We left León on Friday morning and headed west and a bit north into Navarra to the small city of Tafalla, a bit south of Pamplona. It was a long drive, and we arrived late enough and hungry enough that we inadvertently ended up at the restaurant we had intended to visit for Jerome’s birthday. So we celebrated early, and with a delicious meal. Complimentary appetizers of shrimp and cheese in filo dough and a tiny cup of cold shellfish bisque. Baby calamari in their own juices, a vegetable crepe with a light clam sauce, sea bass with piquillo peppers, and steamed baby clams a la marinara (but light on the tomatoes). Local wine, dessert, coffee.
Yesterday we toured the local wine country -- beautiful -- and duly visited the tourism sites to the west and south: a medieval village, Sos, where Ferdinand himself (as in Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs who headed the Reconquista -- and the Inquisition) was born; the 10th-century castle nearby where St. Francis Xavier was born; and the 9th-century Monastery of Leyre whose surviving architecture is primarily Romanesque. It is one of the most important historical monasteries in Spain, and is an important stop on the Camino de Santiago.
Despite their beautiful settings, excellent states of repair, and historical importance, all three sites were just a bit too touristy for our taste (complete with hordes of Spaniards out for a weekend in the country), so we didn’t dawdle in any of them. Instead, on the way back to Tafalla, we turned off on a small road to Ujué (ooh-hoo-EH), which turned out to be a charmingly everyday small medieval village high on a hilltop whose only claim to fame is the view and the 12th-century fortified church, which is in good repair and is gorgeous. The tourists were few, and we stopped at the local roadhouse for what turned out to be just an excellent meal, with salad veggies fresh from the garden and a chicken that was slow-cooked and delicious.
Today we first headed north up a small river into the Pyrenees, which are not very impressive this far west (the highest peak out here is about 4,500 feet) but nonetheless contain some beautiful scenery and quaint villages. We came back south into Pamplona, which has recovered from the annual running of the bulls last July and has settled into its normal life of a lively provincial capital and business center. All of Navarra is Basque country, and in Pamplona we actually heard Basque being spoken around town. Nonetheless, Pamplona was named for that memorable Roman, Pompey, who set up a base there around 74 b.c. The city was sacked by the Visigoths, then the Arabs, and being so close to the French border felt a constant menace from the north. As a result, the fortifications of the old city are impressive, and today serve largely as parkland for the locals. We had a delicious meal in the old quarter, and headed for home in Tafalla.
Today is truly Jerome’s birthday, and we topped it off with tapas and a soccer game broadcast at a tavern here in town. The weather has been warm and clear, with beautiful early fall colors in the mountains, rivers running clear and free, and the air unpolluted except where a few farmers are burning their fields. Navarra gets short shrift in the tourist guides, and indeed does not have a great deal of tourism developed. It contains about 650,000 people all told, in an area about half the size of Massachusetts, with its land part of the meseta in the south and the Pyrenees in the north. It is quiet and lovely, the people are hospitable and unpretentious, and we have greatly enjoyed our stay. Tomorrow we leave to head back north to the coast, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t return here on another trip.
