Zaragoza

I warmed considerably to Zaragoza today - it has a lot of charm, when one gets to know one's way around a bit.  Here's the main old town shopping street - seen in the relatively early morning, when the water cart had just sluiced it down (I was on my way to some excellent coffee, and the world's best breakfast tortilla - if you're passing through, head to Mi Habitación Favorita ...).

Here's the standard tourist view of La catedral basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar - which inside was the epitome of very gloomy baroque - even the central cupola, with its frescoes by Goya (who came from Zaragoza).

The outside has some lovely tiled domes; the inside - unlike yesterday's baroque - made me want to run in the direction of the nearest simple English parish church, fast.

Onwards I went to the central market, which unless you wanted salt cod or lamb, wasn't a patch on the one in Valencia - but this view of it gives a very good sense of how Roman ruins are thrown together with everything else.  

Then walked to the Aljaferia, which started off as an 11th Moorish Palace, which has subsequently been through a whole lot of incarnations (a royal palace, a barracks, and now the local government seat).

The Moorish architecture is stunning.

And then I've come to see that the Spanish have had a real enthusiasm for elaborately decorated ceilings.

Sat under a shady tree to draw the main gateway,

before heading back to to the center of town, and vowing that this is a bar (despite it being round the corner from the hotel) that I will never, ever go to.

I spent a lot of the late afternoon/evening in the Goya museum - looking hard and long at the complete sets of his four major etching series, and appreciating his vitriolic political and social critique (not to mention his imagination and his execution) much more than I've ever done before - and realizing how horribly little, really, I know about Spanish history - indeed, I know more about New Spain than the old ...