We dropped the car off at the Bergamo airport and headed south on Ryan air for Valencia. Ryan Air, one of the many no frill airlines in Europe these days calls itself the “low cost airline”. Gretchen called it the “no air airline”. If the flight was longer than 1.5 hours we all would have all passed out from lack of oxygen. This is the closest experience one can have to flying in a municipal bus. It was amazing that we got off the ground, but even more amazing that we landed in one piece. Our descent to Valencia included 10 minutes of whoops and screams normally associated with an amusement park ride. As we finally screeched to a halt, everyone on the flight cheered and applauded, including the flight attendants. We later learned this is standard pracice on Ryan Air.

Finding the ATESA car rental desk was another problem. Our car rental voucher told us to go to the ATESA desk in the arrivals hall, but, of course, there was no ATESA desk in the arrivals hall. The agent at the Hertz desk directed us outside, but still no ATESA office. Gretchen noticed a van with the name ATESA on the side, but no office, no desk.  Nearby, a man with a clipboard was walking towards us. She asked him if he knew where the ATESA desk might be and he smiled, telling us he was the ATESA desk. As it turned out, he was on his way to meet us in the arrivals hall, which would have been interesting since the flight landed over 45 minutes ago. Lucky for us it took 45 minutes for us to get our bags from the Ryan Air baggage claim. As Javier, the rental agent said, “we are very lucky”. There was a malfunction with the parking system in the airport and no on could get in or out. If we didn’t just happen to run into him, we’d never have gotten the car.

La Mancha
And so, with Valencia to our backs, we headed into the La Mancha region of Spain. At first, the flat farmland seemed pleasant and quaint but in a few days we kept on asking “are we still in Kansas?”
We soon discovered that this year is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Miguel Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”. The Rute de Don Quijote signs were everywhere. Why not. This isn’t the most visited part of Spain so why not get in on the tourist dollars while you can?
We detoured off the route NIII to see the windmills overlooking the valley leading to El Toboso. Seven of the orignal group are still there. When Cervantes saw them over 400 years ago, there were 18 of them. And sure enough, if you’re coming from the south and you squint your eyes up to the hill, they do kind of look like giants.
El Toboso is the home of the Don Quixote heroine “Dulcinea”; we actually visited her house which, of course, is now a museum on the Rute de Don Quijote. We don’t know if Dulcinea ever existed but we’re positive her house was there. But the big surprise was the “Cervantes Museum”. Aparently, the Mayor of El Toboso (which is not a very big town) got the idea to write letters to political groups around the world and ask for donations. However, he didn’t ask for money. Instead he asked for old, signed copies of Don Quixote. And there they were, Margaret Thatcher’s book sitting next to the personal copies of the likes of Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Hosni Mubarak, Jacques Chirac, King Juan Carlos and lots of others, a literal who’s who in at least 10 languages.
That night we returned back to our Parador in Alarcon and tried out some of the local fare. The manchego are very famous for their cheeses, and we like all of them, so why not try some “Morteruelo”, a paste of pureed small wild game birds served on bread; pretty weird but it kind of grew on me. I also like the fried bread crumbs that get served at any meals any time of day. The cold cod fish, potato and garlic paste called “Ajomortelo” was too weird for our taste. But we also got our first taste of good rioja wines starting with a 2000 Marqués de Riscal reserva. It was really good..

Toledo
Tourists aside, Toledo is still a beautiful city. The regal signs of this ancient seat of Spain still tower above the city. Like Venice, with it’s murano glass and leather mask shops attacking you at every corner, Toledo streets are an endless display of boutiques selling hammered inlaid gold; plates, coasters, jewelry, swords. The list goes on. Some of them even have the craftsmen themselves on display to show you that the curious for sale are indeed authentic, although if the shop keeper notices you might be uncomfortable with the high price of the piece, they’ll always take you to the case of machine made gold inlay. Yes, it looks the same and it’s more than half the price.
Aside from the usual meandering through the narrow streets of any 15th century European city, the main sites of Toldeo are mostly religious. The large cathedral (and it is really big) for the catholics, the small synagogues for the jews. Not much left in the name of islam, even though the Moors occupied and ruled most of Spain for close to 800 years. The Moorish culture is present in almost everything from architecture to music to food, but Toledo was the seat of Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and Queen who finally ran them out. By the way, this was the same Ferdinand and Isabella who gave Columbus the money to find new wealth in the new world. The 14th century synagogues were transformed into churches during the inquisition of 1492, the same year the Moors were defeated, but Spain, haunted by it’s violent past or possible trying to get at the jewish tourists dollars, has created a lovely historical picture of Sephardic life in Spain from the 7th to the 15th century. There are two small synagogues, both done in Moorish architectural style. Yes, in those days the muslim and jewish communities actually embraced each other.
My personal favorite place was the secular house of El Greco. I was never a big fan of his work. Yea, he was sort of an impressionist of his time but everything he painted looked the same, elongated bodies with the big noses. The egotistical El Greco also seemed to have painted his own face into all of his allegorical paintings. Either that or maybe all the saints did look just like him. But the reason I like El Greco is because of him. The guy’s life was just as weird as his paintings. Apparently while he was working in Rome, he announced that Michaelangelo was a hack and he could do a much better job if some of the Michealangelo panels in the Vatican were removed and given to him to recreate. The Roman response was to run him out of town. When he found a benefactor in Toldedo, he settled in and adopted the name El Greco, a name the Spaniards gave to him because they probably couldn’t pronounce Domenikos Theotocopoulos. But even in Toledo, his work wasn’t received very well. But through the years he did manage to get enough work for him to be able to buy a really big house in the jewish quarter.
OK, the thing I really like about El Greco is that he spent it all while he was alive. He lived a really good life; big house, lavish clothes, big parties. He even hired a couple of musicians to play music while he ate every one of his meals. When he died, the only possessions he owned were a few pieces of clothing and his paint brushes. That must of really pissed off his heirs.