National Lampoon’s style tour around three blockslooking for the right combination of one way streets to get to my hotel and I got in the far right lane so I’d be ready when I needed to turn. That turned out to be a taxi lane that just ended. I had people whizzing by my side of the car on bikes, taxi’s honking at me etc. until I just had to pull out so I could go around a barrier and make the instant right turn. Poor Dinkus got crunched as I pulled out just as a truck switched lanes into me. It just side swiped the front tire guard because I quickly turned right onto the sidewalk and then back into the lane. Somehow I thought a truck would not do that given that the light immediately in front of us was yellow. Of course there was honking and cursing etc. and I sat there as teams of people in the crosswalk who had watched it all stared at me and looked up at the other driver. “On your right you will see an American tourist who is clearly a mental defective and should not be driving. Notice the throbbing vein in his head that looks like it could pop at any second. If any of you have trouble spotting him through the windshield, just ask someone next to you to point at him with their arm fully outstretched.”

Madrid is typical of a lot of big cities. There is a press of people on the street and everyone is in a rush. I have always thought that people in Madrid seem to have a more unpredictable way of walking than other Spanish cities, and there is no interest in NOT jostling each other or forcing your way through without a word. This sounds like a broad generalization and it isn’t really fair, but I have had this impression for a while and this trip didn’t change it.

After a thirty-point turn getting into the hotel’s chicklet-sized garage, I went straight to the botanical gardens. I have to admit I was really wound up. I actually asked some british tourist if this was their first queue when they cut in front of me in line to get into the botanical gardens. What kind of a freak loses his temper while waiting to go look at flowers?… This guy -> Ed Triplett.

I am not proud of being the angry American abroad but I do know that the gardens were exactly what I needed at that time. I left the gardens a few hours later feeling like I could handle the city again. I attached a few images from the garden below.

The last three days in Madrid were pretty uneventful. I went to the Archivo Historico Nacional, the national library for their history of the book exhibit, and generally caught up on some non-spanish cuisine. The best meal I had in Spain was at a little Thai restaurant near my hotel. Very good Pad Thai.

The morning of my flight, I packed all the books I bought in a $15 suitcase I had bought in that olive-oil stain of a town Villanueva de Arzobispo and threw away the remaining toiletries that had gotten me through the previous six weeks. Why keep half a tube of toothpaste, half a roll-on deodorant and the worst toothbrush I had ever owned? It wasn’t like I didn’t have these things at home, and I wouldn’t need them any more right??? RIGHT!!!?? … If you are new to this blog then you have not already put it together that these things I threw away will indeed be needed before I finish this story.

Wake up five hours before the flight – pack last items – throw away toothbrush with air of finality – drive to get gas – drive to return rental car – get stuck in traffic for 50 minutes within five miles of the airport – pull into the lot that serves every rental car agency EXCEPT Hertz – leave lot after sharking and looking through the fence at hundreds of inaccessible Hertz spaces – take only other option back onto freeway to re-approach – get stuck for 30 more minutes in traffic – pull into hertz space – smile and point to every ding in Dinkus knowing that you are totally covered because for once you bought the super insurance – run to get ticket – security – gate – made it with 20 minutes to spare – realize that there are no seats at the gate (Thanks United/Madrid Airport) – decide that the people who are standing at the gate in one long queue are insane or suckers – stand near the front and wait for your group number to be called – First guy in group to get on the plane!, gear stowed, book in hand, aisle seat – all of the movies available by touchscreen are Oscar nominees or winners – plan on watching several of them on a one-way trip to Dulles! – 200+ people board a huge Airbus A330 – plane takes off! – I will arrive in Washington and nothing has gotten screwed up!….

Just as we got over the mountains west of Madrid, there was a ton of turbulence. I was watching the monitor with the graphic of our jet on its flight-path and I noticed that it seemed like it was making a rather steep turn and I could see nothing but land out one side of the plane, and nothing but sky out of the other. After the full 180, the pilot comes on and says we are returning to Madrid. What kind of a freak lets out a semi-hysterical, bitter laugh after hearing that?… This guy -> Ed Triplett

There was an emergency landing at Madrid complete with a few fire trucks. The crew said nothing for a long time while an equally sarcastic neighbor and I made cracks about how nice it was for them to keep giving us salty snacks. They eventually took us off the plane, dumped us at baggage claim and didn’t send anyone to tell us what was happening until an hour and a half later. The poor guy who drew the short straw told all 200+ of us that the plane was not going to take off until the next day and they put us up in a hotel nearby. It was a nice enough hotel, but I was not happy to be there instead of home. I met some interesting people the next day when the hotel bus took us to the airport and the United/Aer Lingus employees at the desk arrived late, took 40 minutes to get the printer working to print tickets, then took 3+ hours to print new boarding passes for everyone on the flight. I don’t blame the two employees who had to take care of everyone, but I do blame United and their partners for being such raving incompetents. It has been six weeks since I was standing on those concrete floors and I am still ticked off as I write this.

I suppose in the end everything above is not that important since I did get home eventually but as the rest of the blog should show, I hold grudges and I will always hate that airline. Just last week I gave up trying to force United to take responsibility for losing my suitcase and received a letter from Iberia Airlines with instructions for giving them an estimation of what was in my suitcase so they could send me a check. I have to send the list to Madrid and they warned it could take as long as two months to hear back.

That trip was crazy. There were sane moments, but I didn’t exactly dwell on those in the blog. That sanity will have to come out in my dissertation as I try to make some sense of all of the places I saw and the pictures I took. I will end this blog with a few statistics and a new map with a new itinerary of my trip. Some of the sites are missing simply because google has limits for the number of destinations, but in general, it is a lot more accurate than the one I attached to the first blog post.

When I picked Dinkus, he only had 1600km on the odometer. When I turned it in, it read (roughly) 8,800 km. I wish I had been more precise about recording these numbers but I was a bit rushed as I left. In any case, I am certain I drove more than 7000km.

I stayed in 21 different hotels, and traveled to 30 different towns, cities or fortresses.

I took 5474 photos and videos.

The most relevant piece of news for this blog is that it is not over. I am going to pick it back up when I return to Spain again either this Fall or this Spring. If all goes well, I will be doing some 3D laser scanning at Montesa and at Calatrava la Nueva. Hopefully I will be able to travel to some new sites while I am there. Either way I will record everything I can in the blog. I will also add a post about my most recent GIS work that grew out of the trip.
Stay tuned…

What is your problem April? I have had one day of sun, and at least seven of periodic pouring rain, sleet, hail, and snow. The rain in Spain does NOT stay in the plain either. I’m talking about stinging rain, sideways rain, big old fat rain, Forrest Gump rain ya know? I tried to listen to Lt. Dan, but it looks like I was unable to take proper care of my feet. Washing your socks in the bathtub only gets you so far you know. My dark-chocolate colored hiking boots (originally light brown) have surely prevented blisters and a few turned ankles, but damn do they bring the funk at the end of the day.

I would like to submit my shoes to United Airlines as evidence of the trials their incompetence has put me through, but no one should have to bear that, and they would just lose them anyway.  I’m not going to go into it too much here, but after reading about the hundreds of daily thefts that were just uncovered at JFK airport, I have decided to change my United Airlines relationship status to “Is mortal enemies with…” I’m going to do my best to get real answers when I get back to Dulles, but deep down I know I am just another number in that leaking bag of tangled Christmas lights that United calls a “database.”

That brings me to the big news for this post. Last week I decided to cut the trip a little short so I am heading home on Monday. That means this is going to be the last post written from Spain. I still have Madrid ahead of me, but I will have to update those adventures when I get back to Charlottesville. Fortunately, my flight back is operated by Air Lingus so maybe the flight will be uneventful.

Why am I coming home early? Because I have mad skills and because I think Spain has had a monopoly on those skills for way too long. Share Spain! I also realized that looking like a hobo does not mean you have the hobo’s natural ability to travel over land for free. Stuff costs money, and if there is anything this trip has had in spades, its stuff.

***

One might think that given the weather, I might have had a lot of time to blog, but obviously that is not the case. Knowing that I have a limited amount of time left, I have been taking pictures rain or shine. I’m not going to put any false humility out there today. I have been out there kicking ass in horizontal blowing rain to get some of the shots you see below. The first set in particular, at the order of Santiago’s castle of Almenara was one of the most uncomfortable yet exhilarating experiences I have had on this trip. First of all, the rain was so bad I couldn’t find the fortress at first because it was inside a cloud, and the only access near it was a very muddy road that Dinkus really hated. On the other hand, I decided the rain also gave me the option to ignore any sign that <might> have been telling me I was trespassing. As I was sliding around in the mud I looked up and the castle just appeared. There was a ditch on either side of the road, no signs whatsoever, and it was definitely closed, but I decided I would just go Sammy Sosa on whoever was crazy enough to come out in the rain and tell me I couldn’t be there. “The rain blinded me… I don’t speak Spanish… Donde esta la biblioteca?…Is this Madrid?”

Fortunately no one showed up so I got some great pictures with my hand above the lens and even found a little shelter while I drew out a very simple plan of the fortress.

The next set is from just a few more miles up the road at the Order of Calatrava’s fortress of Zorita de los Canes. I got rained on here, but it was only showers off and on so there are a couple of pockets of sunshine here. The tiny town was inside a national park that also contained the ruins of a visigothic fortress-settlement as well. This is also where I noticed that the Willow trees near the river were just starting to come out – which told me that Spring was actually just starting here.

After a morning in Zorita, I drove a few hours north in the direction of Soria. I chose to stay about 20 minutes away from Soria at a town called Almazan simply because it had a better hotel with free parking etc than I could find in the larger town of Soria. It was a total accident that I noticed a flyer for a church that I have read about before but had completely forgotten about called San Miguel de Almazan. The church you can see below is a very unique example of a Romanesque adaptation of an Islamic dome. You might call this mudejar, but the influence is almost entirely structural, rather than ornamental. Eleanor Plantagenet (again with Alfonso VIII’s wife!?) also commissioned a bas-relief altar-piece depicting the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket at this church. Given the fact her father Henry II “ordered” Becket’s murder I thought this was pretty interesting. Almazan turned out to be an excellent, lucky catch.

It isn’t easy to tell, but it was pouring rain at the Hospitaller Monastery of San Juan de Duero outside of Soria. Still, I toughed it out on Good Friday and got the shots I needed of the cloister before running into the church. The cloister arcades are very strange in that each side is different, mixing Gothic, Romanesque, mudejar, and some interlaced combination of several styles. Inside the church, the column capitals seem to focus on violent biblical scenes – which seems appropriate given the church’s patrons.

I was actually impressed with the determination of the tourists who came out in force despite the weather. I have been less impressed with the Spanish tourists’ ability to stop walking into my shot. It is as though they are trained from a young age to look aimless, yet still b-line for the thing that everyone wants a picture of and then stand there in a bright green or orange jacket and look the opposite direction of the afore-mentioned focal point. I had some lady stick her HEAD in the three-foot space between a column capital and the end of my lens. She noticed me when I put the camera down from my face, looked at me, back at the column, then walked off without a word. That’s not just stupid, that’s crazy. Despite this gaggle of idiots in loud clothing with even louder children, I got some great pictures and even got a shot of the hobo.

I mentioned in a previous post that the monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos is a site I have always wanted to see. This monastery and royal pantheon was the primary reason for me to come north of Madrid in the first place. That is a lot of pressure on this monastery to perform, but I had faith… until I got there.

I HATE guided tours for a host of reasons. First, you get herded with too many people, which means that you are often forced to see what is being described from a ridiculous angle. Second, I did not get into the architectural history business to be told what to look at. My whole M.O. is making my own connections between things, taking pictures, measurements and notes about architectural elements that are not thrust in front of your nose in an ARAH 101 textbook or a guided tour. Third, at a site like Las Huelgas that has a series of decorative stages – each more gilded than the last – most tour guides are drawn like flies to baroque altarpieces. I’m sure there are people out there that love them, but those people have bad taste because baroque altarpieces suck… architecturally speaking.

The policy at Las Huelgas is NO PICTURES. This is not on their website. Like I said, I did not think I was going to make it up to Burgos, so I had not really done the reconnaissance work on Las Huelgas to find out if I could get special permission to take pictures or have an unguided tour. It was Easter weekend, so ther hours were adjusted at the monastery, and the person who could be asked about such a permission was away on vacation until Thursday (tomorrow). Long story short, I took the guided tour, which actually skipped one of the mudejar chapels I was interested in, and generally just pissed me off the entire time.

These places with no-photo guided tours always have a 5’1” tall woman walk behind the group to bark at stragglers like a border collie. God forbid they allow pictures, but they have no problem with that kid standing on the short-wall of the cloister trying to use the gothic tracery to help him climb one of the columns. Oh and there is no problem with the guy who has to “test” the status of the inlaid floor by poking at it with the end of his umbrella? Moron. The guide did her best, but damn I was ticked off as they kept shutting the doors behind us at each stage.

I can respect the whole no-photo thing if it is intended to get people to come to the monastery themselves, or – and this is key – to buy the guidebook full of images at the end. However, they only had a tiny guidebook that contained exactly one image of the Santiago chapel, and that was of the statue, not the amazing mudejar ceiling, plaster panels, doorway etc. I am not sure what this says about me, but even though Las Huelgas was beautiful, the tour and the sheep pissed me off so much, I couldn’t appreciate it in the slightest.

After that, I took a 30 minute walk into Burgos, drank four beers with a bunch of tapas while I read the crappy guidebook and mellowed out a little. The pictures below are of the remaining three days I spent in Burgos, as well as a side trip to a visigothic/mozarabic monastery called San Millan de Cogolla de Suso – that also had a no-pictures tour but was located in one of the greenest, most beautiful valleys I have ever seen in Spain.

After Burgos I pointed almost due-south and drove to Segovia. There is a round Templar church called Vera Cruz (after a relic of the true cross) just outside of the walled city here that I was anxious to see. I misjudged the afternoon opening of the church (of course) and had to crouch down on the leeward side of this church when a really rough stinging rain blew in, but it didn’t last too long. You might also notice the similarity in the dome vaulting with that of San Miguel de Almazan.

I came to Segovia once before, but it was a very quick stop for a bus full of undergrads and the Alcazar was closed. I didn’t really expect much from this mostly 15^th-17^thcentury palace but it was really great. Incidentally, the Segovians claim this was Walt Disney’s inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s castle but I think there is some debate about this. You can see it behind the church of Vera Cruz, and I attached some pictures of the really great ceilings at the palace.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to mention there is an awesome Roman aqueduct here also. No mortar!)

Below is an image of the ugliest baroque altarpiece I have ever seen at the cathedral of Segovia. There were like ten of these in the cathedral, each more hideous than the last. I also added a few other pictures I took with my eyes shut. Just consider the collection below the “religion can be creepy” portion of the blog.

(Wasn’t that on an Iron Maiden album cover?)

(Is it me or is that one freaky kid?)

(I’ve collected a bunch of these “Santiago Matamoros” images. Here are two more of the weirdest ones.)

(I was thinking of this sculpture when I was talking about Las Huelgas in the previous post. This is actually in the Cathedral at Burgos. I forgot the Las Huelgas statue of St. James is a marionette that has a movable sword-arm that can perform knighting ceremonies… seriously)

This last picture is of the hobo because I promised Jocelyn I would add one. I had to use a table on the terrace at my hotel as a tripod and I kept squinting as I tried to take this shot with a timer so I guess the overcompensation gave me crazy-eyes. That is not a beard by the way; I am just experimenting with a new Habsburg chin.

The only things between me and Charlottesville VA now are El Escorial tomorrow, the Prado and the national archives in Madrid. I will post some kind of “What I learned” summary once I get used to east coast time again.

Thanks for reading.

That said, like a kid who has behaved himself in church for what he thinks has been a very long time, I am about to test if the itinerary is still watching. Portugal was the first test, but that was just the beginning. I am crawling under the pews with action figures in my hands and I can see daylight at the end of the aisle.

Ever since I decided I was going to work on the architecture of military orders, my trips to Spain have taken me to the central and Southern parts of the Iberian Peninsula. I like this area, but if I had to pick a region to work on after the dissertation is finished, I would choose the northern part of Spain in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, at the time when the border between the Christian kingdoms and the Islamic Caliphate was in the far north, the military orders had not been conceived of yet. There is an 11^th century fortress-monastery called Loarre near the base of the Pyrenees that I measured and digitally reconstructed after my first trip to Spain back in 2003, but otherwise I have not had sufficient reason to travel up there.

Having been to nearly all of the major sites on my itinerary, I am getting really close to cushion time. That means I am going north. When I was constructing the itinerary, there were two “outliers” that I simply could not make fit into a logical sequence of driving. The first was the Hospitaller monastery of San Juan de Duero. This site was far from the military border with Islam, and perhaps because of this fact, it was built on an easily accessible site next to the Duero River and there is no hint of fortification. Another possible consequence of the monastery’s confident location in the interior of Christian Spain is the beautifully articulated cloister and church at this site. Between me and San Juan de Duero in Soria are two more fortresses and the totally rebuilt site of the Order of Santiago’s Castilian headquarters at Ucles. Soria is a long way north, but once I am there, I might as well keep going to the second site I had trouble fitting into the itinerary: The Monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos.

Las Huelgas has almost no connection to the military orders, but its patron Alfonso VIII certainly did. (Remember him? Loser at Alarcos in 1195, Winner at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 and best buddy of the military orders?) Alfonso and his Queen Eleanor Plantagenet (Daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine) are both buried there. If I make it there in the next week you can expect some pictures of their super-cool caskets – lucky you – in the next blog. Still, what I really want to see there is the over-the-top Mudejar decoration at the chapel of Santiago. There is even a bizarrely juxtaposed statue of St. James “The Moorkiller” hacking at Muslims from his horse inside this “Islamic” styled chapel. If Mel Gibson’s character in The Road Warrior drove a diesel Peugeot hatchback and was really into taking pictures of churches my life would be just like that movie.

***

So as usual I have managed to write this blog backwards. I’ve covered the future, so let’s jump into the present and the past. I am writing this blog from a couch on my balcony at a $50/night four-star winery-hotel outside of Alcazar de San Juan. The weather has taken a rough turn over the last two days, so it is chilly, gray and misty. The balcony overlooks a courtyard with one open side that leads to a grape orchard and the violent reek of fertilizer is blowing my direction. From the restaurant below I can hear a deep female voice singing the smooooothest Jazz version of Soundgarden’s “Black hole Sun” you have ever heard. I’ll wait for your senses to explode along with me as we take our journey.

In the last blog I had just come to the conclusion that I was going to go to Portugal. I mumbled and fumbled my way through the Portuguese language in Tomar, Portugal and really had a good time. I drove over a (reconstructed) Roman bridge at Alcantara and crossed into Portugal a few minutes later with zero fanfare other than a pretty weak sign. I did not know what to expect, but I was surprised to see that almost immediately, the trees and crops changed when I got to Portugal. Obviously when you get closer to the coast there is more rain, and thus Portugal is greener, but even near the border, there were more meadows for sheep, goats and cows. Unlike in Spain where you only see trees if they are too high up to be cut down, the roads I drove on in Portugal were lined with trees I had not seen since I left Charlottesville. Some of you know I basically grew up in the woods, so there was something comforting about seeing oak trees again.

Tomar is a cool town. They have embraced their Templar heritage to the point that the Templar cross seems to have become the town’s brand. This is nowhere more evident than in the design on the pavements of this medieval town:

(This is not actually my photo. My picture of the sidewalks turned out a little blurry.)

The monastery was a total maze containing eight cloisters. You could spend days at this site and not see everything. Obviously the architecture of the cloisters is much later than the stuff I work on, but the round church and the fortress were built in the 13^th century. This site is not as well known for the medieval buildings as it is for being the epicenter of Portugal’s uber-intricate, nautical “Manueline” style. The fifth image below is of the famous “Manueline Window” on the exterior of the nave addition to the round church. This is too early to be classified as Baroque apparently, but to my eye it certainly has a touch of the “monstrous” to it. That said, I’ve never been anywhere with more figurative sculpture on every possible surface. I added a few pictures of some of the column capitals I saw.

I wish I could have spent more time in Tomar, but a series of thunderstorms were coming in from the west, so I had to point Dinkus East and drive as far from it as I could get. The rigid itinerary pretty much buckled at this point because after discovering that another Hospitaller fortress to the east of Tomar was closed “the last weekend of each month” (written in what looked like crayon on a rain soaked piece of notebook paper taped the castle door) I used my phone to make a reservation in Toledo, and drove six hours east. I knew that with bad weather coming, I was going to need to stay somewhere where I could be indoors taking pictures, and since Toledo is like one big museum I thought it was a good choice. It was.

Before describing the excellent time I had in Toledo, I wanted to write about a more pressing issue here in Spain. I finally got BBC world news in Portugal. (Spanish hotels never offer this or any other American TV unless it is dubbed) – incidentally you should see “Three and a Half Men” dubbed in Spanish without the laugh track… When there is no auditory signal for a joke, you are forced to listen to the dialogue and conclude for yourself that this show is actually a ham-fisted drama played by mental patients.

… but I digress.

BBC World News showed some great footage of riots in Madrid and Barcelona and mentioned that the general strike was creating demonstrations in 100 other cities and towns. Iberia Airlines was the first to cancel all of their flights indefinitely. Good point Iberia Airlines, you’ve worked hard enough lately. Go take a nap on my stolen suitcase you screaming bastards from hell.

… but again, I digress.

This brings me to my point. I have done some complaining about random fortress closings, Iberia Airlines, Red Bull spitting tourism employees and olive farmers. I am not unaware that the economy here is in the tank, and I am not nearly as self-absorbed as it may seem when I complain about some of these things. Employing people to open these sites costs money, and in many ways, this is the off season. I admit I sometimes wear special history-geek glasses that filter out anything that is not from the 12^th, 13^th or 14^th centuries, but I am sympathetic to the situation here. I have met far more helpful, generous and patient people here than I have Red Bull spitters. I considered starting a second, less self-absorbed blog but Jocelyn told me that the www.whataboutthechildren.net domain was already taken. In all seriousness, by staying away from the cities for the most part, I have not come in very close contact with the hard effects of the economy. 50% unemployment among people under 25 who are looking for work is staggering, and the effects will ripple through Spain for a long time I think. The closest I have been to a real city since the strike has been Toledo, but with the strength of tourism there – especially during the weekend – it is hardly representative of the rest of the country.

So if Toledo does not show you staggering unemployment, what does it show? Answer: medieval awesomeness. I know it has a sort of “authentic Mudejar Disneyland” quality, and even in bad weather it was absolutely crawling with tourists, but I still love this city. One part of its charm is how easy it is to get lost on your first day there. If you don’t want to look up the map of the city on google, just imagine a plate of rectilinear spaghetti noodles with eighteen different inconsistent widths. Having trouble with that metaphor? Then try imagining looking straight through a balled up piece of chicken wire with swords stabbing it. If that is working for you, then imagine that there are actual chickens (symbolizing tourists) inside the ball clucking and jostling each other, and the swords are… actual swords in the millions of medieval sword shops. That metaphor came together nicely, just like olive oil and ice cream.

When you look at the images below, keep in mind that this was the Christian-dominated version of the religious melting pot in Iberia. My favorite example of how complex the architecture is in Toledo is Santa Maria la Blanca. This is a synagogue that was built to mimic a mosque but was later converted into a church… did you get that? It was built when Toledo was under Islamic control, so the original architects were very keen to blend in with the ruling regime but when the Christians took it over they made some very simple changes to make it seem more longitudinal and hierarchical.

The rest of the images below are of a number of Mudejar (meaning constructed by muslim/converso craftsmen or simply built in a so-called “Islamic” style.) churches and city gates. On a sad note, the last image is of an arabesque prison for cats.

Puerta del Sol

The converted mosque-church “Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz”

Synagogue-Church “El Transito”

San Miguel and I taking in the view next to San Tomé

My favorite: The Church of San Román

Arabesque prison for cats.

***

I had a great hotel that was outside of the main “crazy-medieval and impossible to drive in but dumb tourists try to anyway” part of the city. I loved the location, and as you can see below, I picked it because it was cheap and I knew the view was going to be amazing. I did have to deal with one seriously awkward dinner there however…

Sadly this is not my image either, but it was taken from the same hotel.

Despite how many times I have informed a waiter “just one for dinner/lunch/breakfast” I have yet to find the right phrasing so that the waiter does not look over my shoulder with this look on his face: “No one eats a meal by themselves, I will say nothing and wait for the handlers of this crazy person to join him… any second now… great, now he’s making ape gestures at one of the tables set for two people.”

So this happened as usual, but I was told that the first two-top I chose was reserved. I sat at another table in the huge empty restaurant just before the couple with the reservation came in. They were immaculately dressed and the guy was nervous. I was sitting at the table right next to them trying to order “not pork.” I had a cold which I am still getting over, so as I ate I had no choice but to sniffle my way through a deafeningly silent meal. The couple spoke in hushed voices, the woman sent her food back at least once and the guy was clearly not happy I was there. The waitress apparently knew the couple, and also seemed to know that something big was about to happen because she was acting like an unabashed lurker. Eventually after giving one of my sniffles a weird look, the guy convinced his date to go outside on the patio despite her protests that she was cold. Within seconds the guy was down on one knee proposing to the woman with the discriminating palate and the waitress brought the champagne to their table. The weird, sniffing American eating by himself was busily polishing off an entire bottle of sparkling wine of his own (he had hoped to cork it but didn’t realize it was going to be sparking) so he gave them an off-balance smile and said something he thought meant “congratulations.” Unfortunately “felicitaciones” is one of those words that was invented solely to make buzzed people sound drunk. The couple left before the hobo had finished his dessert.

But what a dessert! I attached an image below, and as you can see, my attempt to order something simple (lemon sherbet) yielded this awesome thing. The glass contained hot water to soften the sorbet inside the rind of the lemon that was resting on the rim of the glass. It took a while for the magic to work, but it was by far the best thing I have eaten here. I must add however that I seriously hope this is the end of the “serving your food inside of its original container” thing. I’ve been forced to eat a lot of Jamon, but I’ll be damned if I am going to eat it out of a pig’s ass.

***

There is real suitcase news this time. Just after my last blog I received an email from United. A month ago I sent them a long email describing my bag, its contents, my struggles with Iberia Airlines, my routing number, the bag’s plans to enslave the human race etc. It was so long ago I forgot, but lucky me, delayedbag@united.com replied with this delightful newsflash:

Dear Mr. Triplett,

Thank you for contacting the Baggage Claims Department.

I am sorry to hear that your baggage did not arrive with you to your final destination. I did make some searches for your tag number and a search by your last name but I was unable to locate your baggage, Please contact Iberia Airlines for a claim form so they can conduct a secondary trace for your baggage. If the bag is not located they will process a settlement for the missing bag.

Regards,

Ms. B. *******
United Airlines
Baggage Specialist / Baggage Resolution Center

I hope no one pulled a muscle during that epic, month-long search. At least they are sorry.

Thanks for reading.

Now that I am back on the road, I have had my foot on the gas quite a bit. As I slid west, away from the oiliest town in the world, I entered the province of Jaen on the southern side of the Sierra Morena Mountains. This province, along with La Mancha on the northern side of the mountain range, was the main battleground for Christian and Muslim forces during the 12^th and 13^th centuries. This frontier spread to the east and west, but the fortunes of both sides was decided in the center. I am not crazy about battlefields, but I had to go to two of them recently and it actually turned out well.

The Castilians and the Iberian military Orders lost a decisive battle in front of the fortress of Alarcos in 1195. The order of Calatrava was all but destroyed, but the few that survived proved themselves by hunkering down in a castle south of Alarcos called Salvatierra – which was now deep in Muslim territory. Since they had lost their original namesake fortress (and everything else) after Alarcos, they renamed themselves after this new pile of rocks further south. The new order of “Salvatierra” stuck it out down there until a new Almohad caliph in kicked them out after a three month siege in 1211.

In 1212 everything in Castile got reset by a victory by Christian crusaders at Las Navas de Tolosa. This was the second battlefield I went to. Despite some hokey signage at the Las Navas de Tolosa museum, and a really bad movie I was forced to watch at the Alarcos battlefield I had two good experiences.

This is where Bart says “Jaaa?” becausse Milhouse just informed him that he has become deeply immersed in the Teapot Dome scandal. I understand this is not the venue for a history lesson but my itinerary makes very little sense without this context. I also have to add that I am giving a paper in Kalamazoo MI about the “Immediate” architectural consequences of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa shortly after I get back from Spain.

I know, you came here for travel hijinks and I gave you history. Without warning your brain now contains two facts about the Christian reconquest of Spain. I came at you like a history ninja and now you’ll be telling someone in line at Starbucks that you can’t believe this country is not properly celebrating the 800 year anniversary of Las Navas de Tolosa.

Now when I say that I went to the new headquarters of the order of Calatrava, which was built on the hill opposite of the fortress of Salvatierra, you will know what I am talking about. See? The new headquarters – cleverly called Calatrava la Nueva – is unique for this trip because I have actually been there before. My Dad came with me when I drove to Calatrava la Nueva in July 2008 to do the research for my Master’s thesis. While we were there, one construction crew was building a café in the outer bailey of the castle and a different crew was constructing a casino at the bottom of the hill. They had already completed a pretty decent, yet bizarre restaurant near the new casino and my dad and I ate there a few times. Before I relate my more recent experience at this restaurant, I should show some images of the fortress:

I have to say that most of the fortresses I have seen are perhaps unfairly compared to this one. This site is the prototypical example of a fortress-monastery. Calatrava la Nueva was a new namesake for the order, a new headquarters for their future role in solidifying the frontier and it was within clear sight of Salvatierra – their previous namesake during their 17 years of duress after the loss at Alarcos. I love this fortress and I am happy to see that it has been well taken care of since 2008. The café apparently never got completed, but they reconstructed two chapels attached to the church that had previously been mostly rubble. I am not going to say much more about this place other than one should notice that this symbol of polemic Christian warfare has a lot of what I’ve referred to as “Islamic” or “Mudejar” architectural elements. The header of this website is a photo of the exterior I took in 2008.

After leaving the armpit of Spain, but before crossing the Sierra Morena through the same path Alfonso VIII crossed in 1212 CE, I spent the night in a very cool hotel with a great view of one of the fortresses that Alfonso VIII gave to the order of Santiago shortly after his victory at Las Navas de Tolosa. The first two photos below were shot from my hotel room in the hilltop town of Baños de la Encina. The third was taken at the tourist office nearby.

Unfortunately, the tourist office in Baños de la Encina was pretty rude and unaccommodating. The first day I tried to get into the castle, I was stopped because they were filming a television show inside. I knew I could come back in the morning after I checked out so I just took some photos of the exterior. The next morning, I arrived at 10:30 like I was told, but I was forced to wander around because no one opens a tourist office on time ever. At 11:15 I came back and I was told that it was not their policy to open the doors to the castle for a group smaller than five. Keep in mind I am the only tourist in this town at 11:00 on a Friday morning. Up until this point I have played by whatever rules the tourist office offers with little more than an eye roll. This time I told the woman at the office that the situation was stupid and that I was not going to go round up tourists so she would have a reason to walk twenty feet and open the doors. I was irritated enough that I was sure as hell not going to pay extra. I have been getting by pretty well with my Spanish, but with my temper up I kind of garbled my objection and the woman thought I was calling HER stupid. I didn’t get into the castle but I did let her know that I could get the gist of her stupid little castle on flikr.

This was not my first run-in with Spain’s elite goon squad. It is a little known fact, but some Spanish tour guides have the ability to spit RedBull when they are cornered in front of their office during off hours. What they don’t spit is quickly consumed as part of their incredibly energetic flight response. The word “hola” has been known to trigger this fight or flight response.

***

I’m jumping around a bit, but since I am rolling with “weird situations in Spain” this week I am now going to relate my meal/experience at the restaurant at the base of Calatrava la Nueva. I remember the food being pretty good in 2008, but I would not say that about my more recent experience.

Primero Plato: Not for the first time, I made the mistake of ordering soup as my first course (for those that don’t know, the Menu del Dia is the best way to go at midday in Spain because you get two plates plus a desert or coffee for about 10 euros). I like lentils, I like garbanzo beans, I like pork. I do not like being offered only a spoon to consume a SOUP WITH BONES IN IT! Not cool Spain. Not cool.

Segundo Plato: I like Chicken. I hate chicken in Chinese restaurants. Somehow this second statement is actually relevant. I was so high on MSG after picking at some pre-cut, breaded, yet boney chicken parts that I asked for another glass of wine in either Portuguese or some whistle language I invented on the spot.

Ambiance: The food was rough, but that is not what made this meal literally noteworthy. As I sat through a three course meal at this restaurant, I quickly learned that you can make a jazz version of anything, and that if you translate everything but the title into Spanish you can play any American song at high volume while people eat. I used my phone to record the following setlist in an email to myself under the subject heading “Holy Shit”…

The Girl from Ipanema

I Say a Little Prayer for You

Moon River

Hotel California

Memories

Puppy Love

Lady in Red

I Wanna Know What Love Is

Before I knew it, the food coupled with the high-volume Spanglish Casio-keyboard jazz and transformed the restaurant into a Spanish cruise-ship version of “The Final Countdown.”* Suddenly the music was contemporary and it wasn’t bizarre to serve crinkle fries with an MSG encrusted three course meal. Should I warn the restaurant that in the future everyone will hate this food and this music, or by doing so, will I somehow irrevocably harm the present as I know it?

• For those of you who are not familiar with this film, it is a classic tale about the complex emotions that emerge when a modern-era aircraft carrier is magically transported to the Pacific on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

When the waiter asked if I wanted coffee I meant to say “No Gracias” but what came out was: “No I have to leave before my head explodes…. I mean… No Gracias, La Quenta Por Favor?”

***

The past week wasn’t just about crappy food and RedBull references. I got some work done and put some miles on the tires. A few days ago after dealing with the Baños de la Encina incident, I decided I am going to cut to the most critical sites on my list. I have been on a few side trips to sites that I hoped would have more to offer than I could see in Google Earth, but I have not been very inspired by what I have seen in those cases. This means that I am going to drive to Portugal.

That’s right. This trip just became multi-national, multi-cultural, interdisciplinary, tri-lingual, and buzzword…ish. I am currently in the town of Trujillo in Extremadura. This has been one of the most pleasant towns I have been to since Teruel in Aragon. I attached a few pictures of the Islamic-era fortress at the top of the town, as well as the view of the Plaza Mayor that is right out my balcony window. Incidentally this is also Pizarro’s home town.

I hope to be in Tomar, Portugal this weekend. I was rolling over the sites I have left to see, and I realized that the gas prices have not hit me that hard yet, and I just can’t work on fortress-monasteries in Iberia without seeing this site. Tomar was yet another headquarters of a military Order that was created out of the remnants of the Templars in the 14^th century. If you’ve been following along at home you will notice that this is a very similar situation to the one at Montesa near Valencia. However, architecturally no one would confuse these two sites. Tomar is still entirely extant, contains a round church and has quite a few more phases of construction over the 12^th century fortress.

***

I got great suitcase news this week! I got an email from the bag saying that he seduced one of Iberia’s baggage handlers, boosted a Cadillac and plans on going down in a hail of gunfire somewhere in the American Southwest.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve had more than one Rodney Dangerfield moment on this trip. One that sticks in my mind happened last Thursday when I was hiking around to the back side of the fortress of Montesa. You might think these castles would be built at the highest point within view, but it most cases they are built at the end of a spur that juts out from a larger chain of mountains into a valley below. So as I was climbing around looking for better vantage points to take pictures, I went off the trail quite a bit. As I rounded one corner, I scared up something really big in the brush that bounded almost straight up the side of this cliff. As I blindly shot pictures of whatever was moving I heard an ear-splitting screech at the top of the ridge. I’m not sure why, but as I turned to see the source of the screech I said aloud: “Did that donkey just whistle at me?”

I am not a wildlife photographer, but I knew they were not donkeys, jackalopes or chupacabra. They were so big I thought they were deer, but google and I are pretty sure that they were long haired mountain goats. Whatever they were, they were really pissed off and let me know repeatedly until I walked out of sight. That last one was big on eye contact.

My verbal reaction to the goats is pretty typical for this trip. I get to skype with Jocelyn most nights, but for the most part, I don’t really speak to anyone other than a few tour guides in Spanish, and Dinkus in extremely blue English during the day. Just before my experience with the goats, I actually had to give Dinkus a gold star for the day. In order to get to the “back” side of the fortress, I had to ask Dinkus to drive up a seriously screwed up dirt road with baseball sized rocks and deep ruts in it. It was good I never saw anyone coming the other way because I needed both sides of the road and whatever shoulder there was to get up there. Dinkus was not happy, but strangely he remained silent while I cursed my way up.

So why was I so determined to catch this fortress from every angle? Because it was awesome, that’s why. There are very few sites on my itinerary that fit so perfectly into the monastery-fortress category as Montesa does. The plan is easy to read when you are on site because the foundations are in great shape, and the restorers thankfully did not have enough money to “properly” reconstruct or “parador” it. This means that the guess work was concentrated in one building, – the Chapter House – but the cloister, the church, refectories, cisterns etc. were generally left alone. Montesa was very close to the epicenter of an earthquake in the 18^th century, so this knocked down any vaulted space, but the Ashlar cut stones are still there. You can see how they were stacked up so tourists could walk around, but it is sort of like a puzzle that has been dumped onto the coffee table. I think this site is screaming for a little laser scanning and a 3D reconstruction.  It is a huge site, so this is not a one man job, but I think this might be the site I come back to for a month in the Fall.

Montesa

Montesa has also been an excellent example of why this country makes me pull my hair out sometimes.  The first day I got there was a Tuesday, and they were closed. Nearly every site is closed on Mondays so I have conceded that day as a driving / attempt to buy pantalones day. The signs and the website claimed that they were supposed to be open from Tuesday through Saturday. On Wednesday the tourist office of Montesa and the fortress were still closed and no one was answering the phone. I had already taken pictures of Montesa’s exterior, so I took the opportunity to go to two other sites in nearby towns. The first image is of the super remote and very ruined castle of Enguera – a possession of the Order of Santiago – and the second and third images are of a real hodge-podge fortress high above the town of Xativa. In both cases I did a lot of walking up extremely steep trails and roads. *

• This seems as good a place as any to state that cotton, not polyester is truly the fabric of our lives. Are you listening Adolfo Dominguez: maker of my extremely fashionable Portuguese boxers?

Enguera

Xativa

On Thursday the Montesa tourist office opened almost on time so I was able to measure parts of the interior and take some of the pictures you’ve seen above. I had an awesome day of work, had a very good meal at my little rural hotel about a half hour away, drank half a bottle of good Valencian wine and slept like a baby.

***

On Friday, things got weird. Let me preface this by admitting that I have always been prone to momentary lapses in concentration. When I was an undergrad, I once made a trip to Las Vegas and left my wallet in the hotel room six consecutive times. No harm done, I just had to log more time in the Luxor’s diagonal wankavator. Many of you who know me will read the following true statement without the least bit of surprise:

I am in sole possession of the only set of keys to a 14^th century castle that is four hours away from my current location.

I realized this fact on Friday as Dinkus and I pulled into a new hotel in Puente de Genave and I reached for the passport that I always keep in my vest pocket. Just after my second foot hit the gravel, the patrons looking out the restaurant window watched a stranger break into an improvisational rendition of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. The stranger’s performance seemed very restrained, but clearly insane.

Earlier that day, I went back to Montesa so I could take some more pictures in different light before I left on the longest car trip on my itinerary.  The intern at the tourist office – who was not interested in taking me up to the castle – said that she should have asked for my passport the previous day when she gave me the keys. This time I would have to leave my passport as collateral. No problem. When I got back, the intern was very nice and pointed out a bunch of books in the local library that was above the office. I took some more photos of books and maps and copied down some sources but the office closes promptly at 2pm and they were about to begin the big Valencian festival of Fallas, so I had to cut it a little short. The intern didn’t ask for the keys, and I didn’t ask for my passport. With all these new exciting sources circling my brain, I hopped down the street like the village idiot and put Montesa behind me.

Because of the holiday, the office was going to be closed up until Thursday again… that meant that the very kind intern had to mail me my passport. In any case, my current hotel informed me last night that they received a phone call saying I should receive the package today. What could go wrong? This trip has been a model of efficiency so far right? – If the passport arrives today I promise to treat Dinkus better and only curse at him when he deserves it.

Friday also marked another first on this trip. I moved into my first rat-hole hotel. I will not mention its name here because that is just not fair, but I have to say I would have been better off camping. I actually paid to move out to another hotel a half hour further away from Segura de la Sierra the next day. It was a two star hotel like many of the others, but the water was not potable or warm, there was no internet access in the room and you were not allowed to flush toilet paper. At one point when I was downstairs eating dinner at this place one of the locals came over and offered me some butter. Apparently offering an American butter is like planking for olive farmers because the gesture got a pretty good laugh. Like Rodney Dangerfield, I don’t get no respect.

The new hotel is much nicer, but it also has its quirks. I’m surprised they don’t just have you fish out your meals from a bathtub full of olive oil. If you held up and squeezed the edge of one of their greasy pork chops between your thumb and forefinger you could disprove Newton’s first law of motion.

On the plus side, there was some great people-watching in the hotel bar on Saturday night. I sat there for a few hours with my friends San Miguel and Cruzcampo, tossed peanut shells on the floor and just took in the scene…

Does your three-year-old get tired of running around the bar at midnight? Just sit her on top of the bar and let her play with peanut shells while you continue your conversation. Are you under 30? The cigarette machine is over there. Your sharp geometric facial hair or skirt means cigarettes are the only reason you’d be caught dead in here. I can’t help but wonder what a club in Villanueva de Arzobispo looks like on the inside. I bet it is called “Oil” and plays the best house music around. The bouncer is a Spanish look-a-like of Paula Deen and the password is “Mantequilla.”

***

I have already mentioned how much I love driving here so I don’t have to rehash it, but driving in the mountains out here has been the best yet. It is impossible to describe the views that just pop in front of your windshield as you flip back and forth on these roads. I knew before I left that the topography around Segura de la Sierra was going to be the most dramatic that I would see on this trip. The views did not disappoint, and neither did the fortress. I have never seen a fortress of this size on a more inaccessible looking site or an attached medieval town that is hundreds of feet above the valley below. This fortress became a major headquarters for the Order of Santiago in the mid-13^th century. From this vantage point, the Order commanded a string of towers and fortresses that hardened the border between Christian Castile and Muslim Andalucía.

When I looked at the topography on the map I wondered why they were so concerned with creating footholds in the middle of the mountain range rather than attempting to push to the southern side, but after seeing this valley I understand why. I saw a lot of rolling olive groves and beautiful valleys in Aragon, but this valley has a wildness to it that I’ve never seen before in Spain. Part of why there is so much non-olive green here is because the area is surrounded by a national park. Still, as you can see from the photos below, there are a lot of olives even in the less accessible areas. The top seven images are of Segura de la Sierra, and the bottom four are from the drive to and site of Yeste. Yeste is close to Segura de la Sierra as the crow flies but there is only one road that leads there and it approaches from the East instead of the west so it turned out to be a very long drive.

Segura de la Sierra

Trust me, there is a castle at the top of one of those mountains.

This is just a watchtower in the valley below the town but I am kind of proud of this shot and the fact that I didn’t get busted for trespassing.

Yeste

***

The running gag on this blog is “Dude where’s my bag?” so I won’t disappoint you. My latest theory is that my bag has been sent to the far reaches of the universe on a mission of peace and stupidity. On the way it will develop sentience and like its owner, it will attempt to collect information about distant places. When it returns it will call itself BCNIB14663 and enslave us all. The screaming idiots at Iberia airlines will either be the first against the wall or assist the bag in rounding up dissidents.

Thanks for reading.

One of the regulars quickly cuts him off and says:

“Hold that thought Felix, there is a weird American with a camera behind you.”

From the look on that guy’s face I think I was right not to offer them a round of milk.

***

It has been a while since my last blog so I will have to approach this chronologically or I will get lost. I left Scruffy, Felix and the Templar Fortress in Miravet last week and headed south to Alcañiz. I did not expect the driving to be one of the highlights on this trip, but it has actually been a lot of fun so far. In some ways, Dinkus has the personality of a nervous, yapping Chihuahua. Still, I’m getting used to the random complaints, and the roads here are made for a grippy little car like Dinkus the hatchback. Other than a few toll roads I have driven on other trips here, Spain is not big on straightaways or consistent speed limits, so there is no point in using cruise control. You have to power your way through turns or else you will always have another car climbing into your back seat. I think if anyone had been in the passenger seat they would have lost la comida somewhere between Miravet and Alcañiz.

Alcañiz has not changed since I was last there in 2008. I took a lot of photos there last time, but by the time I got there, I had broken the tripod I brought, so this time I just needed to camp out and get the low-light shots I needed. This fortress became the headquarters of the military Order of Calatrava in Aragon and was especially important after the loss of the order’s namesake fortress in La Mancha in 1195. The most famous aspect of the site is the murals inside the tower that depict – among other things – the order of Calatrava’s role in capturing the city of Valencia from the Muslim Taifa in 1234.

In the 18^th century, a palace was built around the original 13^th century castle-monastery. The palace was then turned into a parador (a nationally controlled 4 star hotel). This is the only affordable parador I have come across, so after weighing my options I decided to stay there for one night. I got some great pictures at different times of day, and got a great meal out of it as well.

After Alcañiz I drove down to Montalbán.

“[Montalban] is a bodaciously small town, Lane. A fly speck on the map – a rest stop on the way to the ski slope. I can’t even get real drugs here!”
[holds up a bottle of whipped cream]

-Charles De Mar

I stayed in a hotel at the next town down the road from Montalban called Utrillas. The hotel was fine, the people were helpful, and with a population of over 3,000 people, it was a metropolis compared to Montalbán. However, while Utrillas is a mining town that didn’t exist before they started blowing the tops off of all the mountains in the area, Montalban has a long history as the order of Santiago’s counterpart to the order of Calatrava’s fortress at Alcañiz.

The fortress was nearly completely blown up in the Carlist wars but fortunately, the fortified church is in great shape. I can’t say enough about how unique this building is, especially given who it was supposed to represent. It was originally surrounded by a moat, and while it was begun in ashlar masonry typical of northern, gothic, and Christian precedents, it was finished in brick, in a more local or “Mudejar” style. The tiles are not original but the 20^th century restorers based them on very likely models in Teruel (a town I will describe next). Again, I don’t want to bore anyone with details, but when you realize that the patrons of this building were professed military and religious enemies of Islam, this church challenges a lot of preconceptions about architectural “taboos”. It is as if the fabric of the building narrates how the order struggled to balance practicality with conviction in their newly conquered territory.

I just left the medieval city of Teruel this morning. My hotel room looked like HGTV decorated the inside of a clown car. It had beautiful orange and blue tile on the bathroom walls, espresso wood-grain laminate floor, an irregularly skinny twin bed, and a desk the size of a barstool against the far wall of a room that was about seven feet wide.

Teruel was a refreshingly larger town than my previous stops. There was just a lot more going on there this weekend. I also got to see the epicenter of the Mudejar architectural style I saw earlier at Montalbán. The pictures below are of the 13^th century church of San Pedro. This church has the oldest Mudejar tower in Teruel, so it makes sense that it is likely a prototype for many others like it throughout the region. The brick and tile pattern from the background of this blog comes from a tower at another church in Teruel called San Sebastian. I also added a photo of the interior even though it was rebuilt following a fire in the 19^th century. The second to last image shows the fortified gallery space that is very similar to the one at Montalbán. Finally the last image is the exterior of the Cathedral of Teruel constructed 100 years or so after San Pedro.

I am writing this blog from Hotel Moya in that Mecca of Spanish culture known as Honrubia. Let me just say you have not lived until you’ve hit the streets of Honrubia on a Sunday afternoon. It’s going to be a hot night in the old town tonight! Whooo! Hide your kids, hide your wife! We’re gonna be snatching your people up!

Don’t be jealous just because my chosen life-path allows me to experience such sophisticated locales. I think if Honrubia asked Podunk Iowa to be its sister city, the proud people of Podunk would turn them down flat. On the way here, the road I was on suddenly gave up on bothering with a center line dividing my lane from oncoming traffic – and it didn’t seem to matter. I don’t think it’s necessary to waste the paint when you’re driving on a road the width of your thumb.

Nonetheless Honrubia is close to another fortress/pilgrim hospital associated with the order of Santiago called Alarcón. This one was also turned into a Parador in a bodaciously small town, so I’ll just have to see how well preserved the 14^th century fortress is.

***

I now have to confess that part of the reason I have waited a while to blog is because I’ve been a bit preoccupied imagining people in various parts of the world trying on the contents of my suitcase. It turns out I flew to Barcelona the day before United and Continental joined to form a Voltron-esque horror of stupidity. When they added Iberia airlines to the mix, it was like they gave the keys to this monstrosity to Snarf from Thundercats. (That’s a lot of 80’s Japanese cartoon references I know but I swear no other mixed metaphor seems appropriate.)

So for quite a while now Voltron-Snarf has been in control of my wardrobe. Iberia is now on the hook for 8 days x 50 euros in compensation even though United lost the bag. That sounds great in some ways, but I have to send the original receipts, and I have no idea how long it is going to take to get them to reimburse me. I am unwilling to change my itinerary to be closer to affordable clothes, so I have been making do with what I find in smaller shops in a few of the little towns I have been to. This means that while my other clothes dried from their sink-washing yesterday, I went to dinner looking like the guy who wasn’t talented enough to be a member of Run DMC. I’m talking about a head to toe black Adidas track-suit with the zipper unzipped just enough to rock the Puma underneath. I even got stopped by a Spanish tourist on the street who needed directions. I think when my beard gets back to fluffy later this month I will cross over from “local” to “athlete-hobo.”

I’ve been on the phone with Iberia every night instead of writing this blog. They recently told me they were going to stop looking for the tag # and exterior description of the suitcase and just concentrate on the contents of the bag. I objected but Snarf told me that idiot-Voltron was a very complicated machine. My hope is that this Helen Keller approach of feeling my things in order to locate their container will reveal an inner genius at Iberia.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve waited a couple days to blog partially because it has taken me a while to wax philosophical about why I reek through no fault of my own. I recently found out through Jocelyn’s help that my bag was at Dulles airport until a few hours ago. Not to rehash, but just so you know, I am the one who brought the bag to Dulles airport. United airlines’ role in the process was to smile at me, call my bag “fat,” cross their eyes, stick their tongue into the corner of their mouth and then drool for four hours while they delayed my flight. I might get the bag tomorrow, but as of tonight, I have not gotten a confirmation that Iberia airlines has actually spoken to Continental to confirm that the bag a man in Mumbai told my wife was in New Jersey is the bag that Iberia has been looking for in Madrid and Barcelona. Since I am writing this blog in English, I will have to tell you that as far as I’m concerned, Iberia airlines – unlike Scruffy – will never get an “Usted” out of me.

So as you can tell I am not dwelling on the fact my wife accomplished in 30 minutes on hold what three major airlines could not. I am especially laid back about how I am the one who discovered that my tag number had too many digits and therefore must be wrong. With the help of Gaudi, a quick little Puegot hatchback I have named either “Pepe” or “Dinkus,” the fortress of Miravet, and an hour of counseling with my analyst Dr. Scruffy, I finally stopped seeing red long enough to write this blog.

Barcelona was just awesome. I can’t believe it took me four trips to Spain to work it into my schedule. I intend to come back, preferably with Jocelyn and maybe some friends for a longer trip at some point. I set out very early on Friday to go to Parc Guell. The subway system was incredibly simple, clean and well designed. Next to London and NYC it is by far the most efficiently organized metro I have ever been on. I got there around 8am and went straight up an outdoor escalator outside the park that led to the base of the highest hill in the park. The weather was beautiful and the view as you can see was pretty awesome.

I worked my way down the hill and took lots of pictures with my point and click camera of the grottos, paths and buildings that Gaudi completed before the project was abandoned in 1914. A few years ago I wrote a paper describing a connection between the subterranean architecture of Medieval Catalonia and Gaudi’s own interests in monasticism and medieval catalan identity. As a medievalist, I thought Gaudi’s structures seemed to have a familiar vocabulary but could never be confused with a medieval “revival.” Parc Guell wasn’t intended for throngs of tourists, but it functioned very well as a public space. The atmosphere at the park is extremely fantastic, yet totally local. All of the retaining walls and paths are made of local stone, and the “gardens” are planted with cacti and olive colored shrubs. The huge lizard that greets you at the lower entrance to the park, as well as the hypostyle columns and the undulating, mosaic-clad benches never give you the feeling you are in Disneyland. There is no reason for this comparison other than to emphasize that when you see all of the famous slides of the most colorful parts of the park in architectural history 101, it creates the impression that Parc Guell is an early 20th century Catalan theme-park. Again, this is not the case.

By about 12:00 I still had plenty of energy so I left the park and took the metro out to La Sagrada Família. Like a good tourist, I waited in line for a half hour, bought the guide with headphones and went to every single stop on the tour and listened to the extremely well written guide. I can honestly say that I have never before had such a positive experience at a major architectural site like this. It helps that La Sagrada Família is my new favorite building in the world, – I’ll get into that – but I have to first rave about how well curated the site was. Of course, I went on the first of March, not August, so that helps I am sure. Still the lines were short, everyone knew their job and was polite about it, and the tour never once insulted your intelligence or appeared to go over the average tourist’s head.

It is going to be very difficult for half-ruined rubble masonry fortresses to compete with La Sagrada Família over the next couple of months. The architecture of 13th century Earth will never compare with 20th century Mars, and it doesn’t have to, but it is unfair to put Mars first in this blog. Miravet was exciting for completely different reasons that I will describe later, but first I have to show some of the pictures I took at La Sagrada Família. It is really hard to express in words what it is like to see Gaudi’s Catalan columns and parabolic vaults actually carry the load of the building… so I won’t.

Yesterday I went to Barcelona airport to pick up the bag that was not there and get in an argument with Iberia air. After that I picked up my Puegot 308 Diesel hatchback and drove to Tortosa to check into my hotel there. I named the car Pepe at first because he is French, he smelled a bit –new car smell x 1000– and he had a really bouncy sport suspension that came in pretty handy on curvy roads in the mountains. After an hour though. I got kind of annoyed at Pepe and started calling the car “Dinkus” because every damn time I go over 50km/hr and again when I go over 100km/hr the car makes this obnoxious dinging sound that I can’t seem to turn off. I also realized that I am weird company without a radio –Dinkus won’t recognize the Bluetooth or USB connection on my Samsung phone– because the name Dinkus was shouted at the car long before it became its actual name.

That brings us to today’s trip where I drove Dinkus to Miravet, the first of several Templar fortress-monasteries but maybe the best preserved 12th century example. Getting to this site involves a ferry that uses nothing but the current of the Ebro River to take up to three small cars across. I was the third in line when the ferry crossed to the East bank of the river, so I had to squeeze in not knowing if Dinkus really was all the way on the ferry. The Ferry guy assured me I was on, but as soon as I could I told the car “You’re on your own, Dinkus” and hopped out.

The fortress turned out to have a lot of unexpected turns. As important and well preserved as Miravet is, the images that are published or online usually focus on views of the exterior in relation to the curving river. True, I also took a lot of those kinds of shots while I was there because the site is very dramatic. Still, I was impressed with the number of monastic buildings that survived and how clearly the structure was influenced by the order’s eastern crusader roots. The sloping base of the upper bailey walls – where the heart of the castle met its most vulnerable point – can be seen in quite a few military order foundations in the crusader kingdoms, including the most famous, the Hospitaller fortress of Crac de Chevaliers in Syria. Not to geek out too much over the castle, but it is rare that so many “monastic” buildings survive in these military order fortresses. The church, refectory, and “makeshift” cloister gallery were in great shape. In the end I think this site should help form one of my chapters. I am going to go back at least a couple more times to take some measurements before I head out to my next site.

The last pictures were taken near or of a church below the castle that was built by the Hospitallers after the Templars were forcibly removed from Miravet by James II of Catalonia in 1308. I just thought this part of the town was cool.
That is it. I have nothing to say about Tortosa other than I hope I am catching the town during an infrequent river-stench period. You know it’s bad when the guy with two shirts and one pair of pants thinks your town smells bad. If Scruffy will allow me to document our therapy with a photograph I will add it to the next blog post. Oh and Dinkus says hi… repeatedly.

Thanks for reading.

I have to begin by saying that this first entry will not accurately represent this blog for the rest of my two month trip. I want to follow that by announcing that air travel sucks, and I hate doing it. I have a long track record of either screwing up the process myself, or getting myself caught in the clumsy ill-fitting gears of the great air travel machine. This time, I did the right thing. Jocelyn and I left early for Dulles airport due to the horrible rain storms in Virginia. Other then some scary driving in the old Volvo, the trip went fine. Then I got to Dulles.

Part 1. I overpacked my suitcase by ten lbs. This was going to cast me $200. In response, I had to take some books and my tripod out of the suitcase and strap them to the camera bag and my overstuffed backpack.

Part 2. I sat at the gate at 2:00 for a 3:05 flight and watched it get delayed for weather outside of Washington seven times in increments of 15 to 30 minutes. My three hour layover in Newark after we finally got in the air became 50 minutes.

Part 3. Newark, NJ. We land. We taxi. Another jet apparently cuts us off at the gate. We sit in front of the gate for 40 more minutes. I’m in the back of the plane staring at my watch and listening to a conversation between two foreheads about how miraculous it was that they had both been to Ireland once before but had never met each other until they were both given the opportunity to torture a plane full of strangers.

Part 4. I have ten minutes before the plane leaves. Unfortunately I am in terminal A, but I have to get to Continental Airlines at Terminal C. There is only one way to get there: wait for a bus. The bus does not arrive for a half hour. I miss the connection to Barcelona.

Part 5.
Continental Representative: “We have to send you to Madrid. Then you will connect to Barcelona on Iberia Air. [looks at my two ridiculously awkward-to-carry bags and tripod] You didn’t check any baggage right?”

Me: “Yes, unfortunately I did”

Continental Representative: “Ohhh k well if [her face says ‘when’] your bag doesn’t arrive in Barcelona you are going to have to tell the Continental baggage counter at the airport.”

Part 6. There is a baby sitting in my seat [24B] flanked by her parents. They suggest I look for another seat. The steward just wants me to sit down. Two bald dudes get in a loud argument because the desk double booked seat 22C next to the larger bald dude’s shrill wife. I stand in the aisle waiting for this to be solved before I can get the stewardess to intervene on my behalf. I don’t want to sit next to the baby in Mom’s lap anyway because she is just gave me a look like “I’m full of milk, my ears don’t pop after takeoff, and I used to have my own seat… let’s do this!”… Thank you Darla [awesome stewardess] for finding me another seat next to a quiet but flatulent man in the back of the plane.

Part 7. I am convinced that the architects for Madrid’s international terminal were instructed to think of tired passengers as lab rats. I have been through here four times, and it is never the same variety of labyrinth. The only difference is that because this is Spain, the rats do not get cheese (not even manchego) they are rewarded with a surly bus driver.

Part 8. The other terminals for European flights at Madrid-Barajas are actually quite impressive architecturally. Instead of eastern bloc, mustard cinderblock, you get high, arcing, bright yellow steel beams. It is quite nice. This airport operates like Penn Station in New York however. You have no idea where your gate is going to be so everyone crowds around the monitors until ten minutes before you are supposed to board, then it is mad, rude dash for the gate and the glory of an overhead compartment. I’m not that fast with all the stuff on my back, but I did make it to the middle of the pack. Then it got weird. Just as my ticket gets ripped, all the passengers who had gotten on the plane are coming back up the walkway again. The “technical difficulties” take 45 more minutes, and all of the seats are taken up by the next flight after us. When it gets fixed everyone forgets how to queue properly and another argument breaks out because the funneling people knock down an old lady… At this point I am tempted to get out of line and see if I can fly to Barcelona on wings of duty free scotch.

Part 9. The present… I am in Barcelona at the Hotel Catalunya deep in the middle of the gothic quarter. I got here around 3:00. I napped a little, walked to the cathedral when it got dark, bought some socks, toothbrush and toothpaste at El Corte Ingles, took some blurry night photos, ate a jamon baguette and came back to write this blog. The little of the gothic city I have seen is really cool, but with all of the shops it has the feeling of an enormous, maze-like outdoor mall. The juxtaposition of the very old when you look up and the shiny glass shops on the street level is weird at first, but the atmosphere is electric. I would not want to brave this place during the summer, but I would love to get lost down here for longer next time. I already like Barcelona a lot more than Madrid. The students in Barcelona did have themselves a riot today however. They set some fires and threw some bricks through bank windows etc. Fortunately for me, I just read about it. I saw nothing either on the street or from the window of my cab.

I am sure I will forget all this travel nonsense tomorrow if my bag ever arrives. Either way I have to go with the flow. I am going to try to go see Park Guell in the hills to the north of Barcelona tomorrow. Many of you know this is a really amazing place designed by Barcelona’s main man Gaudi.

I attached one key photo that shows my itinerary over the next two months. I expect it to change a bit here and there, but for the most part, what you see will be what you get. I am picking up the car on Saturday morning (another reason I need to get that bag soon) so that I can drive to my first site: the Templar fortress-monastery of Miravet. This is a really huge site, but the town itself had no room to grow because of the defensive location overlooking the Ebro River. Consequently I am going to stay further upriver at another Templar fortress-town named Tortosa.

The last photo is the skinny street my hotel is on. Hopefully my photography will improve in the daylight. Thanks for reading.