bodegas and battlefields

Looking back at my last entry it seems that I have been neglecting the blog
sadly the past few weeks. Its difficult to know where to start as we have
travelled a long way and have seen so much since I last wrote.

Tonight we are in Burgos in Spain having spent a lovely day wandering the
Rioja region and visiting some fantastic bodegas, one designed by Calatrava
(picture, building in vines ) and the other by Gehry (picture). They were
both amazing buildings in their own way but I have to admit to preferring
the one by Calatrava, the building and its setting were stunning. Infact
our sojourn in Spain so far has had a very architectural bias, our first
stop being in Zaragosa, where we visited last years expo site, in
particular to see a bridge by Zaha Hadid. My pictures make the bridge look
stunning, and in reality it is very impressive,but I was somewhat
disappointed by the finishes which are not weathering well. I guess the
budget was pretty tight! Zaragosa itself is a great town, with some
wonderful old cathedrals and Mudejar (moorish) architecture, and the added
bonus of some really great cafes and bars!

From Zaragosa we took a day trip to the nearby town of Belchite. Words just
can't describe this town, it was one of the most sombering places I have
ever been. It is in essence two towns, the old town was so badly bombed by
Franco's armies in the civil war that the residents abandoned the town and
rebuilt next door. Today you can walk through the old town gate, and
though the crumbling ruins of the streets, town squares, churches,
convents and public buildings, some little more than piles of bricks. As we
entered music from the new town church drifted across on the wind adding to
the eery impression. Seeing the decimation of a town on this scale really
brought home to us the destructive nature of war, which no pictures can
prepare you for.

On a far lighter note our last week in France was great fun, it was still
warm enough to paddle in the sea! and we were also lucky enough to see a
whole load of A380 parts in transit near Toulouse, being sad engineery folk
this was really cool!

We plan to stay in Burgos for two or three days before heading further west
towards Portugal. Hopefully I will manage to update this again a bit sooner
next time, it should be easier now we have new van batteries and I can
charge my blogger!