Trips: Day 10 Jaca

Jaca's an easy town to fall in love with. Like so many old towns in Europe, the streets are narrow with little if any automobiles so walking is a natural pastime. It's extremely family oriented with kids playing about everywhere. It seemed to me that the fathers are unusually active in the family, especially by giving the little ones a lot of attention. It's not at all unusual to see a Dad pushing a stroller down the street without the Mom anywhere around. I found it easy to relax on a bench or in a cafe and watch the goings-on. Everyone hangs out in town strolling about and stopping to chat with friends or meeting in the cafes for a tapas and a glass of wine.

Paletilla de Ternasco

Okay, here's what we did today. After a typical breakfast of coffee, croissant, and some cheese, we walked across the street to Castle Jaca's Citadel, a huge pentagonal fortress built in the late 16th century that retains each and every one of it's characteristic features; dry moat, bastions, scarps, barracks, tunnels, and a beautiful entrance way with a drawbridge. We were not allowed in unless we took the tour which was only given in Spanish. The tour guide was great, after each stop she would come over to us and try and explain in broken English what we were looking at. Most of what she said we couldn't comprehend but it was nice that she tried. At the end of the tour we could go in the museum that contained 35,000 miniatures of the various militarys throughout history. It even had an exhibit of our Civil War. The whole thing was very well done and enjoyable. Afterwards we went through the process of deciding whether to have a big lunch and light dinner, or little lunch and big dinner. Big lunch won so we managed to find the recommended Restaurante Las 3 Renas. Since we were in the Aragon region of Spain and Aragon is famous for it's lamb (some say the best in the world), we decided to do an Aragonese meal. First came something called Migas del pastor. Best we could tell it was crumbled old bread mixed with olive oil, ham, onions, and maybe some other stuff. It was actually pretty tasty. The main course though was Paletilla de Ternasco - lamb shoulder (pictured above). That was excellent! As you can see from the picture it was a whole shoulder and leg from a very small lamb. It was a lot to eat, but I managed, Sylvia didn't. I don't think I've ever had lamb this good. I highly suggest if anyone gets to the Aragon region of Spain they should try the lamb. I was too stuffed to do much the rest of the afternoon. Around 7 o'clock we went back out to walk, watch, and test the wine. After a half hour of walking we stopped at a tapas bar Sylvia had her eyes on the past few days called Cobarcho. We sat inside and had a glass of wine and waited. About 8 o'clock they started putting tapas on the bar - 16 different ones, each one looking better than the last. They were by far the best tapas I've seen since we've been in Spain. Every one looked delicious and most all contained some kind of fish. Most people would just get one or maybe two and generally didn't eat the bread. Still full from lunch, we had NOTHING. I think I regret it.

Tapas 1 - Upper left - octopus, mussel, squid on each tapa
Upper right - ricotta type cheese with anchovy
Center - sardine with anchovy, onion, pepper