hudebnik

Checked out of our hotel in Madrid, rode two stops on the subway to the southern train station, and took a half-hour high-speed train ride (the overhead monitor said 216 km/h at least once) to Toledo, where even the modern train station is gorgeous Moorish-inspired architecture.


Caught a cab up the hill... and up the hill... and through a maze of twisty little passages from which we could have reached out the cab windows and touched the walls on either side. Old-town Toledo is very much still a medieval city in its construction, with nothing resembling a street grid and few calles (which would be called alleys or footpaths in the US) running farther than 50 m in one direction or by one name.

Our hotel's check-in time wasn't for several hours, so we left our luggage with the desk clerk and walked 100 m to visit the Cathedral, perhaps the biggest tourist attraction in Toledo. There's been a church on this site for about 2000 years, since Bishop Eugenius; it became a Cathedral and the spiritual/political/cultural center of Spain in the 7th century under Bishop Ildefonso, to whom the BVM appeared and gave a rich robe as a sign that this was the place to build a Cathedral; and the current building was constructed (presumably after a period of serving as a mosque) in the 13th-15th centuries, with a few later decorative additions. Pictures to follow.

After a couple of hours in the Cathedral, we returned to the hotel, checked in, and fell asleep. Got up about 6 PM, went out for supper (which was tricky, as most restaurants were closed or closing at this time), visited the (free admission) excavated Roman baths, then found a spot in one of the countless pedestrian plazas to wait for the evening religious procession. It's Holy Week in Spain, so there will be at least one religious procession almost every day up through Easter Sunday, each sponsored by a different church in town. The information booth near the Cathedral has a helpful pamphlet listing the starting times, routes, and dramatis personae of each procession, but it doesn't indicate how long each procession takes; the plaza we picked was about halfway through the route, and the procession reached us about two hours after its starting time. Pictures to follow.


This is the shower fixture in the hotel. From this picture, without manipulating any controls, you can figure out how it works: the left knob is water temperature (with a recommended 38°C highlighted), so the right knob must be water volume, and the pull-knob in the middle is shower/spigot. Temperature and volume are the controls I actually want in a shower -- or a sink for that matter -- not how-much-hot and how-much-cold, much less how-much-and-if-it's-a-lot-it's-hot. Why can't American plumbing manufacturers figure this out?

On the other hand, the "climate control system" in the room has two settings: on and off. I turned it on and got a minute or so of cool air, after which it switched into "heat" mode (presumably because it's March; the climate control system hasn't noticed the heat wave that has covered Spain for the past week). We would have opened the window to get outside air circulation, but the window is actually a door that opens onto the next door neighbor's patio, which feels a little creepy.

Spent the day in Segovia, which is an hour or so from Madrid (1/2 hour by high-speed train, then 20 minutes by bus from the train station to the center of town). The part of town we were in obviously centers on tourists, but it was cute anyway. There are about twenty small Romanesque church buildings sprinkled throughout town, most of which have been repurposed for secular ends (schools, theatre companies, etc.) so we couldn't get inside them but walked around the outsides of several.
I think the oldest non-church building in town is a 15th-century house, but a lot of the buildings, even fairly recent ones, have pronounced Mozarabic influences, e.g. overall geometrical patterns in the wall plaster.

The oldest construction in town, of course, is the Roman aqueduct, which is really impressive. The town centers on a steep-walled ridge (like Edinburgh), which was an obvious place to put a military fort, and one problem with building a fort on top of a hill is that the troops need water. So around 100 CE, those wacky Romans found a place a few miles to the east where a fast-flowing river through the mountains was slightly higher than the hilltop, and built a channel at a steady 1% grade all the way to the fort, including a 2500-foot-long, 100-foot-high stone aqueduct (no mortar!) across the valley and through what are now the town walls.
The aqueduct was damaged in the 11th-century Reconquista wars, but repaired around 1500 and still in use into the 20th century.

Anyway, we walked up and down the main drag of the ridge, with side trips down twisty alleys, a fancy mid-day meal of suckling pig (for shalmestere) and asparagus with salmon (for me), and a traditional Segovian dessert of marzipan over custard.

Found a couple of stork's nests

on top of former church (or secular) towers: apparently there were a lot of fortified 15c towers belonging to various powerful families, but Ferdinand and Isabella, in an effort to quell conflict among said families, ordered them all lopped off to a certain maximum height.

Then we toured the Cathedral, which was started in 1525 to replace the Romanesque one that had been badly damaged in a Commoners' Revolt in 1521. The new cathedral took 250 years to build, by which time the Flamboyant Gothic style in which it was started had become terribly old-fashioned, so they finished the top of the nave with a Renaissance dome
while the bell tower at 108 m was the tallest in Spain. Until 1614, when lightning struck the wooden bell tower, whereupon it caught fire and fell onto other parts of the cathedral. They rebuilt in stone, 20 m shorter than before, but still pretty darn tall. We took a guided tour of the bell tower, including the bellringer's apartment halfway up, and our legs are still sore.

At this point it was after 4 PM. We considered going to the Alcázar, which doesn't close until either 6:00 or 8:00, but we were tired enough that we skipped it. It's a 19th-century medievaloid construction, Spain's answer to Neuschwanstein and allegedly an inspiration for the castle at Disney World.


One of the themes of this trip seems to be "expensive mistakes". I made a bunch of reservations for travel and lodging, some with the option to change and some with discounts in exchange for a "no cancellation, no changes" clause. And so far, every thing we've needed to change has been in the latter category. There are so far five (5) nights' hotel stays that we're paying for and not using. And although I thought the train tickets I had bought for today could be changed to an earlier time for free (and to a later time for a fee), this turned out to be wrong, and we had to buy new tickets back to Madrid rather than sit in the Segovia train station for three hours. I spent both too much time and too much money at a Western Union office this morning trying to send money to a musical-instrument-maker (so he can ship the finished instrument to one of the hotels we're staying at later, and we can bring it home ourselves). But at least it's only money: none of these mistakes so far has affected us physically. (Cue the Book of Job....)

Tomorrow we plan to take the bus to El Escorial (home of two Cantigas manuscripts, among other things), come back in the afternoon and get in a few more hours at the Archeological Museum.

Spent two or three hours yesterday at the Museo Arceológico Nacional, which (like the Museum of London) is organized chronologically. We skipped quickly through the pre-Homo-sapiens stuff, since it's not particularly Spain-specific, but there's a surprising amount known about Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age life in the Iberian peninsula... anyway, we almost got to the arrival of the Romans, with all of the Roman, Visigothic, and Mozarabic periods yet to go. But we had a 2:00 entry time reserved at the Prado, so we left to make that appointment.

Spent six hours at the Prado, getting as far as Bosch, Bruegel, El Greco, Dürer, and friends. (And ran into Mac, of "Mac and Marianne", with some armor-geek buddies.) Had supper at a Chinese noodle place. Bought train tickets for upcoming trips to Segovia, Toledo, and Granada. Went to bed. Up early to catch subway to train to Segovia.

I was talking to my manager at work yesterday. He went to Spain a few months ago, and reminded me that some of the biggest attractions are so popular that you need to reserve tickets for them months in advance. Which I sorta knew but hadn't really done anything about.

So last night I checked on tickets to the Alhambra in Granada, and the Alcazar and Cathedral in Sevilla. Unable to find tickets to the Alhambra on either of the two days we're scheduled to be in Granada, but found tickets a few days later, on the day we were planning to go from Cordoba to Sevilla... and Cordoba isn't far from Granada, so I revised the itinerary with another day in Granada and one fewer in Sevilla, where I'd been unable to find tickets to the major Sevilla attractions anyway. Then shalmestere did some more hunting and got tickets to the Alcazar and Cathedral, on the day we had been planning to go from Sevilla to Merida. So that's not too bad. The re-revised itinerary involves a few hours more driving than originally planned, but we're Americans; we can handle that.

Also made lodging reservations for the last two nights: in particular, the last night, we're at an airport hotel a mile from the Madrid airport, the better to make our return flight in the morning.

It stopped raining at breakfast yesterday, and was glorious the rest of the day. We actually visited three castles: Dinefwr, Carreg Cennen, and Dryslwyn.



A quarter mile from our B&B was the entrance to Parc Dinefwr, which has at one end a Victorian mansion that we didn't visit,



some lovely woods and meadows in the middle, and at the far end Castell Dinefwr.


When we got to the top of the castle and looked around, we immediately thought "It's the Shire!"


Castell Carreg Cennen is a more high-profile castle, with a visitor's centre, an admission charge, an ice cream shop, and all that. It's quite dramatic from the approach road

as well as from up close

The interior is fairly well preserved, as medieval castles go: this is the second-story "Lord's Chamber"

All those fortifications are scarcely needed, because the landscape provides pretty good protection


A few miles away is the less-touristed, scarcely-even-signed Castell Dryslwyn, on top of a hill

in the middle of a scenic valley


Interestingly, the top of the hill contained a village of 30-some houses outside the walls of the castle; you can still see their outlines in the grass

And such a view!



Drove from the Brecon Beacons into Pembrokeshire, checked into our B&B, and got dinner at a pub around the corner.



This morning I woke up to find the weather foggy but not actively raining, so I went for a walk in the neighborhood,
including some lovely views of the coastline and the harbor, then returned to the B&B, had breakfast, and chatted with another guest and the owner for an hour or so before waking D. We found a shop where we could buy some quiche slices, got into the car, and drove through the rain to



St. David’s, “the smallest city in Britain” at 1852 people (it’s a city because it has a cathedral). It was still raining, so we walked around inside the (still functioning) cathedral, of which


the nave dates to the 12th century and the rest to the 14th, with substantial restoration in the late 19th.


There are still a lot of medieval encaustic tiles in the floor, as well as some 19th-century replacements.


The original shrine of St. David was destroyed by Viking raiders in the 9th century, a new one was built in the 13th or so, it fell into disrepair, and was restored with medieval-style, medieval-materials paintings about fifteen years ago. Geraldus Cambrensis is allegedly buried there, as are the Welsh princes Rhys Gryffydd and Rhys Greg (sp?)

A few steps away from the still-functioning St David's Cathedral are the ruins of the medieval Bishop's Palace, which is your average castle minus the military fortifications: it has a great hall, a kitchen, some private quarters, office space, storage rooms, etc. I was particularly struck by the construction of the tunnels that connect the various storage rooms.






And then it stopped raining, so we walked a third of a mile out of town to the chapel and holy well of St. Non, St. David’s mother. She was apparently caught by the seashore in a thunderstorm when it was time to give birth to him (about CE 500), and at the moment of his birth, a lightning bolt opened a spring of pure water, which is still there (albeit not flowing due to the drought).


It’s down by the seashore cliffs, so we walked a little way along the seashore walk (which IIUC goes all the way around Pembrokeshire). Stunning scenery, glorious weather.

Checked out of the B&B in Merthyr Tydfil and drove (often on two-way, one-lane, twisty roads with tall hedges on both sides and no visibility) to a car park,

then walked 1-1/2 miles up the road


(moderately steep, bleakly scenic, quite windy)

to Llyn y Fan Fach, a glacial cirque lake that now has a small dam controlling its level. The dam is unnecessary at the moment, as Wales has been in what passes for drought conditions for several weeks and the lake was quite low.




But the mountains surrounding it are amazing. We’re tired now.

Sleeping in Llandeilo tonight, visiting two medieval castles tomorrow before driving into Pembrokeshire.

So the plan was

• leave the dogs at a boarding kennel today,


• drive to the Washington, DC area tonight,


• participate in a living-history show at Catholic University tomorrow (including a half-hour main-stage musical performance by shalmestere and me),


• attend a concert by the Folger Consort tomorrow (music from the early 14th-century Roman de Fauvel),


• attend our adult niece's confirmation Sunday, and


• drive home Sunday afternoon.

In particular, for the Catholic University demo we were preparing a set presenting the four seasons through 14th-15th-century English music -- none of that French, German, Flemish, or Italian stuff. This is tricky because an awful lot of written music (and other written material) in England got burned in successive waves of violence and looting: the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, the Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the English Civil War, etc. And it used to be taught that England was the musical backwater of Europe until Dowland in the late 16th century. But we now know, by extrapolating from surviving tables of contents and textual references to English songs, that a lot of music was happening in medieval England. So the set list includes well-known English pieces that survive with music, such as "Miri It Is" and "Sumer Is Icumen In", as well as musical pieces that survive with only an English incipit such as "Wynter", instrumental pieces in sources with medieval English provenance, and English lyrics that survive without music but which shalmestere has re-set to tunes known in medieval England.

But on Tuesday, while walking the dogs, shalmestere twisted her ankle on some broken and uneven sidewalk: her ankle is now swollen and discolored, she can barely walk, and she's spent much of the past three days elevating and icing it. So we've called off the trip to DC for the weekend.

It was good to have a deadline forcing us to prepare this ambitious musical set, and it's disappointing to not perform that set tomorrow, but I'm sure we'll find an opportunity to do it somewhere.

A year or so ago, shalmestere ordered a handmade medieval-style recorder from a maker in Germany. A month ago, she was informed that it was ready, and would be shipped upon payment to such-and-such bank account in Germany. Our credit union has an online bill-pay feature, but it only works with 9-digit US bank routing numbers as destinations; I called customer service, sat on hold for an hour or so, and was told that (a) what we need is a wire transfer, and (b) our credit union doesn't send wire transfers (although it's happy to receive them). I told the maker about this, and she suggested using Wise to transfer the money. So I tried that, and Wise's web site got hung in an infinite loop (I had a spinning progress indicator on my screen for twelve hours). I tried again several times over the next few days, with the same result. Wise customer service said the credit union was declining the payment due to lack of funds (which should be impossible, as I was using a credit card with plenty of credit limit). I switched browsers, and instead of an infinite loop I got a message saying the credit union was declining the payment. I switched credit cards, and got another infinite loop. So I tried a debit card instead (making sure there was enough money in that account first), and that finally worked. The recorder is on its way here.

So I looked at the UPS tracking info. Here's an excerpt:

02/18/2022 10:55 P.M. Export Scan Köln, Germany
02/19/2022 4:15 A.M. Departed from Facility Köln, Germany
02/18/2022 11:46 P.M. Cleared Import Customs Your package has cleared customs and is on the way.
02/19/2022 6:46 A.M. Arrived at Facility Newark, NJ, United States

The package cleared import customs in Newark 4-1/2 hours earlier (on the clock) than it left Köln. Köln's time zone is six hours ahead of Newark, so that's 1-1/2 hours later in "absolute" time. How does a package get from Köln to Newark in 1-1/2 hours? The Concorde couldn't do it that fast.

I guess they must do import customs inspections on the plane, and time-stamp them according to the destination time zone, even though they haven't actually gotten there yet. Eight and a half hours from Köln UPS depot to Newark UPS depot (I presume both of them are adjacent to their respective airports) makes more sense.

So, I started coughing around Dec. 14, and spent a good deal of every night coughing until about Jan. 22. Then I had a blessed two weeks without coughing, although in the past few days I've had general muscle aches and felt physically tireder than I should for the amount of exertion. And yesterday I started coughing again. And last night. And today. And I definitely have muscle aches, and I get tired walking across a room. If this lasts as long as the previous one, I should stop coughing around the time we leave for Shawm Camp in March. Which doesn't bode well for, say, practicing before Shawm Camp....

ETA: doctor says it's "a mild bronchitis", and prescribes antibiotics, steroids, and cough syrup. And "lie low this weekend": not a lot of partying, drinking, and carousing. Which weren't very likely at the best of times, and less likely when I'm coughing and achy. But we are scheduled to go to a concert Friday night, a four-hour music class Saturday, a two-hour music class on Sunday, and another concert Sunday. We're skipping the concerts; not sure about the classes, whose teachers are counting on a specific number of people attending.

So Friday evening we flew to Roanoke, VA, the nearest airport to the farm where my brother mankoeponymous was getting married. The wedding had a "burning" theme: part Burning Man, part fire-dancers (which has been a good deal of my brother's social circle for the past ten years or more), and since shalmestere and I are old fuddy-duddies who have never been to Burning Man OR (intentionally) danced while carrying or wearing anything that was on fire, we were a little dubious. But everybody was very welcoming, and it was a good chance to see a bunch of my family: my mother, two aunts, an uncle, my step-sister, a step-nephew, my half-brother, and my father. My mother and father, I gather, were halfway through introductions before they recognized one another; I guess they hadn't seen one another since my wedding, exactly 22 years before.

The bride had been in a pep band in college, so a marching band playing Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" accompanied the bride and groom to the space where the ceremony was to take place. (I played pipe-and-tabor, while shalmestere played sopranino recorder; I don't think anybody heard either of us. There was some confusion over what key to play the piece in: my brother sent out sheet music, but it was band score in which all the instruments are in different transpositions. Anyway, it was very spirited and peppy.) The vows were largely about recognizing that both parties are fallible human beings, that it's better to argue fairly and constructively than to not argue at all, that the only certainty in life is that things won't go exactly according to plan, etc. etc. During dinner, about a dozen twenty-and-thirty-somethings testified, passionately, in alternation about how wonderful the bride and the groom are. After dinner, we bid farewell to a bunch of relatives, watched a slide show of alternating kiddie pictures of the bride and the groom, and returned to our hotel before it got dark enough for fire-dancing (see "old fuddy-duddies", above).

Between Saturday morning and Sunday morning, we got to drink some good milkshakes, eat some good barbecue and Southern biscuits-and-gravy, and visit the Roanoke city zoo, which is on top of the mountain in the middle of the city (nice views of the other mountains that surround the city on all sides). It's a small zoo, where one can see pretty much everything in an hour, so it fit nicely between brunch with my mother, step-sister, and step-nephew and our afternoon flight home.

A bizarre but enjoyable weekend.