Viva la Vida: Castles and Conquerors

Trip 1: Merida, Caceres, Trujillo

We left early Friday morning on a bus. It took about three, four hours to get to Merida.

Merida is in the autonomous community of Extremadura. I think they call it Extremadura because the heat was Extreme... haha just kidding. It's on the southwestish side of Spain, next to Portugal.

Merida is home to the best Roman ruins in all of Spain. It was the coolest place I have ever been. (besides the heat, of course...) All those years of looking at pictures of Roman temples and columns and stadiums, well, now I've stood in one. It was amazing. Really amazing.

Remains of the Roman Forum in Merida - the forum is where they would gather to share ideas, have debates, cultural and political discussions, etc. Check out those columns. They're Corinthian Columns. Ha. I've learned something in these classes of mine :)

The temple of Diana - basically temples were for worshiping, and then in the outer area they would throw festivals and that sort of thing.

The "backdrop" of the stage in the theater at Merida - Probably at one time you would have been able to access the second story, I'm not sure. This photo is taken from the top of the seating area.

Me on the stage of the Theater in Merida - Note the HUGENESS of it! It was built in a semicircle formation, and it had surprisingly good acoustics!

Me with the Amphitheater in Merida - the amphitheater is where they would have gladiator fights. It is an oval shape, with large doorways at either end for the gladiators, etc, to enter. The indented part in the middle used to be an underground chamber, filled with animal pens, rooms for gladiators to prepare in, etc. It would have been completely underground with the arena smooth overtop of it (meaning it would have been excavated much deeper than it currently is, as well. )

Here's a better picture of the layout of the amphitheater.

Caceres:

We spent the night here. We also did a night tour of the old part of the city. See my Picasa album for some excellent architecture shots :) Caceres isn't super famous, but it has some excellently preserved walls, towers, and buildings. The old part of the city is kind of up on the hill a bit, and there are really narrow streets in between tall buildings. It totally made me think of movies like Les Miserables, the Count of Monte Cristo, Zorro, etc, with the city walls and narrow, cobbled streets. I can't even express how incredibly COOL it was!!!!!

Me on top of the tower. We also went on top of the other tower you can see behind me, in the left of the picture. Amazing. And it was sunset time. Even more amazing.

Narrow streets. TOTALLY Les Mis. Around the inside of the city wall, there is a narrow street that goes all the way around. It is built that way to more easily facilitate the movement of troops from one point to another along the walls, unencumbered by people and citizens that crowd the inner streets of the city.

Trujillo: We went to Trujillo Saturday afternoon. Trujillo is fairly small, somewhat insignificant, but it has this amazingly amazingly fabulous castle up on the hill. It also has a cactus tree. We ate cactus fruit and got stickers all over our fingers. We then proceeded to charge at full speed up the hill - in the Extremadura heat - to "conquer" the castle. We are legit like that.

Statue of Francisco Pizarro in Plaza Mayor - he conquered Peru.

Me on the wall of the castle overlooking Trujillo

What the inside looked like - it was basically a big square with an open courtyard in the middle. More a fortress than a palace, definitely. You can walk all the way around on top of the walls - it's about four feet wide, and the walls on the side are four feet tall or so, with gaps to shoot arrows between :)