At Home, part 3

On Saturday we drove to Mérida, where the Roman ruins were, as well as a fine museum of Roman art. But we had unwittingly come to the town on its saint’s day, so the museum was closed. “We’ll have to make another trip here sometime,” I told Mike, disappointed. “Everett says this place has a fantastic collection!”

Fortunately, all the outdoor sites were open. The most impressive of the Roman ruins was the theater, which was well preserved and still had many columns adorning its stage. Lisa loved running back and forth onstage. “Can I do a play for you?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. We headed down into the audience area and watched her sing and dance for a while.

The nearby amphitheater was more rubble-filled, and we watched an English-speaking family searching for pottery shards.

“Do you ever find anything?” I asked them.

“Oh, sure!” said the father. “We do this wherever we go, and we have a pretty good collection of Roman shards.” We chatted for a while, and I learned that he was an AT&T executive working in Madrid. They lived in La Moraleja, a fancy suburb north of the city, and the children attended the international school there.

We walked along quiet streets and bumped into the occasional empty lot that turned out to be another small ruin—a temple here, a bath there. There was a long, beautiful, many-arched Roman bridge over the river—only for pedestrians now—and an alcazaba (fortress) that had been built by Romans and later used by Visigoths and Moors.

We went on to Cáceres, which the guidebook said was “one of the best-preserved old quarters in Spain.” And indeed it was an astonishingly beautiful medieval enclave, free of shops and restaurants, empty of cars. All was quiet, seemingly timeless, with a consistent look because of the old gray-brown stone used for every palace and church along the tiny streets. We tiptoed around this amazing place, catching a glimpse of a white-clad bride entering an ancient torch-lit church for her wedding. “Look at that!” Julie whispered. The bride was lovely, and the moment was magical.

We left the old quarter, but not the mood it had created, to have a wonderful lunch at a restaurant a few steps away. I had a traditional dish, stewed partridge in a rich gravy with huge white beans, bigger than lima beans.

On Sunday, on the way back to Madrid, we took another bit of advice from the guidebook and made a long detour to see Guadelupe. The town is famous for the discovery there, around 1300, of a statue of the Virgin supposed to have been carved by St. Luke. King Alfonso XI built a church to house the statue, and later he added a monastery to commemorate his defeat of the Moors in 1340.

The town became a center of religious inspiration for Latin America. Documents authorizing Columbus’s first voyage were signed there, and the first American Indian converts to Christianity were taken there for baptism.

We drove through beautiful mountain scenery for many miles to get to Guadelupe. The uninhabited land seemed to go on forever, covered with brush and grasses. The rolling hills provided a new vista with every rise and fall, every turn of the road. Blue sky met dusty green fields at the horizon. Though it wasn’t the bright green of a rainier climate, it had its own kind of beauty. We watched it, silent, as the car sped along.

Entering the town, we found the church atop the highest hill and parked a way downhill. We walked up, stood near the base of the long staircase that led to the church’s entrance, and were fascinated by the show that was just getting underway. Dozens of dancers were chanting and dancing up the steps, reenacting the pilgrimages of the new converts in the 15th and 16th centuries. They wore spectacular costumes decorated with feathers, brightly colored in white, blue and orange-red.

“What is this?” Lisa asked, awestruck. We’d never seen anything like it, in Spain or elsewhere. We explained a little about the history that was being recreated, and we stayed to watch for half an hour.

After the ceremony Mike said, “Let’s go see the paintings inside.”

“No, I don’t want to,” Julie said. “I’m tired.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Lisa agreed. Frustrated again, I decided there was no point fighting this.

“Go on in and see what there is,” I told Mike, “but don’t take too long.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yep, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get them some ice cream.” He sped through the church while we walked around its side and sat on a bench for a while. It was a sunny day, in the 60s, and I decided that even without the inside tour, the experience of being in Guadelupe was much more than I had hoped for.