Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts
the stars to flight.
And, lo, the hunter of the east has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable – Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain.

Editor’s note: Sorry about typos in last night’s post. It was a rush job between arriving in our Cáceres hotel and walking to a restaurant in the old quarter. And I was hampered by the fact I couldn’t get access to the internet. In the end, someone at Reception finally managed this – after 10 minutes of trying one thing and another. As they did again at 6 this morning. Certainly the worst internet experience I’ve had in 25 years of travelling in Spain and over a hundred hotel nights. And this in a 4-star hotel! Oh, and it was 15 euros to park the car overnight. The hotel was Extremadura Hotel, which doesn’t seem to be part of a chain. But has a sister hotel in Trujillo, which we are avoiding . .

TRAVEL NOTES

Today we moved from a not-so-good 4-star hotel to a very good one in lovely Trujillo. My old friend has more expensive tastes than me. But at least I now have a nice collection of combs . . .

Need I tell you that – from the edge of the city – it took at least half an hour to get to the hotel in the middle of the old quarter near Plaza Mayor. The first problem was having to find access other than through a closed street. And the second was the – by-now – usual one of having Google Maps helping us to negotiate some very narrow medieval streets. In the end – having been given wrong information by a local lady who wanted the space where we were (temporarily) parked – I stopped a passing police car and got directions from a helpful cop. Needless to say, we were only 50m from the hotel, which was secreted in an alley behind a large church. The third problem was getting to the car park of the hotel, which needed this map:-

The fourth problem was walking back down to the hotel – via this route:-

and then finding my room, which wasn’t on the floor it should have been on.

But all’s well that ends well and, once in my room, I settled into a very hot bath and relaxed away the cares of the afternoon, ahead of an enjoyable evening.

Back in Caceres, we’d visited a charming little ‘Arab house’ museum and then the city’s main museum. Where there were – among many other items of interest – some astonishing gold filigree works of the Celto-Iberians. In the Arab house, this item had particularly impressed us – the entire Koran written in miniscule letters:-

The writing is so small, I can’t tell if the foto is the right way up. So, I apologise to anyone offended if it isn’t.

What didn’t impress us was the number of beggars/homeless folk panhandling for cash. I don’t recall this being a feature of previous visits to Cáceres.

Our 40 minute drive to Trujillo was again done on a terrific 4-lane highway but the total score of interesting birds for my old friend was 1 – a single kite. But you can’t have everything and we’d previously had an excellent tapas lunch, served by a friendly, efficient waiter from Paraguay.

Mérida tomorrow, with all its Roman treasures.

Cosas de España

This is the 4th Spanish hotel we’ve stayed in but the first to meet a request for this sort of information:-

So much for it being obligatory . . . Interestingly, the receptionist couldn’t make head nor tail of my friend’s UK address. But, then, neither could I . . .

Cousas de Galicia

There was torrential rain back in Galicia, reader David tells me, generating the need for him to sandbag his ground floor. Not sorry to have missed that.

Europe

Very upset about Trump’s lies about the continent’s aid for Ukraine.

The USA

Trump has now done something no other president has ever done, it says here – he has formally abandoned the role of leader of the free world.

It’s also claimed that Trump was publicly humiliated by Macron. But how do you humiliate a man who shows no capacity for humiliation?

But it’s true that Macron strove to correct Trump’s lies about European aid for Ukraine. Not that his mad MAGA folk would have even noticed. Especially as Trump then repeated the lie and said petulantly “If you want to believe that, it’s OK with me”. In other words, the World’s Greatest Liar effectively accused the president of France of lying, to his face.

A couple of relevant quotes from the video:- . .

• The divide today is between unreality and reality: Political commentator Timothy Snyder 
• Refusing to acknowledge that Russia is the undeniable and unprovoked aggressor is more than an unseemly moral equivalency – it reflects a gross misunderstanding of the nature of negotiations and leverage. Blame for this human catastrophe rests solely on Vladimir Putin: Mitch McConnell
• No previous US president would ever have been pathological enough to try to tell a lie like that right in front of a man he’s lying about. None would have been that stupid.

At a ‘presser’ yesterday, Trump praised himself for the best-ever trade deal with Canada and Mexico, while describing the president who signed the previous one as an incompetent imbecile. Need I tell you who this was? If Trump really was aware that this had been him, he clearly feels/knows that his fans don’t pay much attention to the liberal media. And that this madness won’t be exposed on Fox.

An amusing take on the gallery of soulless rogues running the US government. Right now, laughter is the only medicine available.

Russia

Doubtless very happy to have the USA as one of its very few voting partners in rejecting a UN motion criticising Russia for invading Ukraine.

Finally . . .

We are certainly experiencing the Chinese curse of living in interesting times. But possibly for not much longer.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.

The Usual Links . . .

• You can get my posts by email as soon as they’re published. With the added bonus that they’ll contain the typos I’ll discover later. I believe there’s a box for this at the bottom of each post. If you do this but don’t read the posts, I will delete your subscription. So perhaps don’t bother if you have other reasons for subscribing . . .
• For new readers: If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.
• For those thinking of moving to Spain:– This is an extremely comprehensive and accurate guide to the challenge, written by a Brit who lives in both the North and the South and who’s very involved in helping Camino walkers. And this is something on the so-called Beckham Rule, which is beneficial – tax-wise – for folk who want to work here. Finally, some advice on getting a mortgage. And this article ‘debunks claims re wealth and residency taxes’. Probably only relevant if you’re a HNWI. In which case, you’ll surely know what that stands for.