Labor Day weekend in Spain afforded our family the opportunity to travel by car for three days through the provinces of Castilla y Leon, just south of Asturias in North-Central Spain. Our first stop was the Romanesque town of Carrión de los Condes (one of the most important towns of the Christian kingdom during the High Middle Ages), where we slept in the beautiful Benedictine Convent of San Zoilo.
The hallway view of the cloister of San Zoilo.
Chub and sunlight amidst the columns.
The only view this room really ever needed. (He was such a happy traveler.)
A delicious meal of lamb--a local specialty. We were draped in the comfort of a warm wooden-beamed ceiling and the many families it nourished that afternoon.
In the original entrance to the Romanesque Church of San Zoilo, adjacent to the convent.
A smattering of the towns where we stopped along the way:
The "official" destination of our wanderings was a 15-year reunion of about 40 of the hundreds of children/adolescents-turned-adults who spent up to 10 consecutive summers of their youth together at a camp in Santo Domingo de Silos, a tiny town in the province of Burgos.
Santo Domingo de Silos
The town is home to a monastery which has a cloister considered to be one of the masterpieces of Spanish Romanesque architecture, as well as what is probably the most famous group of Benedictine monks in the world--their recordings of Gregorian Chants are sold worldwide. Getting to listen to these men sing laudes and vespers in their monastery was a profoundly moving experience, and transmitted a peace that resurfaces with the memory.
The Romanesque cloister of the Benedictine monastery in Silos
Outside of the monastery, however, it was also a real treat to meet many people who knew and loved Bernardo for so very many years before he and I ever met each other, and to hear all of the stories, jokes and recollections that colored this reunion. I was touched to see these people who were so close as teenagers reunite for the first time with their spouses and children in tow. (For full disclosure, this was basically all made possible by the arrival of Facebook to Spain.) And it is always reassuring and humorous to find out just how adolescence held the same delights and pitfalls and innocence and awkwardness for all of us, no matter where we come from. I loved to get a real glimpse of Bernardo's experience of it from the people who shared it with him.
The group.
The center of town and view of the monastery from our hotel window:
The king of all stork nests! And a duplex, at that! This one was worth pulling over to the side of the road on our way back up to Asturias on Sunday:
1 comments:
gazoinks. Your verbiage, photography, and, well the double stork nest leave me wordless here. Thank you for chronicling this trip for us.
Logistical question: how did you get to stay in the monastery in the first picture? Pre-arrangement or just showing up?
Less logistical question: can we get an awkward Berni adolescence story pretty please?
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