Zaragosa for lunch

We arrived at Logorono around six in the evening .   It would be our last night so we had to do our packing the night before as they wanted out suit cases outside our door by eight in the morning.  Meg and I finished our packing by stuffing our clothes in plastic bags and then sitting on them to try to get the air out then closing the the bag quickly.  Soon we had our bags lined up on our beds.  They looked like crinkled up, multicolored potato chips.  We then flung them into our suitcases and most of the packing was done! Voila!

Meg was eager to go out with the rest of our Kazoo Gang and do the Tapas Crawl but I had a tummy ache and all I wanted to do was sink into a tub for a soothing bath, wok on my notes and crash for the night.  So Meg got all prettied got her cane and up and left the room whistling a happy tune.

I took my bath and got my notes and scrambled in bed to to get to work.
We had covered a lot and if I didn’t get things down on paper I forget what we learned.   I was doing pretty well until I hard lots of noise coming from the square.  It started with some drums and then some chanting.   It sounded like there was an uprising, but the chatting was not nit angry but humorous.

Spain National team made up of the best players won the Euro Cup over Italy

It was impossible to work with all the noise, so I got up and investigated.  It seemed that the people making all the noise were the soccer fans of the Roija Federation Football Team.  They had won their division and all the fans were waiting for the bus to bring them back.  You could hear when the bus came in as the noise was deafening .  The park was full of people cheering so loud you would have thought the Pope was in town!  After that everything got quiet again and I went to bed and crashed.

The next morning we were up and ready to go by ten having  placed out suit cases in the back of the bus by the hefty team of bag brigade to help Felix in the loading.  We were on our way east to our next destination: Barcelona!  We drove through beautiful green fields again as we left the agricultural Rioja Valley  and then came to the industrial section of Spain. We would be making a stop in Zaragosa for lunch to stop mid-way as we had a long drive.

Green with agricultural beauty

Zaragoza is a big city of seven hundred thousand people.  It was initially settled by the Sedetani , a tribe of Iberians, then the Romans took over and settled their army veterans there, It was easily taken over by the invading Goths and finally the Moors who gave it the name Saraqusta.  when Charlemagne tried to take it from the Moors but after a month long siege at he city gates they withdrew being chased by the Basques.  The city was then played like a political football by the Moors  as one took over after the other.  The last sultan was Banu Hud who was forced to abandon the city when the Christian Aragonese conquered the city and absorbed all the people.  The Muslims of Zaragosa became military regulars within the Aragonese forces.

Wind turbines along the ridge.

Currently, Zaragoza continued to grow in its economy which is indicative of all the factories that we passed as we arrived.  The Opel factory is one of the successful companies in nearby Figueruelas.  Also the Balay company manufactures household appliances, and a large construction company builds railway engines.    Its airport is a main cargo hub, and it is in the rout of the high speed rail from Madrid to Barcelona.  Zaragoza is also the home of the Spanish Air Force base which it shares with the U.S. Air Force.

Parked the bus on the street outside the Basilica

Buddhist Monks touring Zaragosa

The large Plaza

We would see non of this, however, for our destination was the Catholic basilica, Nuestra Senora de Pilar (Our Lady of the Pilar).  It is linked as one of the first miracles of the beginning of Christianity.  According to the legend, The Virgin Mary appeared to St. James  in the first century standing on a pillar.  She was still alive at the time.  The feast is celebrated on October 12 which coinsides with Columbus finding the New World.  The Celebration lasts for nine days with all kinds of activities.  It is a bit like our Fourth of July, but it last more than a week with fireworks, dances, processions with huge carnival figures, concerts, bull festivals, and a flower offering to the Virgin in the form of a cloak of flowers.

We arrived at the large court yard in front of the basilica.  There were shops across the square and a Chamber of Commerce building with lots of green umbrellas from a near by restaurant.  Tim gathered us together and said that we were going to visit the church and find a place to sing then we would get a chance to explore the church again and all meet across the plaza at about one o'clock at the Chamber of Commerce building before going to lunch.  Ed was going to check on lunch and be back by then.  So we all went into the church and again stared in awe at its magnificence.

We were lead to the choir loft and we were informed that we would be able to sing from there when the church service in the chapel was over. So we waited patiently until we were given the signal to begin.

When we were given the signal we all moved to our proper places and sang the "Jubilato Deo."

 Tim set the Pontifical choir on the other side of the choir site and we began the "Ave Maria."

We then sang, "All My Trials"  as people in the church turned and looked at our performance.

When we were done, we toured the Basilica and marveled at the beauty of the golden figures.

We then left again waking out to the plaza as we wanted to meet others for lunch.
We saw that we still had time and decided to take some pictures.

Sharon and Meg posing on front of the Chamber of Commerce next to the green umbrellas.

I saw that we had a bit more time and said I would be going down to the end of the plaza to take pictures of the extraordinary waterfall at the end.  The meeting place would be at the corner where the buses ran and the restaurant was at the end of the street. There were kids playing by one of the fountains and I took a picture of them.

   So off I went to take pictures.  I saw Lorraine and Charmaine there and took their picture.

And they took a picture of me in front of the magnificent waterfall. It looked lie an Ice Berg and the falling water gave a beautiful sound and it cascaded over the serrated edges.

We gathered our things and walked back to the path that we were to follow to get to the restaurant.

we noticed no one was at the Chamber of Commerce by the umbrellas.

So we went to the street where the  bus was sitting.  Charmaine said that the name of the restaurant was something like, "Bodega." So we went looking for this restaurant all the way down the block.  But we did not see one,  Next we looked down the side streets, but most were small establishments that would accommodate only about twenty people.  As we were looking, we ran into Kim who seemed as lost as we were.  Then after more looking, we ran into Donna.  So now there were five of us lost puppies.  We couldn't believe that forty-five people disappeared from the face of the earth so quickly.  So now after an hour of looking, we figured we would go back to the Plaza near the Chamber of Commerce and have a drink.  Margaritas sounded pretty good about now!

Finally, one and another member of our group found us and said that everyone was waiting for the bus and we were to follow.  So we got up and followed down the street that we had walked a for an hour.  We continued walking across an avenue and around another corner.  I don't think we would have been able to get this far if we had a map.  We rounded the corner and kept going up the street until we came to a little restaurant and had a large table clear in the back of it.  We  decided to use their restroom then went out to the park across the street and wait for the bus.

Oh well I had a stash of protein bars a, apple, and an orange that I could eat if I got hungry.  The bus finally came, and we all got in.  Not much was said and we tried to go to sleep listening to "Carmina Burana" all the way to Barcelona.