Alicanteos

I spent 3 days in Plasencia a small town in the north of Extremadura. During the summer the region is very dry and hot, I felt it as soon as I went out of the train, 3 hours of train from Madrid to Plasencia, there is no faster way to go there except by car. In that month of July, the weather was above the 40 degree mark every days. Plasencia is really two towns, the new Plasencia with more or less recent buildings, construction dating after 1900s and the old Plasencia. The tourist area is of course, in the old town, business wise the taxi drivers know when the Madrid train arrive and they are there waiting clients from that train. I took a taxi to my hotel situated in the center of the old town.


The sight of the entry gate was a promise to have some of the medieval spain here:

My friends from Plasencia picked me up at my hotel (hotel dora), It was 10 a.m but already the sun was burning like hell, we left my luggage’s in the hotel, I did the formalities and we directly went for a visit of the area. I wanted to eat something because I didn’t get a decent breakfast in Madrid but I quickly learned that I cannot except to eat until 5 pm or even later, everything is closed in Plasencia. At some level, we could say that the town is phantom but it was 10 a.m after all the Spaniards in that area wake up pretty late. We visited the cathedral Vieja, the funny things about the cathedral was the two distinct architectural style well both side of the building are roman-gothic but built in different time, it look like two distinct buildings.
There is some interesting pieces inside the cathedral like the one called Retablo Cathedral see the picture.

From the cathedral, we walked to the plaza major, I enjoyed walking in the old town because all the buildings date back from past centuries, on the plaza major I thought we were on the set of the Zorro movie, but it just looked similar to what the Mexican call ‘colonial style’. The Plaza Major was empty with camareros (barman) doing nothing. No tourists, no locales, just the sun, me and my friends. I learned later that the Plasencians live at night. I didn’t find a place to eat on the Plaza, it was mostly a Plaza with bars and closed restaurants, later, we went to Don Quixote Museum, it was interesting to see all the items related to this mythic character invited by the writer Miguel De Cervantes.

The last monument we visited for the day, was the convent de Sto. Domingo which is also a Parador Hotel, the concept of Parador is to have high class hotels in castles and historic building, the Parador is open for visitors, having your room in a Parador is pretty much like having a taste of the old Kings and Queens lifestyle with modernity in bonus.

We spent the rest of the Day at the Isla, a big park in the extremity of the town, with a large public pool. It was a crowed place, from the Isla, you can walk to a nearby site called Santa Barbara, it is an hill but with 40 degree of temperature it will probably discourage you to do such a walk at least it did for me.

At night, the city is really alive with hundreds individual in the streets walking in small groups. We went to the park De Los Pinos , a park with a lot of turkeys. If you have a car and only if you have a car, you can go to place like the Valle del Jerte and the Vera

(valle del jerte)

Essential :
Tourist Office : +34 927 01 78 40
Car Hire: +34 927 42 70 79
Bus Station: +34 927 41 45 50
Hotel Dora: +34 927 41 10 34
Parador: +34 927 42 58 70