Today we spent in Zamora after that long drive yesterday! What a fascinating and beautiful city in addition to being very accessible – ramps and curb cuts everywhere! In the morning we did laundry – how fun! They have “express” laundry where your wash (and your drying if you want to) is done in 30 minutes. Holy smokes the machines hold a lot though! 11kg was the smallest machine for clothes costing 4 Euros. Not to waste time we did a dark and light (which is a new concept for Andrew) and spent 9 Euros (next smallest machine was 14kg at 5 Euros) and were done in 35 minutes! Nice clean facility that was 2 blocks from our hotel, AC Marriott Zamora – the number 1 rated hotel in the city. Then we returned to our “suite” in the hotel and proceeded to air dry all our clothes despite the AC in the room that just would not turn off! Then off we went with the excellent map from the hotel and some hints on where to walk, to check out the town! We are just on the outside ring of the old town so all we had to do is walk into the old town to experience the city. While the city was pretty similar in some ways to Tudela – lots of churches, it was really cool the tiling on the mostly pedestrian streets – the mosaic design. We walked directly from one end of the Old Town to the other and then went down the road (instead of the stairs) to the river walk below where we visited a very old church, no longer in use, and the water turbines which create some energy for the area. They were actually built in the early 1900’s however over time they rotted away and in about 1970 they were re-built again using the designs from the 1900’s (all this I understood from the poster that was in Spanish but some of the words are close to French and I was able to piece some together). Then we continued on the river walk heading back around, past some beautiful bridges – the stone bridge which is very popular and then as the hotel front desk clerk told me (not in any tourist literature) the “Eiffel” bridge which was designed by the same man that designed the Eiffel Tower. At that point, dying of thirst as we had already clocked 10km, we stopped for a drink. Well, I stopped, Andrew had to follow! He had a cervesa and I my standard drink of the day – Coke Cola! In fact I had 2 of them as the bottles were small and the whole thing only cost us 5 Euros – which is so funny as often my Cokes cost as much as Andrew’s beers! Here they were just a single Euro – go figure! Then following the City Wall, we arrived back at our hotel, after making a quick stop for a couple of cans of beer and some sin gluten ice cream for me! All in all an awesome sightseeing day in cooler weather – only about 26 degrees! After taking a break, we found out that a recommended restaurant that also does GF was closed on Wednesday nights so instead we ordered Domino’s pizza as they advertise GF pizza. I was VERY apprehensive about doing this as in Canada I would not order from Domino’s due to contamination concerns with gluten pizza’s. However they seem to have their act together in Spain so I tried it and decided to pick it up just to check out the facility. When ordering I was pleased to see that what I could order was pretty restrictive in terms of items to put on the pizza too. Oh was I surprised! Two ovens and two prep areas! Check out my box and the Celiac program that trained them – I was off to the races to enjoy a wonderful pizza! And it was good! Now off to bed – we have some driving and touring to do tomorrow!
