Chris Wage Photography 

Los Baños de Doña María de Padilla, Sevilla, Spain.

One of our favorite spots was the Alcazar in Sevilla, which is a fairly typical Spanish castle complex. This one, though, is surrounded by sprawling acres of gardens you could get lost in for hours. Indeed, we nearly did get lost in one of the garden mazes. On our way out, we almost walked right past the entrance to the highlight of the trip — Los Baños de Doña María de Padilla, which wikipedia had this to say about:

The “Baths of Lady María de Padilla” are rainwater tanks beneath the Patio del Crucero. The tanks are named after María de Padilla, the mistress of Peter the Cruel. Supposedly, Peter fell for María and had her husband killed. María resisted his advances and poured boiling oil over her face to disfigure herself to stop Peter’s pursuit. She became a nun and moved to a convent afterwards. She is regarded as a symbol of purity in the culture of Seville.

I guess they didn’t have restraining orders back then.

Catedral de Segovia, Spain. September 29, 2011.

I got museumed out pretty quickly in Spain. I’m a fan of several veins of religious art, but there are only so many statues of the virgin mary with the baby jesus you can see before they all start looking the same. But I never got tired of the cathedrals.

Carrer del Portal, Tossa De Mar, Spain.

Just north of the fisherman’s beach, we stumbled across this magical little strip of restaurants outside the old castle walls. No one other than us and the ghosts of Tossa de Mar were around, but these restaurants had all fired their ovens and lit their lamps nonetheless. The result was an eerie juxtaposition of this empty 3,000 year old street, and the warm inviting glow (and smells) of these restaurants. It was like something right out of a Miyazaki movie. I kept expecting that after we gorged ourselves we’d be turned into pigs for eating the food of the spirits.

We braved it anyway, and had probably the best meal of our entire trip in Spain. I had a simple dish I can’t recall the name of, but it translated roughly to “fisherman’s stew” — a mix of basically every form of sea life in the Mediterranean in a savory tomato sauce. It. was. incredible. I .. I still have impure thoughts about it. Our only company the entire evening was our waiter and a very pregnant cat begging politely for scraps (I gave her a prawn).

UPDATE: The name of the dish is zarzuela de mariscos. Yum.

Evening at Tossa de Mar, Spain. Looking south towards Lloret de Mar along the Mediterranean coast.