Merida, Spain

So we left the wine warehouse at 2:30 am and got to bed around 3. Surprisingly Ernie got his second wind at the restaurant and was doing great!

Got up the next morning feeling no pain. Had our last breakfast there and left for a 5 hour drive to Merida. We stayed in a room at Juanma's apartment, that also had great parking and left to see the Roman ruins. What has absolutely amazed us is finding places like Braga in Portugal and now Merida, that have fantastic sites and they are not listed in the guide book. I just don't understand. Outside of Rome, the ruins in !erida are some of the best preserved we have seen. We toured the teatro and the amphitheater. We passed the walls on the way to town center. We then walked, uphill of course, to Alcazaba, the Moorish fort. Since we arrived late in Merida and were only spending the night, we didn't have time to see the other ruins. As in Rome, every time you turned a corner, there were smaller Roman structures in the streets and squares. This is a beautiful little town to visit.

See the little speck of a man in the center of the photo at the bottom? That's Ernie. Just wanted to have so e perspective on the size of these walls.

 

There were several young men on the floor of the forum practicing fighting like they did in Roman times.

 

We were walking to another site to see the ruins and walked past this on one of the side streets.

 

Since everything closed at 9:00, it was now time to have some tapas for dinner. As we were sitting in the square having a drink and two surprising tapas (surprising because of what they were - one was a roll with cream cheese and anchovies and the other was a dish of chicken gizzards cooked in a tomato sauce). Ernie was ecstatic!!! We heard a large crowd gathering towards our left. It was a small procession with young ladies carrying a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. We have been so fortunate to be in the right places at the right times.

 

It was about 93 degrees in Merida and we knew Sevilla would be hotter. The weather has been quite a surprise to us. We expected rain in Galicia (the guide book said their climate was much like England and to have rain gear with you). We had beautiful sun and heat. Since we left England over 5 weeks ago, we have had only 2 days of rain in Granada. When we were having lunch in Sevilla, our waiter commented that it was probably hot for us. We of course said we were from Texas and it was no problem since we experience up to 42C in the summer. He said that was nothing. Summer in Sevilla would get up to 45C. We were very thankful we would not be there in the summer!

Went out for our last night of tapas and actually ate before 9 - have to get on a more citizen schedule like we will have on the boat. We will dearly miss Spain and Portugal and are already talking about our return trip to Portugal possibly in 2015 so I can stomp grapes in the Duoro. Looks like it might be an 8-9 month trip starting in Portugal, going to Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany (for the Christmas markets) and then on to Asia. Just in the talking stages right now.

Off to Amsterdam!

 

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