León and Las Médulas, Spain

     From Oviedo, we headed south to León to visit the city with the same name as Izzy's dad. He insisted on going and we agreed because it would give us the chance to visit Las Médulas in western Castilla León. The city has an interesting connection to Las Médulas because it was established by the Romans in the 1st century AD as an outpost to provide protection from the people in Asturias while the Romans extracted gold from Las Médulas. Our visit to the city was quick. We parked near the old town and walked to the cathedral. Her dad made us stop several times whenever he found a sign that said León and wanted a picture with it. We had visited the city before but didn't manage to get into the Cathedral. This time we did and enjoyed it. The church has a large, impressive collection of stained glass windows. It is considered to be the best example of Spanish gothic architecture.

     Our next stop was Las Médulas in western Castilla León. What an incredible sight. Las Médulas were the most important gold mine of the Roman empire. The landscape formation seen today was caused by the aqueduct water system the Romans used to the mine the gold. It's described by Pliny the Elder as tapping into local streams and using the water to move the gold. The overall effect was that the water undermined the rocks beneath the mountain. We went to the observation deck at the top to see it all. While we were up there, we saw some trails down below and decided to go walk through them.

     We followed our GPS all the way around to the town at the bottom of Las Médulas. There, we found a tourist office. It, of course, was closed so we had to wait til the 2 1/2 hour lunch ended at 4 p.m. to get some information. We found out we could walk up to some of the caves. Izzy's dad found out that the old Roman settlements were still buried under the ground. Check out this large cave and the strange trees along the walk.

     When we finished our hike and Izzy's dad was quite pooped, we headed on to our destination for the night, Santiago de Compostela. This completed my seven hour driving day. It was long but well worth all the sites we were able to see. We spent the evening in Santiago and had some great tapas. Izzy's mom tried the octopus and after two bottles of wine, we spent the evening having a deep family discussion of wedding things from a couple of years ago. While the two bottles facilitated the conversation, they helped make it bearable too. Ah, family time.

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