Salamanca is a nice place and we could spend another day looking at what it offers, but we are scheduled out by noon. We have a 5 hour drive to Fisterra and need to be there by the end of the day. Still, Ana has some things she’d like to do. She want see the ancient Roman bridge on the other side of the historic center and also do some shopping at a jewelry store that has caught her eye. 

So, we get up early and pack, have breakfast and set out on our walk across the old town. I snap some more photos in the university area and then we descend to the river and the Roman bridge.  No point is seeing a Roman bridge without crossing it. So, we do, and marvel at its length and construction. Ana wants to hurry, but I tell her to relax and enjoy Salamanca. We will be gone soon enough. We make our way  back to the jewelry store. Ana buys a bracelet and we do some Christmas shopping for my family, as the wares are handmade in Spain and rather attractive. 

My relaxed attitude means we will leave Salamanca an hour later than planned. We head north toward Zamora. After an hours, the gps leads us to the historic area without much trouble. We find parking easily in a riverside park and hike up through a very old neighborhood to the castle and Cathedral, which are predictably high on the town’s hill.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Cathedral, is smaller than most, but still cathedral size. The audio tour includes the catheral’s small museum, which is  interesting and includes a large collection of medieval tapestries that are quite impressive. In an era without TV or movies, they provided illustrated entertainment for noble families. I suspect they sat around in the evenings and related the stories depicted about Roman kings and the gods of ancient times. Plenty of gore and magic woven into them, not unlike the movies of our present century. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Unfortunately, the castle is closed on Mondays. We view it from the outside noticing its deep moat. Did they have a way to pump water up the hill from the river; could they fill it with rain water? We will not find out. 

We use the GPS to find a recommended restaurant, but the device fails completely and we end up on a  back street in old quarter at a dead end. Enough of Zamora and its closed castle! Hopefully we will find a Burger King on the way out of town. We don’t and soon we are pretty hungry and way out in the sticks. I think the GPS has made another error, as we are traveling a country road running  between some pretty tired looking farm towns. The direction we are headed is right but we should be on an expressway. It is slower driving, but at least the drive has some personality. As we buzz through the seedy little hamlets, we look for restaurants, hoping to buy a sad little sandwich to keep going. We see an unpromising sign in the tiniest of towns, but stop since there are some cars in front and a open sign on the window. 

We go inside to find a decent size bar with people sitting at the bar having lunch. There are some empty tables in the bar room. As we stand looking like the out-of-towners, and older guy points to the rear of the barroom and some closed doors. We make our way through to find a large restaurant full of locals and a busy waiter, who seats us as he buzzes around between a dozen tables. The place is packed at 2:30! The waiter comes by with the menu written on two little slips of white paper. He starts down a long list of options for the first and second courses. There will beer or wine before hand and dessert as well, all for 10 Euros. We are famished and this place is a godsend. When Ana needs time to consider the options he hands her the two little slips and runs off to his many other duties. We will pick pork and veal steaks for our second courses. I will get a salad for my first course and Ana will have a plate of Spanish rice. The steaks will be delicious and will be served with french fries that actually taste good and not dried out or cold and limp. Ana will call the rice the best rice she has in a very long time, which is as good a compliment as you can get from her. This little farm town has produced one of the best and most memorable meals will get on our trip I suspect. What a delightful surprise. When we leave the restaurant, the bar tables are now filled with old men playing cards. More than a dozen of them have arrived. This place is a real oasis in farm country. 

We are fortified, but running very late. We must skip a stop in Ourence, where we have planned visiting a hot spring. This is a big disappointment for Ana, who loves hot springs. Still, she does not want to arrive extremely late in Fisterra; it will be a good decision. 

Our drive has been through flat, dry country with little relief. My friend Lew Harriman went to school as a boy in Salamanca. He describes this part of Spain as the Oklahoma of Spain. It is an apt description. 

We still have several hours to go and it is after 5 p.m. We are moving along well on an expressway in what is now mountain country near the edge of Galicia. Suddenly, both lanes start to slow and stop. A mile ahead something bad has happened. Soon people are getting out of cars and standing in the expressway trying to see further along. I do as well and see something with a single blinking light in the road; a helicopter perhaps. A tow truck and an ambulance fight between the two lanes of stopped traffic and then we see a helicopter rise. We have lost another half hour when the traffic resumes. Ana has called the owners of the condo in Fisterra to explain our delay. The woman is most helpful and understanding; she will go to the local market before it closes and buy us a few things needed for a breakfast, while she waits for us to arrive. 

The GPS gives us fits in the outlying roads of Santiago de Campostella and we are delayed some more. In this part of Spain,  the very far west, the sunrises after 8 a.m. and sets about 12 hours later. We have an hour to go on country roads and it is now getting dark. It is a tedious hour of driving. We get to Fisterra which is not impressive in the dark. The place is literally at the end of the road down a long peninsula. So, it is quiet even on its main street. The GPS has no idea where the condo is, so we stop and call. We are very close, but some how the lady cannot explain to Ana how to arrive. Instead, she sends her husband who has a raincoat and white beard to walk to the car. He will meet us near a hotel that we have mentioned. We find him, but there is no room in the tiny car to seat him. He walks a head of us up a steep hill for a long time until we arrive at the condo. We feel badly about this as the car idles along following the older gentleman. Still, I am impress how he chugs rapidly up the rather steep slope. 

The condo is large and most things are new. They give us extensive instructions and it is clear they own the place and are proud of their work. As a Spanish speaker, Ana understands the instructions. Still the old man want to relate to me and can spit out a few words of English. He shows me how to open some new fangled, and very awkward sliding doors to the patio, and tells me we will have a nice view in the morning. They want us to be pleased. They have recently bought the place and are proud of it. 

After they leave, we snack on some of of the cheese and wine and mellon that we have lugged from the car. It has been a long day, mostly of driving, and we are exhausted.