Avila to Zamora

We started the next part of our adventure by renting a car and driving NW out of Madrid. We stopped in on Avila to admire her medievel walls.

As we walked through the front gate…

…we were thrilled to find that we could walk on top of the walls for a number of kilometers!

The cathedral actually makes up part of the wall -

The walls were built between the 11th and 14th centuries…

…and are the most complete set of fortifications in all of Spain.

(this viewpoint shows the inside of the wall)

There are 88 towers and 9 gates.

There were great views of the surrounding countryside -

did you see the city walls?

We of course had to visit the Cathedral.

Construction was begun in 1099.

I just loved the local mottled red and white stone. Inside, you could see where the original building used this stone…

… and where later construction used more monochromatic stone -

Choir and pipe organ:

We then drove on to the next stop along our route, Zamora, where we stayed for a couple of nights. Along the way, we felt like we could be in Kansas…

Zamora is a pretty little town perched on the banks of the Duero River.

For those of you fellow wine drinkers out there, the Douro (in Portuguese) River runs into the Atlantic at Porto, Portugal.

I was really taken with this pedestrian bridge. We luckily arrived in town just before the golden hour, so I had time to get down to the river and capture these shots.

We had made Zamora our base so that we could explore wine country further east along the Duero. As we stopped in various bars to taste wines…

… we occasionally caught glimpses of the surrounding countryside -

Before we leave Zamora, I have to share something. In the next picture, you’d think this was a pretty pedestrian walkway near the city walls -

Well, I shot this picture from the car, just before we turned left, hugging the building. The window at street level on the left edge of the picture was our bedroom window of the apartment we stayed in [with no AC or fan, so the window was left open at night :) ].

I’ll close with a mural from the town of Toro, that really spoke to me (I played French Horn for 15 years):