We were debating today’s destination last night, and the debate continued into this morning. Do we push to Madrid and spend 4 hours on the road, or do we stop in Soria which was about 90 minutes from Logrono. We finally settled on Soria.
About 1 minute after pulling out of the campground we came to a cross road with a local police officer directing traffic. It turns out that today is the Logrono marathon. So we sat at the intersection for about 10 minutes until there was a gap in the runners big enough for him to allow us to cross the road. It runs out that our route out of the city paralleled the route of the race for about 6 kilometers. At first it was cute than eventually it was annoying as we were forced onto side roads that were tight for François.
Eventually we got untangled from the marathon and started heading to Soria. Of the 100 kilometers to Soria about 80 were in the mountains. The road was a good two lane road and we were the slowest thing on the road so it was not too stressful and the Sierra de Cebollera’s were beautiful.
Soria is the capitol of the Soria Province which is the least populated Province in Spain. I know I told you Logrono was the capitol of the least populated Region in Spain yesterday and they are both right. Autonomous Regions are bigger than provinces. Soria is located in the Castile y Leon Region. Anyway enough about population.
Given it’s lack of population I was not expecting a lot of activity on a Sunday morning. But all the parking lots coming into town were packed. We did quite a lot of driving before we found a place.
Like most medieval cities the center of town is located on top of a big hill. So after we parked we found ourselves climbing up some fairly empty streets before we suddenly popped out on Cervantes Park. The park was full of people and we quickly found that we had arrived during their fall Fiesta.
In the distance we heard medieval sounding music and saw big figurines moving down the main street of town. So we followed the music and joined the parade as it made its way down the street.
Everyone was having a wonderful time and the children were out in force. Ton was in heaven dashing around taking pictures. I was busy trying to keep her in site in the crowd. I didn’t even try to keep up with her.
Spain has outdone itself the last week. Each day has had a completely unexpected event that has delighted us. We have been incredibly fortunate.
We had one more thing to accomplish which involved food. Soria is famous for a pork dish called Torreznos. It is marinated pork belly fried in a special way. It is very similar to a Thai dish that we both love so after chasing the giants we headed into a bar to get a dish. Ton is famous for tasting a dish and giving this review; its good, but the Thai version is better. For maybe the first time ever her review of Torreznos was that this is better than the Thai version.
By the time we finished our Torreznos the fiesta was starting to break up. We headed back to François and found a campground. In the end we were thrilled that we did not by pass Soria for Madrid.