Sixty kilometers southwest of Toledo stands a vast and wide-open plain on which is planted grains, olives and grapes. If, while visiting Toledo, you have a car, it is well worth a trip to visit the small town of Consuegra. It is here you’ll find the famous “Windmills of Consuegra.”
I’ve often seen images of these windmills dotting the pages of “La Mancha” travel articles, but until now, have never had an opportunity to visit. There is a swift new “AutoVia” super-highway leaving Toledo and traveling right by Consuegra. By car, it takes about 40 minutes.
Approaching Consuegra from the north, you can see the windmills from a distance, across the plains.
It was a bit of a challenge trying to locate the road up to the windmills. My GPS was useless, but we found signs pointing us to the Castello and the windmills to be helpful.
The windmills became famous in the 16th century when Don Quixote was first published (BTW – I read somewhere that Don Quixote is the second most read book of all time, after the Bible). These windmills were introduced by the “Caballeros Sanjuanistas,” who brought these machines to help mill grain. They were handed down from father to son. There are still three operating windmills, but only for tourism. All fell out of use in the 1980’s when less expensive forms of milling were introduced.
Fado in Coimbra is different than that of Lisbon. In Coimbra, Fado centers around the university community and is sung by men dressed in traditional academic capes, robes, and leggings. Like in Lisbon, it is accompanied by classical guitar and a specially tuned Portuguese guitar, but sounds totally different.
My group and I arrive early at A Capella, a small 14th century chapel turned tapas bar and Fado venue. The owner and chief Fado singer were practicing a rock and roll set scheduled for performance at 12 midnight. Luckily, we were able to preorder a set dinner menu of lamb or fish.
The actual Fado began at 9:20 p.m. and continued in four-song sets until midnight. We all enjoyed the performances of the male soloist and guitar ensemble.
The food was good and by the end of the evening, the chapel was packed with 80-100 people drinking, eating and enjoying the Fado experience.
Have you ever been lost? Not the kind of lost where you really don’t have a clue where you are, but being lost in familiar territory. Confused yet? Well I was too.
I had just arrived in London. I’d traveled most of the day from hot and sunny Madrid to wet and soggy London. The Thameslink train dropped me near Kingscross Station and I hoped on the TUBE to my hotel. When I emerged from the TUBE station at Tower Bridge I knew, according to the directions given by the hotel operator, I was just a short walk from my bed for the night!
The Tower Bridge station is right across the road from the Tower of London, just on the west side of the Thames. When I couldn’t see the hotel from my location, I decide to do the smart thing and call the hotel for more detailed directions. Little did I know I would get “central reservations” located in who knows what little podunk town in the depths of England. The reservations agent sounded like she knew what she was talking about, so I believed her when she said ” it’s east, just walk from your present location and follow the road away from the Thames. “Don’t go across the river” she exclaimed.
Well, I took her at her word and proceeded to walk (with my 30 pound backpack). Twenty minutes later there was no hotel in sight. Instead, I’d crossed over into some industrial zone in London where the prevailing industry was shipping and loading boxes from trains to freighters. So I did the logical thing, I retraced my steps to Tower Bridge. Knowing my hotel was NOT across the river, according to the previous directions, I took another route away from the bridge! On this I ended up almost all the way back to Kings Cross Station. The spot I had left over two hours ago!
By now I was frustrated, hot and worn-out! I decide to hail a taxi. Being in London there are tons of taxis. But out in the boondocks of the city they all had fares. So I had to make my way to a Tube station to find a taxi stand. Finally! I was in one of the big black sedans. The driver asked where I was going. I gave him the address and off he went. Soon we crossed the Thames by way of the Tower Bridge and just two blocks later I was dropped at my hotel!
My lesson here is a TAXI is sometimes worth the expense. If you’ve got less time than money, then a taxi can be a lifesaver. It cost me about $7 to get that taxi to my hotel. But the worst thing is that I wasted an hour wandering around looking for the blasted place!
Later in the evening I began to wander down the east bank of the Thames into an old seafaring part of London. My wandering took me past clipper ships, chic bars, and a wonderful view of the city. This was a different kind of wandering that I had done in the afternoon looking for my hotel. Tonight, I wanted to get lost in order to discover new ground. This is what I call exploring Europe!
It used to be that the most expensive part of a Europe trip was the flight. Once arriving one could live a pretty good life on less than $40 a day. I can remember my first trip to Europe. In 1977 I was a member of the Florida Junior College Chorale and we traveled to Europe for three weeks on a concert tour. Much of the tour’s expenses were funded by the College, however each of us were required to pay $900 to cover the tour expenses. NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS! That was for the flights, hotels, transportation, most meals, and tours.
Pictured in the photo above (from left to right) is Brian, Eva, Pam, David, and Doug on the canal in Venice. That’s Casanova there in the back pushing the gondola along.
My records from 1977 show that $1 USD = 877 It.lira. Here are my total expenses for my seven days in Italy:
$.57 – Cola
$5.81- Dinner
$1.42 – Breakfast
$.39 – Cola
$1.14 – Pizza
$2.28 – Hamburger (my, my…how my tastes have changed)
$1.02 – Banana Split
$2.28 – Lunch
$4.33 – Lunch
$2.77 – Lunch
$2.28 – Lunch
$3.42 – Lunch
$6.27 – Disco and drinks
$5.70 – Drinks and entertainment on Piazza San Marco (Venice)
Last month I was on a train in Italy when I received an incoming call from an “unknow number.” Upon seeing that, I cringed and my stomach sank. You see, I’d had that same “call” on two other occasions while traveling in Europe. It was from my web hosting company back in the USA notifying my account (meaning my website and my blog) had been suspended.
I have used the same web hosting company for over ten years, however in recent years things have made a drastic turn for the worse. It is long story and I’ll not bother you with the details, let’s just say I learned my lesson the hard way.
The odd thing is that I always got the “unknown caller” when I was not in a position to do anything about it, usually I was in Europe. The person I talked never varied, it was always the same voice, although he never used the same name twice. The story varied at each call beginning with “my website had overrun its space on the server and I need to pay more money to get unlimited space.” The next time the same guy (using a different name) said several of my domain names had expired and as a last ditch effort I would have to pay lots of money to reinstate them. The next call I got was because my webspace was using too much bandwidth and I should pay more money to get unlimited bandwidth. The final call came, as I mention, while on the train last month. This time my “problem” was that someone “hacked” my webspace and it was “gone.” They had a backup, but I would have to purchase new webspace and pay for someone to restore my data at a huge cost.
That was the last straw! I just let everything sit in limbo for a couple of weeks until I could get back home. Luckily, I had a full backup of my website and a backup of my blog from late-March 2010. So, over the last few weeks I’ve restored my BLOG and totally reworked my website. Hours and hours of my time, but with a reliable and well researched web hosting company, I feel a lot better.
The moral here is NEVER trust anyone without checking them out. When I got to digging into that web host provider, I found scores of complaints and very similar stories to mine. Apparently, he/they have fooled a lot of people. If you are insterested check it out on the web:
The crooks are : Global Internet Services (GISOL) http://gisol.com
My research revealed fraud at many different levels:
Historically, people have always butchered my last name. It’s pretty simple, and phonetic too… McGuffin. Yet all my life it has been pronounced incorrectly. Here are just a few of the variations: McGriffin, McGruffin, McGaffin, McGuhhh, McGovern, and so on.
I was in Ireland recently and had the opportunity to say or write my name on a daily basis. Only one aurally-imparied lady got it wrong. I guess that just goes to show you that the Irish and I have some common roots.
Sixty kilometers southwest of Toledo stands a vast and wide-open plain on which is planted grains, olives and grapes. If, while visiting Toledo, you have a car, it is well worth a trip to visit the small town of Consuegra. It is here you’ll find the famous “Windmills of Consuegra.”
It was a bit of a challenge trying to locate the road up to the windmills. My GPS was useless, but we found signs pointing us to the Castello and the windmills to be helpful. 
The windmills became famous in the 16th century when Don Quixote was first published (BTW – I read somewhere that Don Quixote is the second most read book of all time, after the Bible). These windmills were introduced by the “Caballeros Sanjuanistas,” who brought these machines to help mill grain. They were handed down from father to son. There are still three operating windmills, but only for tourism. All fell out of use in the 1980’s when less expensive forms of milling were introduced.
