One of the perks of working at a school is getting holiday breaks, and Spain has quite a number of holidays throughout the year. So that is how I found myself ready to explore a new city and with a four day weekend in mid October. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling indecisive when it comes to taking trips and picking a new city to visit; I have so many possibilities and a limited amount of time (so it feels) that I become overwhelmed.  I try to narrow my options by doing a little research, only to have so much amazing information that I can’t make up my mind. So, unfortunately, it was a few days before the holiday and I still had not decided where to go.

I knew that the upcoming break was due to the feast day of Our Lady of the Pillar (Oct 12), the Patroness of Spain. What I didn’t know until then was that the apparition of Mary to Saint James atop a pillar (hence the name) took place on the banks of the Ebro River (the same one that runs across Logroño) in the city of Zaragoza, located not two hours away from me. The encouragement of my Spanish friends prompted me to brave the crowds and head out to Zaragoza for a last minute trip to partake in the festivities and explore the city. So there I was Friday afternoon, frantically making travel plans for the next day, hunting for a place to stay and with absolutely zero idea of what I was going to do once I got there.

Being a morning person, I headed out at 7 am and arrived at the bus/train station around 9 am with enough time to leave my backpack in locker, grab a café con leche and do a little research while I waited for the tourism office to open. For those of you interested in history and geography, Zaragoza, the capital city of the autonomous community of Aragon, is located about 2 hours northeast of Madrid and 2 hours west of Barcelona. Its history can be traced back to between 25 and 12 BC; then an outpost Roman city known as Caesaraugusta. Around 700 AD, the Muslims gained control of the city, renamed it Saraqusta, and ruled for around 300 years. Zaragoza then returned to Christian hands around 1100 to the (then) Kingdom of Aragon. Two hour later, I took the city bus downtown and headed to the Basilica-Cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar. To say that the church was packed would be an understatement – there was little room to move along the ornate, baroque style basilica. I probably did not help matters by stopping every few feet to admire the architecture, paintings and Francisco Goya’s magnificent frescoes. I took advantage of the elevator located in one of the towers of the Pillar to get some great views of the brightly adorned cupola, the Ebro River and Zaragoza. The rest of day one consisted of museum visits, walking along the festival markets and eating great tapas and yummy pastries. Whenever I was in doubt about my next stop, I would just start walking and stop whenever something caught my eye, I heard an interesting tune or got a whiff of something mouthwatering.

Given the success of my museum visits the previous day, I started day two with a visit to the Goya museum located a couple of blocks away from the Pillar. I spent over two hours admiring many of his pieces and learning more about Goya’s life. My morning ended at the Ceasaraugusta theater. I had walked by a set of Roman ruins in Zaragoza the day before, but nothing compared to walking around the remains of this first century Roman theater. I could almost imagine sitting on one of the giant steps and hearing an orator plead a cause, laughing while watching a comedy unfold or cringing during a gladiator fight. After enjoying couple of beers and tapas at a small and quaint, but packed restaurant, my day ended with the beautiful views of the Aljaferia, a 9^th century fortified Islamic palace. I have never felt so small and yet so much a part of history as I did that day among such distinct settings located in one city.

Monday, the feast day of Our Lady of the Pillar, began bright and early as I visited Our Lady, as is custom, and attended morning mass. The quiet, early hours at the Basilica allowed me to spend more time admiring the church before the mass influx of people began. As I headed out in search of a churro shop I had run across the day before, I was greeted by an array of traditional costumes. The plaza outside the church has an altar that is slowly adorned as families make their procession from a mile or so away in their traditional garments in order to leave a flower offering to Our Lady. After waiting forever to get a churro and watching the ‘parade’ of sorts, I headed to a cafe for a café con leche and to people watch while waiting for the museums to open. The Arturo Gargallo museum was a little hard to find between the street closures for the parade and my horrible sense of direction, but well worth the effort. His classical and modern sculptures were a great treat at the end my trip. Once I boarded the packed train headed to Logroño and found my seat, a wave of exhaustion hit me as I realized how much I had walked and seen in the past 72 hours. It was definitely a fun trip, but next time, I need to remember that less is more.