on the road to Barcelona part dos

So now we're in Day 5 -- Sunday April 18th. We've left Pamplona and are on the way to Zaragoza. Lots of wind farms in the Spanish countryside here. Also some big solar arrays the likes of which I've never seen in the US.

When we arrived, we stopped into a place that sold good old pizza. Wow, was it nice to get something that was exactly what we expected. Plus, the place was showing the Monte Carlo tennis tournament final in which Rafael Nadal was finishing up his devastation of the competition there. (Unfortunately, because Nadal played so damned well in Monte Carlo and in his previous tournament or two, he was too tired to attend the Barcelona which I'll describe in a later entry.)

Zaragoza is a medium-sized city. Seemed to be a lot of large, unused infrastructure. (Wikipedia: Zaragoza hosted Expo 2008 in the summer of 2008, a World's Fair on water and sustainable development.) The thing that attracted our attention is the Aljafería Palace, built in the 11th century by the Moors. Christians took it over early in the 12th century.

Me standing under a pretty old Moorish arch

A courtyard with orange trees. Note the mathematical patterns in the architecture which is a hallmark of Muslim architecture in general.

Prior to and during the trip, I boned up on Spanish history some by reading the generous history section in my book, "National Geographic Traveler: Spain" which I think is a great guide.

Charlemagne (b. 742, d. 814) did a lot of fighting in NE Spain and established Catalunya as a buffer zone between Moslem Spain and Christian Europe. My dad pointed out to me an interesting bit of history that I hadn't heard or read before: Charlemagne attempted to conquer Zaragoza, but failed. Apparently, as he was heading, tail between legs, back to France, his rearguard took a lot of heat from Moslem/Moorish fighters. This event inspired the song of Roland which you can read about on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanson_de_Roland
One of the stranger parts of this epic poem/song, in which Roland is the hero, is that Roland, after his forces are demolished, blows an olifant (named after elephant .. it's made of an elephant's tusk) horn so hard that his head explodes and he dies.. Yikes!

A few hours later, we rolled into Barcelona. We drove up the main strip in Barcelona called La Rambla. With amazing ease, found a place to temporarily park and check in to our hotel. Parking at the hotel was interesting. For one thing, we had to drive around the block and a couple of crazy drivers nearly squashed our poor little Seat (and poor little us) when 3 lanes suddenly became only 2. I hit the brakes and the two vehicles on left and right came within inches of taking off the left and right side-view mirrors. Navigated onto the pedestrian-dominated side streets and went down the exit ramp into the parking area. They parked the car New York style -- that is, put it on a lift and moved it into an overhead car slot somewhere out of view. Barcelona is a very crowded place. After going out for a not very exciting dinner (we got stuck in a tourist trap type place), we hung it up for the night.