Soria

As a result of one of those encounters in the pub where ideas are thrown around that seem great at the time, we did not have a lie-in this morning. We got up at six thirty, and spent the day on the poetry train (sorry, let's give this a real fanfare: we spent the day on... The Poetry Train) to Soria and back to go and see the tomb of Leonor, child-bride of Antonio Machado, everybody's favourite poet. Soria has: a dead holm oak, subject of Machado's great poem 'To a Dead Holm Oak';

a great deal of elaborate funerary art;






graveyard avenues lined with cypresses;

a greyish red squirrel;

a monument to Jesus Christ of the Sacred Heart which isn't quite as flamboyant as the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio, being as it is half a kilometre out of the city and only twenty foot tall;

a bust of Antonio Machado;

a sweet old woman who told us that they must have had lots of material left over when they made the bust, because his head is far too big and much more bulbous ('bulboso') than any real human head;

the Instituto Antonio Machado, where Machado taught French in the early years of the twentieth century (Soria at that point being so small that his largest class was eight students),

and a delicatessen selling tinned coxcombs.

This was all so exciting that I have nothing to say about the Cuatro Torres Business Area, which we saw from the train on the way there, and on the way back, so I will let Wikipedia tell you for me.