Spanish Wedding – Medieval style (Architecturally Speaking – not dress up as Buxom Wench speaking)

This weekend I went to a wedding in the lovely, picturesque town of Ayllón en Segovia.  It´s only an hour from Madrid and the area is dotted with other, equally delightful little towns (Riaza is worth a stop).  We discovered you can still walk into a little tavern in a fortress wall or looking over a medieval plaza as the bullfighting plays on the television (or indeed, if you go at the right time, the town’s bullfighting or running of the bulls festival might actuall be going on live in the plaza) and buy a beer for one euro.  And you thought Spain was all beaches and 15 euro cocktails.

The wedding venue, The Cloisters of Ayllón, was breathtaking.  These are the kind of ruins you find all over Spain – there are so many medieval castles and ruins people literally don’t know what to do with them.  The volume is simply too big for a National Trust type scheme to meet the task of restoring them all. (The government runs Paradors as part of a conservation plan – historical buildings converted in to affordable hotels and you really should stay in at least one if you visit Spain).  Read more...