Monday was my 72nd birthday. It was also a travel day as we were to take a train to Madrid where we would leave Spain to fly home. However, our train didn’t leave until nearly 3:00 so there was still time in the morning to do a little more exploring of Granada.
We headed out towards downtown again. We were headed to the University which we had been near the day before, but it had been closed. I thought we would see some interesting architecture, but the building we saw wasn’t that exciting. Perhaps if we had explored more inside it would have been interesting, but it felt a little awkward to walk around inside. There was a nice courtyard with orange trees, The orange trees had a wonderful odor to them. We saw orange trees throughout the city, and their scent was always wonderful, something impossible to share through a blog post.
From the university we walked to the Basilica of St. John of God. It seemed a pretty large church. There was a fee again to go in so my wife Silvette decided not to go in, but I did. I’m glad I did. This was one of the more interesting churches I visited on our trip.
The first room was a room of art and religious pieces such as other churches had on display. It was all in one room. The ceiling had a very detailed painting on it which was quite interesting.
Visitors entered the sanctuary from the front near the altar. This was another ornately decorated church. The ceilings were painted much like what the previous room had been like. The chapels on the side were surrounded by gold adornments as was the podium area for speaking.
Probably one of the strangest things I saw in a church was here. Near the bottom of one of the chapels was a painting of the head of John the Baptist. The painting shows a wild-eyed man with seeming terror on his face as he knows he is about to die. Somehow this painting does not inspire peace or encouragement to me. I also doubt John the Baptist felt terror at his death. All in all I found it a very strange thing to be on display in a church.
The church is dedicated to St. John of God. He was Portuguese, but ended up in Spain where he had a ministry among the poor and those with mental disorders. He is buried at the church. One can walk up to a room behind the altar, and there is a large silver urn there with his remains. One can see the urn from the sanctuary through a space in the front of the church.
What is interesting is that there seems to be remains of others there. A sign identifies the room as the reliquary chamber. On the walls around the room were transparent boxes, and inside were bones including skulls of various individuals. It was one of the oddest places I have seen in a church. I did not know that Catholic churches still hung on to relics. In fact the church states they have a splinter from the cross of Christ and a thorn from his crown of thorns. I did not find these in the church. Nevertheless these relics of bones were a most unusual thing for me as a protestant to see in a church.
Across the street from the Basilica was another church, Santuario de Ntra. Sra. del Perpetuo Socorro. I find it interesting that Catholic churches are so close to each other in Europe. This particular church focuses on an icon of the Virgin Mary. The name means Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The church itself was not as ornate as the nearby Basilica, but it did have some interesting ceiling features.
After leaving the church I thought it was time to celebrate my birthday. I wanted to have some ice cream and cake. We had walked past a dessert place a number of times so I decided to go there. Surprisingly, they had no cake so I ended up with ice cream and tiramisu. They were both good. I wanted something to drink so I had lemonade, which in retrospect was not the best choice with ice cream and tiramisu, but it was my birthday celebration in Spain.
We still had some time left to kill before our train trip so walked over to the river again. There were some plants there in flower that I had a chance to photograph.
Returning to our hotel they graciously called us a taxi to take us to the train station. Unexpectedly we had to go through a security check to board the train, but it went pretty quickly. We found our seats fairly easily as the car numbers were on the door. The trip took about three and a half hours. We passed through mostly farm land with orchards. This time I sat by the window and tried to take a few photos through the window. Occasionally we would see some old ruins in the distance. It surprised me how rural much of this part of Spain appeared.
Arriving in Madrid we had to figure out the subway to get to our hotel which we had booked specifically to be near the airport. It took us three subways to get there. When we got off the subway, we again went in the wrong direction away from our hotel. We finally realized it, got some help, and found our hotel. Tired, we went to a nearby Burger King for dinner.
Our hotel was one subway stop from the airport so we didn’t need a lot of time to get there in the morning. When we bought our subway ticket, we had to pay an airport tax. Arriving at the airport we had to scan our subway tickets to show we had paid the tax. A group of students who arrived with us had apparently not paid the tax. The gate didn’t open for them. They seemed to not understand what was going on. Hopefully they made their flights on time.
The Madrid airport is huge, but we got there in plenty of time. We even had time to get Starbucks before we needed to board the plane. Our flight was direct from Spain to Philadelphia. It arrived late afternoon, and we had to stay overnight for our flight the next morning. A shuttle from our hotel picked us up and then dropped us off early the next morning for a 7:00 am flight to Seattle. The same shuttle driver drove us both times, and he was quite the talker, basically telling us his life story. It kept us entertained.
It was another long flight to Seattle, but finally we were home. Now we just had to deal with the jet lag, or so we thought. Sadly Silvette came down with a cold the next day. The following day she tested positive for COVID. At least we were home and not in Europe somewhere when she got it. Me, I never got it.
This was the longest trip we have ever taken together. We found three weeks to be a pretty long time to be traveling. Perhaps in the future we will max out at two weeks or not go to so many different locations. However, except for the weather in Belgium, we had a great time. We saw a lot of interesting things and learned more about the culture of the areas we traveled to. We also saw how things are the same. People looking at their phones all the time is constant no matter where one is.
I think the thing I appreciated the most is how gracious and kind people were throughout our trip. While there were occasionally rather abrupt people, most of the people we encountered went out of their way to be friendly and helpful. While I tried to use my Spanish some in Spain, the rest of the time we used English, and most of the time that was not a problem.
There are still many place in Europe I would like to see. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to return again to see even more of Europe.
Thanks for joining us on our long journey through Europe. As this post goes out it will have been well over four months since we started out on our journey. The memories have already begun to fade, but there are certainly things that we will always remember. I hope that you have enjoyed reading our story and have learned some things in the process. If you have questions or comments, be sure to post them in the comment box below.
Credit: The three photos at the Madrid airport were taken by Silvette Lee