Extremadura

We left Santiago with no reservations for the night...and the only goals of having a glass of wine in Toro , getting as close as possible to home, and finding a place with availability for two nights.  At this point we had learned that the only way to see ANYTHING is to stay at least two nights in one place.  That gives you a full day in situ to explore the area.  I Googled "casas rurales extremadura"  on my smart phone and came up with a list of places to begin calling.  After our experience in Monchique, Portugal, Angelines had made it clear that she didn't want to stay anywhere too far from the freeway: possibly a tall order to fill given that casas rurales tend to be hidden away from civilization; but first on my list of places to call was a house which according to GoogleMaps was in a small town just off the main freeway through Extremadura.  I made the call and not only was there availability for two nights, but they also allowed dogs!  ¡Qué suerte!  We agreed to meet around 6:30 and proceeded to make our way through the end of Galicia and into Castilla León for our lunch in Toro.

The "toro" in Toro dates to the Neolithic period.

We arrived just barely in time for luch (about 3:30) and so we sat down at the first bar we found and ordered from the menú del día.  Lunch was great and my parents marvelled at how we hadn't had a bad meal our entire trip, yet we hadn't been eating anywhere exceptional.  They couldn't believe that even the funkiest, divey looking places on the outside served up great meals.

And the wine didn't disappoint either. ;)  After asking our waitress for directions to a bodega where we could buy a few bottles for ourselves, we were disappointed to discover that there were no tours offered.  I suppose that we didn't have time to tour anyway, but I had hoped that they would have a tasting bar available or something of the sort.  Nothing.  We purchased a few bottles from their store and hit the road again.  We were running a little behind schedule for "La Casa de Tía Emilia".

(A small parenthetical: at this point in our trip, unbeknownst to us, we had received TWO speeding tickets...damned sneaky radars!  We're only just now getting them in the mail.  The first was leaving La Roda passing Huelva and the second was this long day's drive to Extremadura through León.  Poo.)

...bored in the backseat...

A post-lunch coffee break was in order around 5ish, so we pulled off the road pehaps an hour from our destination.  The road into town was lined with large industrial buildings, nothing abnormal.  Many times entering towns right along the freeway you pass through the industrial area of the city: olive oil factories, fiberglass tank factories, tractor dealerships, etc.  However, I noticed in this particular town that all the warehouses we passed were meat processing plants: productos ibéricos--venta al público.

Pata Negra: before the butcher's...

Not until this trip had I ever noticed that the best Iberian cured ham you can buy--pata negra--nearly always comes from Extremadura.  We were in ham-land!  What a happy surprise.  Of course, now we had a double purpose to our stop: café, and jamón!

Only in Spain will you find first-class cured meats (pork loin, whole hams, salami, chorizo, blood sausage...) in a coffee shop. :)  We actually ended up buying from a place right next door, but there were meats on display in the coffee place.  The facade of our coffee stop was covered with a giant picture of black pigs grazing amidst scrubby oak trees.  These are the famous, Iberian, black-footed pigs.  They eat wild acorns from the native encinas and graze over acres and acres of land--they were "free-range" before that became a buzz-word!  The meat from these pigs is often refered to as pata negra (black hoof) and is known to be the best quality.  However, in some places you can find "normal" hams with black nail polish applied to the hoof...  So the terms "Iberian ham" or "Acorn ham" are also used as synonyms.  It was at this point in the trip, that we dubbed our rental car "Pata Negra"...although, I'm not sure it really reached those high quality standards. ;)

Of course my mom wanted a picture with the woman selling the meat...

Look at the amazing archway! (Not Tia Emilia)

Around seven, we finally made it to La Casa de Tía Emilia: wonderful!  I think it was a very close second to the great place we found our last night in Portugal.  The house itself was a wonderfully maintained, very big, old home.  There were four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a living room an ample landing at the top of the stairs, a kitchen and a washroom!  The staircase was the made of chestnut (traditional in the region) and the steps were bowed from use of the many years.  The ceilings downstairs had a few dangerously low beams (also chestnut)--beautiful.

Our hostess, who was not Emilia, was an ebullient elderly woman named Juana who insisted on making us a huge cake for the next day's breakfast and bringing us fresh lettuce from her garden!  She also had a great guidebook for the region and pointed out some of her favorite places to visit.  We had no idea about anything in the area, of course, because we hadn't planned to stay there.  As it turns out, it was our very favorite part of the trip.

Lettuce from "Juani's" garden.

We were staying just on the other side of the ridge from the Jerte river and the Valle del Jerte (Jerte Valley), famous for cherries and alabaster carvings (!?).  Several months before our trip, Angelines and I had been watching a documentary on television about the Jerte Valley and it struck me as an incredibly beautiful area.  Both of us agreed that we wanted to visit some day... and suddenly here we were without having even planned it!

Our first evening we strolled through the little villiage of Villar de Plasencia and were struck by how much history was conserved in this tiny town.  Villar de Plasencia conserves a portion of the ancient Ruta de la Plata, a Roman highway connecting Seville in the south with Gijón in the north.  Some of the homes with stone facades reminded me of villiages we'd seen in Southern France.  One home even conserved a stone archway over the front door that surely dated from at least the Middle Ages.  It was impressive to say the least.  We strolled out of town along the roman road for a bit and took in a spectacular sunset.
 

La Ruta de la Plata: Roman road

Stone wall at sunset.

My super driver...tired from a day on the road.