We met our Tours By Locals guide, Marco, in the large, arcaded Plaza Mayor of Caceres, and he immediately suggested we start with a cup of coffee in a local cafe. Carol liked that idea, and so we did (I had my typical sparkling water).
Marco kindly laughed at my pronunciation of the city's name -- Caceres, which I naively pronounced as "Cuh-ser-ez" -- you know, the way it is spelled. Well, apparently it is pronounced "Cuh-ther-ez" and how the second "c" is a "th" is too much for my non-foreign language speaking brain to comprehend.
In fact, next time we talk, innocently bring up the city of Caceres (pronounced logically but incorrectly) and then help me replace my head after it blows up. I will sputter "Cuh-ther-ez" reflexively, trying not to shoot spit as I do so.
Marco talked about life in Caceres, his recent week guiding a group around much of Extramadura, including Caceres, Zafra, Guadulupe, and Trujillo.
It was then that Marco told us that Extramadura is geographically the size of Switzerland (population 8.9 million) or the Netherlands (population 18 million) but only has a million people.
The second interesting factoid is that 80% of the tourism in Extramadura comes from within Spain. That means only 20% of the tourists we would see in Extramadura came from other countries, meaning that we probably ended up seeing very few, if any, other Americans.
His third interesting factoid was that the city's population doubled the previous three days from 100,000 to 200,000 for the city's music festival. That's why we couldn't find a VRBO to rent in Caceres, and had to go 10 miles north to the sleepy, relatively charmless town of Casar de Caceres.
Caceres is also a UNESCO World Heritage City. No single site is a "knock your socks off" UNESCO World Heritage Site, but put together, the city of Renaissance palaces, churches, mansions is quite the place to be.
After the break/intro, Marco took us to enter the historic part of the city through the Estrella Arch, which the Spanish had widened to allow carriages to drive through. The uphill, turning driveway, along with the arch, had to be widened to allow carriages through.
We saw the Bujaco Tower and down some of the tight streets as Marco pointed out various mansions, cut off towers, churches, and the two towers in town that did not have to be cut off. We enjoyed both the buildings surrounding Plaza de Santa Maria and La Plaza de San Jorge.
It was a sleepy Sunday morning, with the main activity in Caceres being workers taking down the various music festival stages in the plazas.
Unfortunately, with the exception of the main Santa Maria co-cathedral, everything else was closed. I'm not sure if that's because it was Sunday morning or because of the WOMAD Festival that had just finished up Saturday (apparently there are WOMAD festivals in England, Australia, and also annually in Caceres).
The sculpture of the Black Jesus (yes, it was a nickname for NBA superstar Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, but not in this case) is a focal point of the co-Cathedral of Santa Maria. The sculpture, which is an anonymous carving, arrived in Cáceres in the 14th century and is historically linked to the flight of the Templars from Europe to Portugal. It is very visually arresting and beautifully carved out of dark wood.
The Bujaco Tower wasn't opening till 5pm. Initially we planned to go back to climb it and along the small stretch of the city walls open to the public, but by 5pm we decided the hassle of finding parking in Casar de Caceres wasn't worth giving up our parking spot.
Caceres is a beautiful old sitting, with Moorish and Renaissance buildings and features. We felt like we got a great overview from Marco, but we were there on the wrong day to then follow up with a more in-depth look at the city.
We had lunch at a nice restaurant in one of the plazas above Plaza Mayor outside of the historic walled part of the city. A large group of elderly British tourists were seated in our room, but my fears that they would be noisy proved not to be true.
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