We spent nearly three weeks in Spain in summer 2007, in Aragón, a region I had never visited before and Navarra, which I only knew slightly. We flew into Zaragoza airport, which, being really small, is great for arrivals: we picked up the hire car and were away.

The first place we stayed, for two nights, was the Monasterio de la Rueda, to the south-east of Zaragoza. Peaceful and isolated, it was a perfect place to get into relaxed, holiday mood. There are guided tours of the monastery itself, with its wall-paintings and swallows flying around inside. The staff were good (we arrived just after they had finished serving lunch, but they were happy to bring us something up to our room) and the food was great.

We then headed for the Parador at Alcañiz which has a spectacular setting and great views and the castle used to be the headquarters of the knights of Calatrava. The chapel on the same site contains some of the finest medieval wall-paintings in Spain, according to some guide books – they were great and included a delightful ‘calendar’ of medieval peasants carrying out different tasks according to the season. Again, wonderful food, using local produce, which is a speciality of Paradors and you could sit out in the courtyard in the dappled shade for drinks or lunch. The town below had a lonja and a Collegiate church with an amazing gothic portal and you could also visit some tunnels underneath the town (access via the tourist office) which used to store wine amongst other things.

Our next stop was just one night in Alquézar in a more modest hotel, Santa María de Alquézar, but perfectly adequate and run by a very friendly family. The best thing was the views across to the church and castle walls, perched on the hill, but the little cobbled streets were charming to stroll around. Some people were off canyoning or hiring quad bikes – being less energetic, we stuck to site-seeing and watching the world go by!

Next we spent three nights at the Parador at Sos del Rey Católico, a hill-top town where, in the Palacio de Sada, Ferdinand of Aragón (as in Ferdinand and Isobel, los reyes católicos) was born. The Parador has a terrace with wonderful views (loads of swallows wheeling around until the vultures came along and scared them off, but they soon came back when the vultures had gone!) the staff and food were great and the town is well-worth exploring – the church has amazingly brightly coloured 14^th century wall-paintings. The annual music festival going on, Luna Lunera, involving bands playing each evening – if we had realised, I suppose we could have timed our visit to coincide with a band we fancied seeing, as it was, we didn’t buy any tickets and you couldn’t hear the music from the hotel, so I can’t comment on the quality!

We then stayed in a house for a week, over in Navarra, just east of Pamplona. The local town, Aoiz, was having fiestas, so we had fireworks for the first four nights and there was music in the evenings and gigantes and cabezudos during the day. The house, Casa Juandecay in Ecay, was a great base for exploring up into the Pyrenees, including Roncesvalles of Charlemagne and Roland fame, and countless little villages with white houses with steep-pitched roofs and masses of geraniums – very Swiss-looking! We also visited the Hoz de Lumbier, where you can walk along this deep defile and admire the enormous quantity of vultures, buitres, flying around. The Hoz de Arbayún is viewed from a platform at one end from where you can admire the spectacular view of the gorge with its river down below.

We then geared ourselves up for a return to city life by spending two nights in Pamplona, which is a very civilised city indeed. We stayed in the Hostal Navarra which was very clean and comfortable. There was some noise from the street, but this was mainly because it was near the old bus station, bus as a new one was being built nearby, presumably that won’t be a problem much longer. There was also something kind of cosy about being in bed when the poor souls outside were about to embark on a coach journey all the way to Cartagena! The arcaded main square in Pamplona was one of the few things I remembered from a previous visit, with its pavement cafés and the bar where Hemingway used to drink. Another memory was the citadel or ciudadela, and the park surrounding it which includes at one point, a zoo down in the defensive ditch. The narrow streets of the old town are full of bars and restaurants and of course, you can follow the route of the infamous San Fermín bull-run.

On the way to our next stop, Zaragoza, we called in at Olite, which has another Parador in a castle and a main square surrounded by old buildings. We also took a detour to see the bárdenas reales – strange rock formations in a semi-desert landscape which has been used in countless films. Then we arrived in Zaragoza with the idea of dropping off the car at the station and getting a taxi o the hotel. Driving into Pamplona had been easy; unfortunately Zaragoza, on account of the following year’s Expo, is in a state of massive road-works everywhere and they’ve built a huge, minimalist, new station nowhere near the old one marked on our map! We found it eventually and were taken to our hotel by a taxi-driver happy to grumble about the road-works (I strike up conversations with taxi-drivers as much as possible in Spain, otherwise you are in danger of returning home having done no speaking practice other than ordering food!). The racily-named Hotel Sauce (it means willow) was just a few streets back from the main square and the staff were brilliant – more than happy to provide an extra pillow and turn off the fierce air-conditioning. Our room overlooked one of those internal air-shaft type courtyards, so no view, but no road noise either! The Basilica, housing the famous pilar, is colossal. We had been walking around for some time before we spotted the pillar, shrouded in a cape and there was a ceremony going on for young children to kiss the cape and have their picture taken – fascinating. We also visited the cathedral with its amazing baroque interior and the 16^th century lonja, which housed a temporary exhibition – we were keener to see the building itself! There was not enough time to see much else, although there are plenty of other sights – I can definitely see a return visit to this region happening some time.

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