Lerma

20 May 2023

We came to Lerma because it was an easy drive from Zamora, it sounded kind of an interesting place, and it has a Parador said to be the best in Spain. (The Paradores are a chain of hotels owned by the Spanish government). Correct on the easy drive, definitely correct on the Parador, not-so-correct on the “interesting place” part.

Lerma has a number of old buildings and an old gate to the city, but the Parador is the star. The city itself disappointed, though. We drove from Zamora on backroads, through beautiful fields of wheat on rolling hills; the breadbasket of Spanish agriculture. I envisioned Lerma as being a small town in this landscape; yes and no. It was a small town, but as we approached it we were directed onto the A1 Autopista - a six-lane highway between Madrid and Burgos, one of the busiest highways in Spain. Turns out that Lerma is about a mile away from the A1, and though we couldn’t hear it and could barely see it from Lerma, its presence was ubiquitous; no matter how we tried we knew we weren’t out in the country. An odd thing, but it definitely affected my feelings about the town.

The Duke of Alba, a powerful man in central Spain in the early 1600s, built his ducal palace here, primarily as a place that King Felipe III could come and rest. The palace fell into disuse and thirty years ago, the parador chain took it over and converted it to a spectacular hotel. And somehow, we got an amazing room, in one of the four towers of the building. Pictures? You betcha!

*One view of our room. I estimated this room was about 300 sq. ft. - a pretty big room.*

Huge windows! This is the view out one of them. In a time where hotels often have small windows, we had two four foot wide floor to ceiling (a twelve-foot ceiling) windows looking out on the countryside. Nice.

*The center courtyard. Pretty nice place to have a glass of wine.*

Lunch...no way we're having this for a late dinner! This entire region is famous for roast suckling lamb (this) and pig. In Lerma there are about eight restaurants and all of them are *asadores* - places that serve roast lamb and roast pig. By the way, this dish is for both of us.

*We get a kick out of standing in a place such as this and thinking, "This has been here - largely unchanged - for five or six hundred years."*

*Big line in the Wednesday morning market! What were all these folks lined up for? Tomato plants. There were three stalls selling tomato plants and every one had lines like this.*

Spain seems to us to be amazingly affordable. The Parador here is a four-star hotel and the cost, including a huge breakfast, was $165 per night. We paid more than that for a Hilton Home2 room in Yakima! Large pours of wine were $4.50 in the courtyard. Wines at dinner were less than $30 for a bottle. I don’t know how they do it, but I like it.

We did make an interesting day-trip to two small towns near Lerma. One is the home of a monastery, which once was home to several hundred monks and today has 47 living there. Three times a day about twenty of the monks give a short service of Gregorian chants in a huge church attached to the monastery. Luckily we were there for one of the services. It was beautiful, but twenty monks singing in a huge church meant volume was on the low side. Definitely worth attending, though.