There are nine albums or songs titled either "Feet Don't Fail Me Now," "Feats. . .", "Feets. . .", or "My Feets. . ." I didn't realize there were that many when I looked up the original artist to confirm it was "Little Feat" who did "Feats Don't Fail Me Now."
Extramadura could easily be named "Extrarural."
Which, when GPS fails makes going from one isolated town (Trujillo) to the next isolated town (Guadalupe) a bit stressful.
See, we don't carry road maps anymore. That has nothing to do with the fact that maps are hard to read once you start relying on reading glasses and everything to do with just how simple GPS is to use. The days of our rental car Tom Tom having no idea how to take us in rural Tuscany are long gone.
Except when the network that we were ("Orange") failed when we pulled into the parking garage in Trujillo. At first I figured it was an "inside a parking garage" problem. But it wasn't. Then I figured it was a "in a small rural town with lousy coverage" but that wasn't it, as the handfuls of other people we saw that Monday morning had no problems with their phones.
So, going to Guadalupe through the middle of nowhere, across nothing, became instantly stressful. Carol's iPhone had the same problem.
A bit out of town, I pulled over, pulled out my iPad, and could use the GPS map on that. So while driving the mountain curvy roads, I had my iPad on my right now, balancing. Eventually Carol got nervous enough to grab the iPad and hold it up so I could see it. Not quite as good as having the GPS map showing up on the large rental car screen, but we made it after about 75 minutes of somewhat harried driving (good news is, there aren't many cars on the road in rural Spain).
We went through the tangled, tight streets of Guadalupe, coming to the small plaza in front of the UNESCO Heritage Site that drew us to Guadalupe in the first place, the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe. I spun around the plaza twice looking for parking.
And I saw what might be a spot and pulled into along the sidewalk. There were cars along the sidewalk above us, so I reasoned it was a parking space. Although, it might NOT have been a spot, as our vehicle was protruding into the road. The space ahead of us is a handicapped parking space, which hinted that it might be the last legal parking space along the street.
I rolled the dice and parked. We either had rock star parking across the street from the UNESCO Site, a ticket magnet, or towing bait. Carol was stressed, but I decided we would take our chances.
We went across the street to the monastery, and bought tickets. After marking our tickets as 12:00, the ticket guy realized it was 12:05, crossed off the 12:00 and wrote 12:30. Of course, as we went back out, the 12:00 group was just entering the monastery. Ugh.
We had time to kill, which gave Carol more time to spin herself up that we'd be towed. Or put up against the wall by remnants of Franco's secret police and shot.
(Editor: To be fair to Carol, she didn't think that. Writer: I don't know, she was pretty spun up.)
Since we were in Extramadura, there is not exactly a plethora of English-speaking Spaniards like there is in more touristic areas.
Editor: Don't you mean "touristy" or "touristed"? Writer: I think the Spanglish word "touristic" is pretty evocative, so I'm adopting it.
So we received no guidance other than to wait till 12:30 and go in when called.
So we go in, mill around for a bit, and nothing is happening. So we decided we would not wait for the disorganization to become slightly organized. Instead we took our own tour, going through the monastery on our own.
(If the difference between Spain falling to another Muslim invasion is whether the invaders have some pictures of the monastery in Guadalupe or not, the entire Iberian Peninsula is doomed.)
The monastery was started in 1337. The earliest parts, the church and cloister, are built in the Mudejar style, but then more was added in the Gothic and then Baroque styles.
First we went round the beautiful cloister, where I took most of my pictures (there was no one in sight, so my fears of being shot by remnants of Franco's secret police were lower for the photos than Carol's fears of the same happening for our parking.)
Some of the building was underwhelming. I only saw briefly what I believe to be the most beautiful part of the entire complex, the Camarin de la Virgen decorated in Baroque. Alas, the lady standing there thought (correctly) that we weren't with the noon group that had just been in, so she demanded to see our tickets, saw the "12:30" and threw us out, locking the door.
While she was harassing Carol, I played dumb (Editor: not much of a stretch, eh) and went for a quick look at the Baroque Virgen room. It looked stunning, but Carol didn't get to see it, and I barely did.
We went upstairs with the noon group, where listened to a priest in Spanish in the impressive Chamber of the Virgin, which is richly decorated in colorful plaster and stucco, and the walls are covered with paintings. The priest talked a bit fast for Carol to get most of what he was saying, although she cracked the code on some ot it.
The monastery also played an important role that I don't fully understand in helping unify the various Kingdoms of Spain under the leadership of the Crown of Castile. It was also important for the spread of the Catholic faith in the New World.
I was not thrilled with it -- I felt like we paid good money and did not get much out of it. Carol was quite grumpy about both the GPS mess and the poorly done monastery tour. I mean, if you are going to be a UNESCO WHS, you need to act the part.
We were not ticketed, so we decided to have lunch in the plaza near the monastery and, more importantly, our car in case were getting a ticket.
While we were waiting for the food to come, Carol noted that the network we were on, "Orange" was not lit up in the color orange on our cellular note on the Settings app. She then called Julia up in Charlottesville (she's tech support for the family) and woke her up early in the morning.
While she was doing that, I clicked on "Cellular Data Options" on my iPhone and noted "Orange," "Movistar" and one other I'd never heard of. So I clicked on "Movistar" as I remembered seeing it a bunch in Spain.
I went to my GPS, and boom, it was working! Emails and texts were also coming in! We were back in the groove!
On the food note, I was fond of saying there is no such thing as bad Spanish food, but it turns out there is. It's called "Migas" and it's a favorite comfort in Extramadura (and Portugal). I had it once in Portugal and didn't like it, but thought I owed it another shot in Spain. Spoiler alert: I did not owe it another thought.
It's a low-budget dish made stale bread and other stuff. In Extramadura they soak it in water, garlic, paprika, and olive oil. That way it tastes like. . .well, stale bread. It is made different ways in different parts of Spain, but have no fear, migas will never pass these lips again.
Oh, and yes, they eat migas in Mexico, but it's totally different ingredients. Maybe on the Spanish version the words "stale bread" should have given it away.
