en el camino a Zaragosa

I spent three nights in Madrid and now I´m in the northern city of Zaragosa for a night. I´d never heard of Zaragosa until a couple of days ago when I discovered it as a dot on the map between Madrid and Barcelona... but it´s got a long history stretching back to Roman days. Ceasar Augusta has left his name all over the place and there are plenty of ruins to be seen. It was ruled by Muslims for a few centuries, but nowadays the cathedral casts the whole town in a very Catholic shadow. Yesterday in Madrid I went back to Atocha to visit the Museo Del Reine Sofia, which exhibits much of Spain´s modern art collection. Picasso´s Guernica was surprisingly emotive... having been an expression of Picasso´s anger at the Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, which killed a lot of civilians, and which could probably have been classed as ¨terror bombing¨ - a war crime - but wasn´t (see Wikipedia). The Guernica painting is surrounded by countless other Picasso works including a number of original sketches for the mural. A class of primary-aged children were on an excursion to the museum and I wondered what they made of it all. There were a number of Dali paintings including La Gran Masturbador, as well as quite a few of his earlier more conservative works. Unfortunately I was almost disappointed by the Dali paintings - I guess they just weren´t as big or as flawless as I´d imagined them to be... (I´m still going to Daliland). From the museum I walked toward the botanical gardens and found a used book market. I bought some Spanish comics from the ´60s. I´d planned on seeing a flamenco show last night but found that I really didn´t like the idea of sitting alone in a restaurant for another night. So I did the rounds of the tapas bars instead. I had to make an early start this morning to get out of Madrid. The train to Zaragosa travels at over 250km/hour. The landscape was a dull brown except for the green of olive trees and the scarlet of some mystery bushes. The topography´s pretty impressive though - mountains, cliffs, and valleys on all sides. Every part of Zaragosa seems to be undergoing renovations at the moment. Even the enormous cathedral is half-steeped in scaffolding. I suppose it´s all in preparation for Expo Zaragosa 2008, which seems to be a pretty big deal here... The official mascot, Fluvi (which looks like a cross between E.T. and the thing from Lilo & Stitch), is pictured everywhere and official expo merchandise is available from every store. The main plaza is a huge open area that separates the cathedral from a tangle of narrow laneways called El Tubo (The Tube). I´ve been exploring the streets with my ¨touristic map¨ in hand. I´m going to buy some boots tonight. Everyone here has such great shoes...