stories from zaragoza: miscellaneous

1. the children are so well-dressed!! well, people in general are well-dressed. maybe it's just my reaction after spending time in canada aaaand romania, but yeah. we were laughing at how the whole 'sartorialist' thing is a cheat, cause he can just come to europe and do snapshots of random people on street corners, then present that to americans as elegance.
but the children are a whole different level.
no ugly parkas and sweatshirts with random logos in ugly colors and indifferent shapes. the girls were wearing little dresses and cardigans and colored tights and adorable tiny boots. and i've seen boys in non-jean/sweat pant pants and button-down shirts, with shoes that actually  looked like the mini version of an elegant grown-up shoe. and the little coats on them! i swooned. these people are real young ladies and gentlemen.

this special window was across the street from our hotel! we fell in love with it on the first day, but then it got forgotten what with the avalanche of other stuff

2. the city is well cleaned. "zaragoza limpia" is what the cleaning service is called, and they have funny green street-sweeping machines. on our first night, walking along the river, we kept almost bumping into one of them as we took photos. then we came to appreciate them again n january 1st: after midnight's celebration the central streets were all littered, as you'd expect, with bottles, plastic cups and various containers, not to mention liquid puddles of all sorts. well before noon that had been all cleaned - i'll say that's pretty good.

bridge over the ebro.

3. we never crossed any of the bridges to get on the other side of the river! i mean, it didn't look like there would be old churches and tiled buildings and stuff there, so yeah. but we went under the biggest bridge, called puente de piedra = the stone bridge. man, is it big.

here are the backsides of the stone lions guarding the entrance to puente de piedra

4.the bats of zaragoza!! we met them on new year's eve, in the square, while everybody was preparing their champagne and sets of 12 grapes. poor bats, probably residents of the church towers, especially of pilar, were going bananas up there! just circling around the square, flapping their wings at the nightmare. but i mean who knows? maybe they're used to it. after all, they do ring those bells a few time every day, and that's in the daytime when poor bats are supposed to be resting. the fireworks and the crowd and all was just a big bonus, like yaaaay we're on bat time today! come join our celebration!

they have this habit here of painting old this-is-what-it-looked-like-200-years -ago on sides of buildings. the scenes depicted are always from a place next to the depiction. like a time machine. lovely idea.

5. aljaferia is a lovely castle, and the detail of the decorations there is insane. we arrived there for our visit around 5 and it was closing ar 6...we seem to have done a lot of last minute visiting. so on the evening of dec. 31st, after dark, all the other groups of tourists are out of the gate, i'm waiting for giulia by the gate, the ticket lady and the guards are waiting at the gate, the other guards are on top of the stairs...following giulia down the stairs. this is already past 6 o'clock, probably 6.10...and nobody says anything, but i swear they're closing down behind her. she climbs down one step...stops to take 5 photos, one more step, stops again...and the 3 people behind her are taking a step each time she's taking a step.
and yet nobody said anything, nor gave us the evil eye or anything.  very nice people!

one of my favourite aljaferia photos, even if the camera was already pretty dead at the time

6.talking about last minute: on our last day it went something like this:
-last chance at drinking chocolate!!! instead of lunch.
-the sastago house: arrived 10 minutes before closing time, without realizing it. just managed to walk around the entrance hall leisurely before being evicted
-last chance at sending postcards at the main post office building! we needed extra stamps because the prices had changed january 1st! i spent an hour writing cards in there, and still didn't finish. at some point that evening i was standing at the door of some shop writing cards, while giulia was in a huge line inside waiting to pay for stuff.

i wonder why this individual is represented as totally hollow.hopefully no offense intended.

7.(cont'd): pass by university building on our way to bookstore, around 15 minutes before it was closing. run in, take 2 pics of one stained window, run into gift shop, buy stuff, take all free stuff accessible, go out.
giulia had some prejudice against the university (again, because they tore down some older building at some point, to make a newer one? i think! but after looking at it in passing it was decided that it might actually be a nice place to look around. next time, said giulia, who wants to go back to zaragoza. i doubt it very much that i'll be back there again. so it's goodbye, farewell.

this is the fish that giulia had a date with. a photo date!

8. stealing tiles: this was not in our plans!! nevertheless, the ocassion arose and we rose up to it...i guess. we'd taken photos of every bit of tile in the old city (well , some of us more than others) and it was new year's day and nobody was around. the first one (mine) is missing a corner. the other came off perfect.
us: "this is how we start the year!" (i mean, is that good, or bad?)

we both have one of these now

9. talking about superstition: "virgencita, plis!" this is the leimotif of the prayers on the back of every necklace of the Virgin of Pilar sold in the shops around the basilica. "plis" is "please", but how spanish is it? anyhow we thought it was very funny. of course we still say/write "plis" instead of please these days. i've always liked religious souvenirs - one humble step forward in trying to get your prayer answered, by making it concrete: san antonio, plis, help me find a novio; plis, ayuda a mi familia. the one i got says "virgencita plis, haz realidad mis suenos" - too vague??

very urban

i have thought about these things and places carefully, trying to put them in order; i don't mind a little overdoing, but there's always the danger of overoverdoing it. so here now, have a photo of a photo of some artsy magical realism, and this is the last you'll see/hear about zaragoza from me. peace out,
c.