Zaragoza day 2

 

Day 2 in Zaragoza and a trip into town on the tram. There is only one line on the system but it passes right past the aire where we are staying.  We took the tram right through town to the south side and to the Parque Grande José Antonio Labordeta (big park of José Antonio Labordeta) who was a singer-songwriter and former Deputy of the Cortes of Aragon. It seems a bit strange that such an old park should be named so. Maybe it has been renamed? Who knows? Anyway its a nice park and pretty big which is maybe why it is called the Grand Park. Our first stop in the park was the Museum of Ethnology. The building was rather quaint and looks really well preserved but in fact was only built in 1959. It's only just a smidgeon older than me. 

As you enter the park from the tram stop you are faced with this view.  There's a statue of some guy on a plinth away in the distance and it turns out to be the Monumento al Rey Alfonso I el Batallador  (Monument to King Alfonso I the Battler). 



If you can zoom into the second picture you might think it looks rather like King Robert the Bruce. He was a battler too I believe.

We then walked all the way up the Gran Via (Main street) which and eventually we got to the river where I took this photo of the big fancy church thing which was fully described in yesterday's edition. When playing with Kinrick we used to sing a song called Jamie Foyers which was about a guy from Perthshire called Jamie Foyers (no surprises there) who left Scotland to travel to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. One of the verses includes the words
"to the wide Ebro river young Foyers is gaen (has gone)
to fight by the side o' the people of Spain"


That river in the foreground is in fact the Ebro river.

It is our intention to move tomorrow and head a bit further north. Who can guess where we will stop tomorrow? Keep safe.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Arjuzanx and other places and more wetness!!!

Image
Ok apologies for the radio silence for a few days. Some of us have to work you know. Let's get you caught up without any further ado. I promised you pictures of Arjuzanx and I am going to have to modify that slightly to say picture, singular. I only took one of the war memorial. It is not the best picture of what I thought was one of the nicest war memorial's I have seen. The guy on the top was all painted beautifully and it was really striking. We stayed a couple of nights in Arjuzanx but the weather was awful. I was working and Sheila was confined to book reading and cooking. I must say the food on this trip has been pretty awesome. We often think let's eat out and so we go to the local restaurant. We look at the menu and the prices and think, sod it, we're not paying that. Sheila makes something ten times better for a tenth of the price. It is a no brainer really. Pork teryaki (or however you spell it) tonight. Might just open a bottle of my favourite 2 euro a bottle...
Read more

The leaning tower of .....

Image
Zaragoza of course, the leaning tower of Zaragoza. I have to confess that in the photos it does not look like it is leaning that much but it is enough to notice. This image is taken from the end of the magnificent square, well rectangle really outside of the big fancy church place. There is a fairly modern water feature in the front and then the tower in the back OK it's time to admit it, you thought that the leaning tower was the one on the extreme left. No. That apparent lean of that one is an optical illusion caused by the angle of the picture. The actual leaning tower is the one in distance in the middle of the picture. It is called the  Church of San Juan de los Panetes  How Much Does It Lean? It's not dramatic, but definitely visible — locals joke that the tower is "slightly tipsy" 🍷. Fun Fact There’s a popular myth in Zaragoza that the tower leans because the monks who built it drank too much wine while laying the foundations. 😄 Remember I mentioned a big fan...
Read more

Fenny Compton or bust

Image
  After a few days of "radio silence" we are back. I had a very busy few days of work there and we were camped by the side of a fishing lake although there was not much actual fishing going on and we never saw any fish getting caught so maybe we should just call it a lake. Oh and on that front I guess it was really pretty small so maybe a pond would be better so all in all I think Seighford Fishing Lakes might be better to be called Seighford Ponds. Mind you it did have quite a selection of birds including a fine flock of Canada Geese. A tad noisy but otherwise they were good neighbours. It was, as previously indicated, a busy work spell and so we did not manage to do that much except work but it was notable that our journey from Banbury to Stafford took us (deliberately) through Fenny Compton. Now here is a test for you, where do you know that name from. Fenny Compton. It is a tiny village in the middle of England with not much happening. I can hear you know thinking, I know...
Read more