Avila

Avila is worth the visit for its spectacular walls. Built in 1098 straight after the reconquest from the Muslims, to protect the city the walls totally enclose the whole city and are truly unique. We spent most of the morning walking around the top of them, with great views, Including straight into our hotel room! Walking back through the length of the city afterwards we realised that we were walking along one of the branches of the Camino de Santiago, something that I was never going doing to do, and now have done at least a small part of. We then went to see the basilica of san Vicente, which is a really nice, quite plain 12C church in Romanesque style, and then lunch in the sun. After a siesta we went to the cathedral, which must be the ugliest cathedral we've ever seen! The outside is very heavy and crude, mostly in dark grey stone, and with no redeeming features, it more resembles a fortress than a church. Inside it is grotesquely decorated, even for Spain, and is in two styles; a earlier Romanesque stone which is white and red limestone, called bloodstone, that looks like someone has splattered dried blood all over it, and a later gothic style using the dark grey, rather brutal looking stone. Overall not somewhere we would rush back to. Avila in general we did not warm to as much as Segovia, though the food has been good.Read more