Old Hands, part 21

As the time for us to return to the U.S. got nearer, I figured I’d better cash in my gift certificate. A year earlier Mike had given me a birthday present that was a homemade certificate good for a weekend at the parador of my choice. Since we hadn’t been to the wine-making region of La Rioja, I thought it would be good to use my parador certificate for that. There was only one parador in the province of La Rioja, and that was in the village of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, so I booked our weekend. Dolores, the school’s gym teacher, stayed with the kids, and Mike and I headed out of Madrid on a Friday night.

The drive up was pleasant and sunny. As we drove north we left the dry plains of Castilla y León and moved into greener country. A patchwork of different crops was laid out over gently rolling hills. We reached Santo Domingo at 9 p.m., and the sun was still up, giving a golden light to the old stone buildings.

The parador was built around what was left of an old hospital for pilgrims on the route of St. James, and it was next door to the town’s cathedral, so that was our first stop on Saturday. Its distinguishing feature was the live, caged rooster kept inside as a reminder of a legend. Centuries ago a German family had traveled the pilgrimage route, and they stayed overnight with a family in the town. The daughter of the house fell in love with the son of the pilgrim family, and she told him so. He rejected her, and in revenge she hid a silver cup in his backpack, then told the authorities that he had stolen it. He was hanged, and his parents sadly traveled on to Santiago.

But the boy didn’t die on the gallows, because Santo Domingo protected him. When the parents returned from Santiago they found him alive, and they went to tell the local judge. The judge was just having his lunch—a roasted hen and a roasted rooster. Hearing the story, he declared, “That story is no more true than if I said these chickens could get up and crow,” which they promptly did. Descendants of the pair have been kept in the cathedral ever since.

Mike’s Price Waterhouse colleagues, hearing that we were going to La Rioja, had been generous with suggestions for shopping, dining, and wine tasting. The first suggestion we followed was to go to Ezcaray, a small town where there was a store that sold locally made mohair blankets. We got there before the shops opened, so we drove to a park to get a view of the area—and what a view it was. It was a clear, sunny day, and the hill was covered with tiny wildflowers. We could see a narrow river in a wide riverbed below. Crickets chirped everywhere, and we heard the sound of cowbells from a nearby hill. It was so peaceful and so lovely, we lingered there for half an hour.

Back down in the town we realized that we didn’t know the name or address of the blanket store. “What should we do?” I asked Mike.

“Let’s park and ask somebody,” he said. He left the car at the curb and walked right up to an old lady who was heading toward the shops. “Estamos buscando la tienda de mantas,” he said—We’re looking for the blanket store.

“Bueno, sígame,” she said without hesitation—Well, follow me. She took us right to the shop, which had no sign in the window. We would never have found it without help.

Inside the proprietor proudly showed us what he had. There were beautiful plaid mohair blankets in every color combination, and the prices were great—about $65 for a generous-sized throw, and not much more for a king-sized blanket that we bought as a wedding gift for Mike’s sister, who was going to be married in a few months. The dueño (owner) showed us a loom he had on display, and he explained that the goats that provided the wool were kept in the area, near the river we had seen. The actual weaving was done there, too, near the raw materials.

We decided that we needed a lot of blankets—they’d make great gifts for lots of people over the next few years, and we could ship them back with our household goods. So we bought about a dozen. Some were blue and white, some were red and white, and the most colorful were gold, blue and red. “These will keep us warm in Connecticut,” I told Mike.