The Adventures of Mr X

A couple weekends ago Mr X ventured into Luxembourg to find General Patton's grave. It's located in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial. Most of those interred here died in the Battle of the Bulge and though General Patton survived that battle, he requested that when he passed away he be buried with his troops. May he rest in peace.

Spain, Part 5: Toledo

It's getting to be the end of February and I still haven't finished posting about our Spain trip. I better get on with it. I'm sure it's no surprise that Toledo was both Mr X's and my favorite part of our trip. It is a breathtaking little medieval city that is definitely worth exploring. I guess most people (tourists) stay in Madrid and then take a day trip to Toledo rather than staying there. I highly recommend actually getting a hotel in Toledo. There's more to see than you can squeeze into a single day and plus it's just so charming that you won't want to leave once you get there. Mr X and I took the train from Madrid. It only takes about 45 minutes.

These pictures are in no particular order (except that first one, I suppose) so here are some photos of Toledo:

This is a panorama looking out from the center of Toledo. I don't know if this small blog picture does the photo justice. I'm certain that the photo doesn't do Toledo justice, but when viewed large it's looks quite nice even in the photo.

This was the view from our hotel room at night. The building on the right is the public school. I forget what the building on the left was exactly. Our hotel was a quaint little place that was right next to the cathedral in the center of the town. It was perfect.

This was also taken from one of the windows in our hotel room. It's part of the cathedral.

We climbed up to the top of one of several towers in the city and we thoroughly enjoyed the spectacular views. (Above and below.)

Below is just a picture of a random building we happened upon while lost in the streets. Usually we're pretty decent and finding our way around but we got lost several times in Toledo. Luckily it's a small town so eventually our aimless wanderings would bring us to some part we recognized enough to wend our way home. I thought it had a lovely facade.

Toledo has a lot of Moorish influence in the architecture. Often buildings built by the Moors were kept fairly intact and just reused embellished with Christian influences later. In this picture Mr X is standing in an area below a Christian church which was built on top of a Moorish building. I guess they started excavating and discovered that the building that was here before had a crypt of sorts in the bottom of it. Mr X is standing by the tombs.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside the cathedral in Toledo. It was unfortunate because it was a gorgeous cathedral - actually it was so large that the main part was a cathedral but the rest has been made into a museum of sorts. They love El Greco in Toledo and it shows in the cathedral because an abundance of his artwork is on display there. We couldn't take picture to show you, sadly enough, but Mr X always tries to sneak some photos anyhow. This is a shot of part of the ceiling of the cathedral. (I'm a little bit obsessed with the ceilings in all of the big cathedrals in Europe because for some reason I find them strangely captivating. Mr X is always helpful in indulging me in my obsession.)

The road were so narrow in Toledo that the cars (very small cars) had to stop before entering some of the street and pull both of their side view mirrors in so they could fit down the road. If I drove around there I have no doubt that my car would be completely scratched, front to end, on both sides. But I do love narrow European streets.

Below is the cathedral at night. (2 photos.)

This is the inside of a cloister. Once again, I love the ceiling and arches.

This is still inside the cloister...there's a lovely garden in the middle with fragrant orange trees everywhere. It kind of felt like home for a minute and it was difficult for me to resist the urge to start stealing citrus.

This is just a local house on the edge of the town that we encountered. I like the look of the laundry hanging in the obviously medieval town.

This is by one of the several entrances to the old part of Toledo. Mr X and I figured that since it looked like something tourists could explore that meant it was. We were wrong. It's now an office of some sort and we pretty much got 'shooed' out of there.

The rest of the pictures don't really need much of an explanation. They are just pretty pictures. At least I thought so.

(See the Moorish influence in the structures behind Mr X?)

(A view from our hotel room during the day.)

Spain, Part 4: Food Glorious Food

When Mr X and I are abroad, we get serious about the business of eating. Well...I guess it doesn't matter where we are, we love to eat. I'll try just about anything and I find that this sense of culinary adventure usually leads to delightful discoveries. Once in a great while I'll stumble upon something disagreeable, but that always contributes to a good laugh and a great memory. So here I'll take you through some of our Spanish meals:

For some meals we went out, but for others we simply went to the grocery stores. The above is a photo of the results of such an occasion. Slices of Jamon Iberico with leftover (from a restaurant meal) tortilla de patata. It was such a delicious meal - I loved it. For desert we had Crema Catalana from the grocery store. It was just okay.

The picture above and below were from another evening's trip to the grocery store. Once again we had some jamon iberico but we paired it with some fantastic aged manchego cheese and perfectly ripe strawberries. For dessert we scored with Tocino de Cielo...pretty much like flan but surprisingly tasty. I really liked it. The name is strange though - "Bacon from Heaven." I have no idea why they would call it that. It tastes nothing like bacon, I assure you. But it might just be from heaven.

These pictures are in no particular order but I swear we didn't eat jamon at every meal...the order is just off on these. Below (the next 2 pictures) we enjoyed a meal at the Museo del Jamon so of course we ordered ham. Accompanying it was some crusty bread, some sweet flavorful melon and croquettas de jamon. Another superior meal. We were too full to order dessert.

This was a tortilla de patata. It is perfect in it's simplicity: potatoes with eggs and onions. It SO good. Later I had a sandwich were they put a slice of this tortilla between a sliced baguette...nothing else on it - no mustard or mayo or anything. You're probably thinking it sounds just so bland, but you would be wrong.

Mr X ordered some rabbit and chicken paella at a restaurant in Toledo. It was the best paella I've ever tried and one of the best meals we enjoyed while in Spain.

We decided to try out some 'real' flan after we'd experience Bacon Heaven. I figured that if the stuff from the store was so good, the real stuff from a restaurant would be better. Turns out Bacon Heaven couldn't be beat, though this flan was quite good as well.

This was my favorite meal:

It was a very tender and moist roast piglet with fries. I loved the fact that the hoof was still attached and there were even hairs still on the leg. I tried to get a close up of the hoof for your viewing pleasure.

At that same restaurant Mr X ordered the pigeon and although it was mouth-watering in it own right, we both agree that my little piglet was the more superior meal.

Here Mr X is enjoying garlic soup. He tries garlic soup wherever he goes - Germany, France, Spain... He always likes it but I believe it is his opinion so far that the Germans make the best garlic soup.

This doesn't look like much but it was incredible. It's called pisto manchego....kind of a Spanish ratatouille. I loved it.

And now we get to the not-so-good choices:

I just had to take a picture of the above because it looked so completely unappetizing. I'm not entirely sure of what it is but I believe it's a slice of bread with some sort of vegetable filled mayo explosion on top of it. The little pieces of bread next to it with the cheese and wieners tooth-picked on it didn't look much better in my opinion. You would think that after seeing these two things I would have chosen something much tastier but I didn't. This is what I ended up choosing:

A fried calamari sandwich. Tasteless and rubbery. The bread wasn't even very good but everywhere we went people seemed to be gobbling these things up so I thought, "they must be that good if everybody is eating them." *sigh* Nope.

Mr X ordered some sopa de mariscos. Seafood soup. I didn't think it was bad at all, I actually liked it but after a few spoonfuls the fishiness of it does get a bit overwhelming.

This was the worst thing we tried while in Spain. It was a shrimp empanada. The outside crust was very flaky and pastry-like but the inside was revolting. It tasted like slightly rotten mashed shrimp. I tried several bites, thinking maybe it would get better. I shouldn't have given it the benefit of the doubt because it just made my stomach upset.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed trying out the Spanish food. Some of it I absolutely loved but I still like French food better. And Italian. And Greek. And German. And Czech. (That makes it sound like I don't like it - I do....my problem is that I just love food in general.) I'm such a pig.

Heidelberg Excursion

I figured we could all take a break from my pictures of Spain for a bit (I still have two more posts coming on that) - plus maybe you'd like to see what Mr X is up to these days? I know I'm always interested in seeing some of the places his wanderings take him. On Saturday he decided to take a day trip to see Heidelberg. Here are some of his pictures:

This is a view of the city from the top of a rather steep nearby hill. Mr X rode the funicular because it was too icy and snowy to walk up on foot...plus funiculars are always a good time, right? I want to ride one. The river on which the town is situated is called the Neckar. It eventually flows into the Rhine at Mannheim.

Next Mr X explored the Heidelberg Castle. Here's a bit about it from Wikipedia:

"The castle is a mix of styles from Gothic to Renaissance. Prince Elector Ruprecht III (1398-1410) erected the first representative building in the inner courtyard as a regal residence. The building was divided into a ground floor made of stone and framework upper levels. Another regal building is located opposite to the Ruprecht Building: the Fountain Hall. Price Elector Philipp (1476-1508) is said to have arranged the transfer of the hall's columns from a decayed palace of Charlemagne to Heidelberg.

In the 16th and 17th century the Prince Electors added two representative palace buildings and turned the fortress into a castle. The two dominant buildings at the eastern and northern side of the courtyard were erected during the rule of Ottheinrich (1556-1559) and Friedrich IV (1583-1610). Under Friedrich V (1613-1619) the main building of the west side was erected, the so called "English Building".

The castle and its garden were destroyed several times (during the 30 Years' War and the Palatine War of Succession). When Prince elector Karl Theodor who resided in Schwetzingen tried to restore the castle, lightning struck the Castle in 1764 and ended all attempts at rebuilding."

This is a view of the city streets just below the castle. That little shop in the middle is where Mr X reports that he ate one of the most delicious Apfel Streudels he's ever had.

Apparently Mr X also took a stroll along the Philosophers' Walk. It's on the north side of the Neckar river and it takes its name from the fact that supposedly Heidelberg's university professors and philosophers regularly walked and talked along this path. *shrug* Either way, Mr X reports that the path afforded beautiful views of the town.