First off, while all the big cities are an easy hour-plus drive from Madrid and the airport, the high speed trains are faster and much more relaxing. Imagine being seated at a table erasing the horrible taste of airplane food by eating the Spanish equivalent of a ham hero – a bocadillo on a barra de pan – using the finest jamón prepared fresh for your journey, while watching the fertile landscape zip by. It took a little planning to arrange that picnic, mostly picking up the sandwiches and managing not to eat them until boarding the train, but it was worth it as the perfect introduction to Castilla y Léon.

My companions and I arrived refreshed in Segovia, one of the few cities in the region I hadn’t visited. What a beautiful city it is! Especially the old quarter, the fortress, cathedral, and the most magnificent 2000+ yr old Roman aqueduct, which is the best-conserved Roman aqueduct in the world. At more than nine miles long and just under 100 ft high in the tallest place (Azoguejo square) the triple arches of the aqueduct survived the centuries in a simple stone-on-stone build with no mortar to hold them together.

Our guide, whom we engaged at the Information Center in Plaza del Azoguejo square, saw us straining our necks looking straight up at the beautiful structure and suggested the best viewing place would be from the top of the Postigo steps beside it. While we later found a better vantage, she was right in saying that it was easier to appreciate the massive scale of the aqueduct spanning the square from those steps.

Once back down in the square, we walked up Calle Real, through the Jewish Quarter, and after visiting the sights I mentioned earlier, (a cathedral is a cathedral is a – very lovely – cathedral) we entered the Plaza Mayor. Every Spanish city has one, a place where city life congregates, and Segovia’s was no exception.

Here is an unusual fact about the medieval quarter of Segovia. St Michael’s church is where Isabella, the Catholic, was crowned Queen of Castile. When the square was expanded, Isabella paid to have the church moved to the edge of the new square to preserve her coronation site.

After some people-watching over a refreshing café double and the ever-present plate of jamon, we improved our appetite on the walk back to Azoguejo square to the most famous restaurant in Segovia – Mesón de Cándido.

You realize that Mesón de Cándido is a big deal restaurant when you see a huge statue of Chef Cándido as you enter the city. He’s the one who put his families’ humble inn on the map in the early 1900s. We navigated through the outdoor seating (in the shade of the aqueduct – what a view!) to climb a staircase to the second floor dining room. From its beginnings in 1884, Cándido’s has grown into a large restaurant that looks like a history museum, with every available space sporting a photograph of famous people, dignitaries, and even the king, all surrounded by old serving utensils presumably gathered during the 100 years the restaurant has been internationally known. The many small tables were packed with tourists and couples, or pushed together for local families on a celebration, and us, with a tantalizing aroma of good food mixing with the multi-lingual conversations. Our expectations were heightened; it turns out for good reason. Mesón de Cándido is not just the place to be seen; it is the place to eat!

A video of Segovia includes the aqueduct and dining at Mesón de Candido. VIDEO BY RICHARD FRISBIE.

Mesón de Cándido is famous for its cochinillo asado (roast suckling pig). Order it for the sheer spectacle of it, and eat it for the joy of fine dining and delicious food. The founder’s grandson is the Candido immortalized by a statue in the roundabout. He received numerous gold medals for his contributions to tourism and cuisine, and held the title: “The Greatest Innkeeper of Castile”.  He was the abuelo (grandfather) of the current chef, the fifth generation Candido, whose father continues the show his father started of carving the roasted pigs with a plate and then breaking the plate on the floor. Mesón de Cándido is very much a family affair and pure theater – it is a sight to behold!

I’ve had suckling pig before, but this one was remarkable, due – in part – to the brining and then basting with lard in a hot oven to deliver a moist flesh with a crisp skin, but it was elevated by the setting and the ceremony of carving, certainly. Mesón de Cándido is a must visit when you are in Segovia.

A video of the five different hotels we stayed at in Castilla y Leon (including a castle!). VIDEO BY RICHARD FRISBIE.

Remember that I mentioned we found a better place to view the aqueduct? Well, after a much-deserved night’s sleep at Hotel Exe Casa De Los Linajes, we got up early to an overcast sky, and drove out of the city to the surrounding plains where balloons were being readied for a morning flight. We slowly lifted off and floated over a hill disturbing dozens of rabbits who scurried to the safety of their warrens. Then, equally animated, but running towards us instead of away, was a grade school recess of about a 100 kids waving and yelling until I was sorry not to have brought candy to drop to them.

The rain stayed distant and the breeze strengthened to carry us higher over the city for the best views of the aqueduct ever! Yes it is impressive standing under it looking up, but to be able to see all 9 miles of it bisecting the city to the distant hills was an amazing sight I’ll never forget. Nearly as good was our safe landing in a cow pasture on the other side of the city, celebrated with a toast of champagne. This being Spain, I asked: “Why not cava?”

The answer was a charming story of the first hot air balloon ride ever. It was in France. The King gave a bottle of his finest champagne to the brave first team to ever attempt such a feat. When they landed, miles away in a farmer’s field, they were set upon and almost killed by the farmer because he thought they were aliens, or the devil, never having seen a hot air balloon before. It was the King’s bottle of champagne that convinced the farmer that they were fellow humans, subjects of the King, and they were spared. And that’s why there is always a champagne toast after every flight.

Afterward we packed up our things and moved on to another great city, Salamanca, just so I could see again the giant redwood trees (Sequoia) grown from seeds Christopher Columbus was rumored to have brought back from the new world. That myth was shattered for me when our guide said that historians had determined the trees were the gift of an arborist whose son attended the 800+ year old Salamanca University, and that he got them from a Russian arboretum . . . blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening to the dry academic account because too many people during previous visits told the more romantic, apocryphal tale, and I didn’t want to spoil the memory. So – believe what you will, but be sure to admire the oldest redwoods in Europe – they’re magnificent! So is Salamanca.

I’ve written elsewhere about Salamanca (the “Golden City” with two cathedrals joined together) and other cities and farms in Castilla y Leon. You can follow these links below to read more about them:

A Culinary & Cultural Tour

The Tuscany of Spain

Two Spanish Farms Visited

The Spanish Farms video

HOTEL & TOURS:

Hotel Exe Casa De Los Linajes  is a very comfortable 3 star hotel that from the outside is medieval in style, but inside you’ll find vintage design with all the modern amenities you’ll need for a refreshing stay. It is just five minutes away from the Plaza Mayor and the Cathedral, in the center of Segovia.

Segovia Balloon Rides 160 Euros / pp

Mesón de Cándido

TOURISM:

Spain info

Turismo Castilla y Leon

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And the amusement was mine, one shared with fellow passengers as scenery unfolded around every bend in the river. Red-tile roofs topped white stucco buildings of quinta — wine estates — and villages popped up along the banks, church spires rising from their centers.

I was aboard the Emerald Radiance. Unlike Emerald Waterway’s other ships, this one is smaller, 112 passengers instead of 182, to fit inside the Douro’s dams. It passed through five on our eight-day “Secrets of the Douro” itinerary beginning and ending in Porto near the mouth of the river at the Atlantic Ocean.

Such a voyage wasn’t possible a generation ago. The Douro had been a wild river flowing through a narrow passage cut by wind and rain, a raging torrent during high water, too shallow for ships when the water subsided. The dams, built from the 1960s to 1980s for flood control and hydroelectric power, tamed it. Now resembling a necklace of lakes, the river is navigable for 130 miles, all the way east to the Spanish border.

In 2001 a chunk of the river valley became a UNESCO World Heritage site, not only for its importance as a wine region but also for its dramatic landscape and historic structures. Excursions from the ship touched on several more UNESCO sites.

In Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city, a walking tour led me through a web of lanes and alleys and down the pedestrian Santa Catarina where many stores occupy buildings in the art nouveau style. I stopped to take photos at the belle époque Majestic Café where J.K. Rowling sipped coffee during her stay in Porto and dreamed up Harry Potter stories. Around the corner a queue stretched more than a block outside the entrance to the Lello & Irmao bookstore with lavish art nouveau furnishings and a staircase said to have inspired one depicted at Hogwarts in the Potter films. The 1906 building has become a mecca for Potter fans.

River ships arriving and departing Porto pass under the double deck Luis I iron bridge made by a student of Gustave Eiffel in 1887. The master himself, creator the Eiffel Tower, designed another of Porto’s five bridges, but it is Luis I that gets the most attention. Daring — or foolish — youths jump off its lower deck into the river, a spectacle best seen from the adjacent Ribeira neighborhood of pastel-hue houses and arcades. Waterfront cafes, bars and shops make Ribeira a popular spot to hang out, day or night.

Our walking tour transitioned to a motor coach to cross the bridge to the opposite bank of the Douro and the “new town,” Vila Nova de Gaia or simply Gaia. To avoid taxes in Porto, the Douro Valley’s earliest winemakers kept storehouses here to be close to Atlantic where sailing vessels from around the world docked.

About half of the wines made from grapes grown along the Douro are table wines. The other half of the region’s grape harvest becomes port. About 48 hours into their fermentation, grape spirit — 77 proof — is added giving port a high alcohol content.

The Douro River Valley ranks as the oldest demarcated wine-growing region in the world, established in 1756. Only fortified wines from the valley’s eastern vineyards can legally be called port, a name protected within the European Union.

Wine producers still keep warehouses in Gaia. Our group stopped for a tour and tasting at Taylor’s Port founded in 1692. One of the managers led us through the port-making process, telling us about three of Taylor’s up-river vineyards where grapes are still stomped by foot. Port comes in several varieties — including tawny, ruby, rosé —consumed with dessert or as a nightcap. White port, such as the chip port we sampled at Taylor’s, is drier and served as an aperitif.

Portugal’s other well-known wine, Mateus Rosé, also comes from the Douro River Valley near the town of Vila Real where our group visited the 18^th-century Mateus Palace. Its fanciful exterior, with baroque towers and flourishes, appears on the label of the wine’s iconic, flask-shaped bottle. But that’s where the palace’s connection to this sweet, slightly fizzy wine ends. The Count of Mangualde, who owns the palace and resides there part of the year, does not make Mateus Rosé but collects a royalty for the image on every label.

The connection between wine and the Douro kept popping up all week during my cruise. In the village of Pinhao, the ship’s tour escorts led us on a walk to the old train station where 24 blue-and-white tiles from the 1930s illustrate wine cultivation and production. Passengers had a chance to try tile painting in a workshop on board, one of several Emerald Radiance activities that also included a presentation by “Cork Lady” Paula Guimaraes. Most of the world’s supply of cork comes from Portugal harvested from the bark and used not just to seal wine bottles, but for making a variety of products Paula laid out in the Horizon Lounge: wallets, hats, belts, jewelry.

I joined passengers one night for a dinner on shore in the warehouse of the Quinta da Pacheca wine estate. Strolling musicians entertained us as we drank wine and port and feasted on local fare, some dishes incorporating olives and almonds grown on trees alongside vineyards in the valley. The “Almond Capital of Portugal,” Vila Nova de Fox Coa, lies just a few miles from the Douro on the route our excursion took to the Coa Valley Archeological Park.

The world’s largest open-air Paleolithic rock art site encompasses about 50,000 acres at the confluence of the Douro and Coa rivers. Petrogylphs dating back 10,000 to 40,000 years were found here during preliminary work to construct a dam on the Coa in the 1990s. The discovery was kept secret, but when word leaked out preservationists rallied to save the area. UNESCO stepped in, adding it to its list of World Heritage sites in 1998.

But the museum merits a visit for two additional reasons: its location and its architecture. The building stands on a hillside overlooking both river valleys. I walked onto the terrace of the museum café for the week’s best view of steep hillsides terraced with vineyards. A ship slowly cruised the Douro far below, an ant floating through a canyon.

Other Instagram-worthy views presented themselves on the ship’s excursion to Lamego. Our motor coach dropped us at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Remedies perched on a hilltop overlooking the red-tile roofs of the city. Our tour escorts gave us the option to ride the motor coach down to the city center, but encouraged us to tackle the 686 steps and take time to enjoy the view. The stairway is broken up by nine terraces where the now-familiar blue-and-white tiles form murals of religious scenes and statues depict the Stations of the Cross. Changing views of the city below and the sanctuary above kept my camera clicking and in less than an hour I finished the descent, my gimpy knee no worse for the wear. On religious holidays, the faithful make the more difficult climb up the granite stairs, some on their knees.

We put Portugal behind us on an excursion into Spain. Salamanca lay a two-hour drive from where our ship docked at the Spanish border. Yet another UNESCO World Heritage site on our cruise, the Old City deserves its nickname, “The Golden City,” for the tawny sandstone buildings aglow in the midday sun.

Our walking tour led us through the 18^th-century Plaza Mayor with its City Hall and Royal Pavilion, the public market where platters of ham, cheese and olives were passed around for us to sample, and the city’s first university dating back 800 years.

The 33,000 university students in this city of 150,000 give Salamanca a youthful vibe and we were charmed by the music students who performed for us at the end of our tour. Dressed in the medieval costumes of troubadours, they assembled in a shady courtyard to play traditional songs on guitars, accordion and tambourine.

We’d reached the farthest navigable section of the river at the Spanish border, so the Emerald Radiance turned around for its return to Porto giving passengers a second opportunity to go through the locks on the Douro’s five dams. This exercise never failed to draw a crowd to the sundeck. Even passengers like me who are fairly clueless about mechanical things are impressed by these feats of engineering and thankful for their existence. Without the dams, a river cruise across this colorful swath of Portugal would not be possible.

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Three countries the easy way: you don’t have to drive, you don’t have to schlepp your suitcase around, you get picked up at your hotel each morning and you get as many days as you’d ever want in Morocco – and you don’t have to spend a lifetime learning to speak Moroccan Arabic!

Insight Vacations, of course, is only one of the tour operators covering this area of Western Europe and the top left part of Africa but as we travel around, we hear it is the most dependable. We like the fact it is part of a large company, the Travel Corporation, which carries a million dollar bond on its members, and the fact that it’s been in business for a long, long time.

Dependable is important when some of the travel touches a country like Morocco, a place you are not likely to be visiting again and where you would surely hope to get it done right that one time.

An Insight Vacations staff member collects us in Madrid airport and takes us to our hotel. Our tour leader, Toni Aguilar, welcomes us there enthusiastically. “You are going to see our countries better than you ever imagined possible,” he says. “What you see will be like picture postcards. But the photographs will be yours and they will stay in your memory.”

Our Picture Postcards

We are going to start our three-country trip in what he calls “The Land of the Bull.” We think he means the land of the bullfight but he means we will see several replicas of bulls propped up in farmers’ fields standing like the advertisements they once were for the Osborne sherry company.

Our coach is a gorgeous Mercedes-Benz, with enlarged seating space and a toilet. It will take us into this land of windmills, made famous when Cervantes told us how Don Quixote tilted at them, but windy Andalusia still harnesses its blustery weather even today.

We will meet Cervantes and his favorite characters more than once as we travel across our countries with Insight in what the company calls “the Art of Touring in Style.”

The question we got asked on our return was typically, “Was it all that special compared to what other tour operators offer? We don’t know what all the other companies offer but we were well pleased with Insight Vacations. It was true to the promises on its website. The hotels were better, much better, that what we’ve experienced with other tour operators as were the chosen and special restaurants. Both hotel and restaurant staffs looked after us really well. Toni made an interesting suggestion that we wear our identification tour badges for the first day only then not wear them. He felt when we came into what were often upscale restaurants we’d be received better as a small group rather than thought of as a tourist party to be shuffled to a less charming rear room.

The coach, carefully washed and polished, was gleaming at us every morning, the amiable drivers impressive with their skills on the occasional narrow mountain roads – and Toni, our suave tour operator was very helpful with the pride persons take in themselves when they know they are doing a really good job. Insight Vacations hospitality was not unlike what we saw in an Old Master oil painting in one of our hotels: understated but personal and friendly.

Spain’s cities and small towns were all different. Poised at an elevation of 3400 feet Toledo above the river Tagus seemed more like a German medieval hill town and Salamanca rather like a French university city. In the main square of Salamanca people sit surrounded by plaques on the walls dedicated to previous monarchs. Amongst them is a plaque to, of all people, General Franco, the man who creating a civil war, and almost destroyed his country.

Lisbon comes in like a breath of springtime. What a magnificent history for such a relatively small country; at 36,000 square miles it is about one fifth the size of Morocco. Here lies the body of Vasco de Gama, the famous explorer and navigator of the New World lying in state in the Jeronimos Palace and round the corner beside the figure of a wine snob showing he knows all about Port wine stands another snob. (See one you’ve seen ’em all!)

So it’s people who make photographs special. In Morocco how a man values his donkey. How a woman values her cell phone or her baby. And how an older woman values a job, work that keeps hunger at bay.

And what does a nation validate? Again, work. Its reputation – even if from Hollywood. Its history, here guarding the capital, Rabat. Its tradition: ze the belly dance. Its ceremonies. And in the main market square in Marrakesh, the same market that opened Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, two performers who jingle as they move but they’re having fun.

Then once we get off the ferry from North Africa there’s Gibraltar complete with its famous Barberry Apes.

And Spain’s famous cities: Cordoba. Once the most splendid Arab city in the world. And there in the Old Jewish Quarter, the Arabs of the past pay a tribute to a Jew, the Jewish scholar and physician, Maimonides.

Seville comes in the heart of Andalusia, that mystical part of Spain that holds on the best to all Spain’s traditions. It has the second largest bull fighting arena in the world and…

…And it has the flamenco, the most intimate personal dance of any nation. The dancers, our guide says, do not take their style, their tempo from the music but from the audience’s reaction and support – and the musicians take their timing from the dancers. In the Cathedral here lies the body of Christopher Columbus. The Dominican Republic said it had his body but our bones were tested with DNA from his brother Diego. This is the correct grave.

Surrounded by simple homes stands Granada, the special but somewhat simple place the Moors built to show how superior their religion and their art was, compared to Christianity. To today’s tourists dragging through tours of the Great Cathedrals of Europe, the Arabs failed to demonstrate that superiority but Granada does not leave a bad taste in the mouth, an impact on one’s conscience that the poor peasant of medieval Europe were beggared to create the wealth of The Church.

This will be a great year to repeat this tour.

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