Ken’s Tower Tour

On Tuesday, May 27, we decided to follow Ken as he led us on a tour of some of the city’s towers. We started out with the tower of Iglesia de San Pablo, the church of St. Paul.

Next, we went to the tower of Iglesia de San Felipe, the church of St. Philip

There were a lot of statues around the square

Ken calls the one above, “the horse who is about to leap upon a cactus”

The one above is easy to miss, and has no name, as far as Google Lens knows.

Unbeknownst to us, this was the square that houses the first restaurant that Marta, our food tour guide took us to, the Restaurante Montal. The one that had the great artichoke and cheese tapas. More on that later. Right now we march on to the most impressive towers on our tour, La Catedral basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar.

According to tradition, this is the first Marian church in Christianity. The story goes, that on January 2, 40 AD, while St James the Apostle was deep in prayer by the banks of the Ebro, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, appeared to St James and gave him a piller of jasper and told him to build a chapel in her honor. Over time, the small chapel became the large Cathedral that you see today.

We went inside, but the church asked that no photos be taken, so we respected their wishes. The large number of photos that you can find online of the interior is testimony that not everyone respects their wishes.

We walked across the plaza to see the other cathedral that we had seen last Saturday, the Catedral metropolitana de San Salvador. It is extremely rare for a city to have 2 cathedrals

A little further on, we discovered Iglesia de la Magdalena, the church of Mary Magdelene

We were looking for one last tower attached to Iglesia de San Nicolas di Bari. We found the back of the church, but couldn’t see the tower through the trees, and couldn’t figure out how to get to the front of the church, so we pressed on across Puente del Pilar. It was an interesting bridge. There was an older bridge in the center that was now a pedestrian bridge. And new bridges on either side for cars and bicycles. Cathy took a picture of me; you can see the towers in the background.

Another view of the Pilar from the bridge

A view of the Roman stone bridge and the Elba River

Teenagers raced their boats to a small island in the center of the Elba.

Another view of the Pilar with all its tiwers

Having crossed the Elba and returned, we were hungry and wanted tapas. We stoppedfor tapas at an Ok topas place, but we were really craving the artichoke and cheese topas from Montal. Whenwe finally found the restaurant, we discovered that it was in the Plaza de San Felipe that we had visited before.

This is a very bad food photo. Youbc3an see my wine glass at the top. I’ve half eaten one of the topas. Still it gives you some idea of what it looks like.

If Gail were with me, she would have taken a much better picture.

Fortunately:

• In 2 days, we’ll be in the same city
• In 3 days, we’ll see each other at the choir concert in Barcelona
• In 4 days, we’ll be back together again