Click here to read the previous post, Adjusting to Life in Spain: Tapas Crawl on Calle Cava Baja
It’s time for another day trip to explore yet another corner of this country! My destination of choice is Alcalá de Henares.
Alcalá de Henares is a town in in the Comunidad de Madrid (Community of Madrid), about 35 km/22 miles northeast of the city of Madrid, with a population of 200,702.
It’s best known as the hometown of my Spanish teacher’s parents. (Well, at least for them.) But other than that, it’s known for being the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quijote (or “Donkey Hotey,” as I misheard as a youngster and have never been able to erase from my mind).
Here’s a modern version that you were more likely to read (if you read it at all):
Getting to Alcalá de Henares from Madrid
I’m still getting used to the myriad of trains, planes and automobiles – kidding, just trains – in Spain. So I did what any anxiety-prone newcomer would do: asked a native Spaniard for help. Thanks to my good friend L, this is how I managed to get to Alcalá de Henares from Madrid.
First, I got myself to Madrid Atocha, the largest train station in Madrid where you can board high-speed, long-distance and commuter trains. Commuter trains (i.e. Cercanías) are short-distance trains that connect cities with their suburbs and nearby towns, generally within 60–90 km (37–55 miles) of the city center.
Once in Atocha, I looked for signs directing me towards the Cercanías platform.
The Cercanías logo is easy to spot, but in a station such as Atocha, it can be a bit overwhelming to follow the route it attempts to point out in a labyrinth of routes and signs. This photo just barely gives you an idea of what you’ll face in the huge station that combines long-distance trains, commuter trains and the metro.
Source: Renfe
I bought a round-trip ticket for €6.80 in the distinct Renfe ticket machines and then went to platform C-7 (you can also get to Alcalá de Henares via the C-2 line).
Source: Renfe
My friend L also gave me a very important tip: When entering and exiting the station (in both directions), always tap your ticket (on the inner-city metros, there’s no need to tap out). If you don’t tap it on the way out, then when you try to enter the station on the way back home, it won’t register (it’ll think you never left the station).
I waited on the platform for about fifteen minutes and then boarded the train, opting to sit on the top level (like a double-decker bus). The air conditioning was refreshing (it’s been around 35-39°C/95-102°F lately), the view was…high, and the trip took 39 minutes.
By the way, I hope my specific instructions are helpful for others who might want to travel to these same places, but mostly I’m providing clear directions for myself in future!
Arriving in Alcalá de Henares
The main purpose of my day trip to Alcalá de Henares was to visit my good friend, C, who helped me celebrate my first birthday in Spain, taught me navigate the commuter bus and train to El Escorial and took me on a trip with her family to Galicia.
When she met me at the station, I couldn’t tap my way out through the turnstile, so we just waved and called hello from either side. Finally, she pointed out a turnstile that remained open, and I tentatively exited through it. I told her my fear of not being able to return (because the system, according to my ticket, thought I was still in the station). She said not to worry, and I decided to believe her. Returning home on the train was future Selena’s problem.
Once I had escaped depot jail, we headed out to get a lay of the land and were soon in the city’s casco antigua (old town). Calle Mayor (Main Street) is one of the longest arcaded streets in Europe and was built along the route of the Caesar Augusta Roman road that passed through Complutum.
Sidebar for those interested in history
Here's a map of the route for the Roman road—from Augusta Emerita (today’s Mérida) to Caesaraugusta (modern Zaragoza)—that passed through Complutum (present-day Alcalá de Henares).
Source: World History
And a modern version of the map with the blue line going from Mérida to Zaragoza, and passing through Alcalá de Henares:
What’s cool is that this shows that there’s a historical continuity from Roman infrastructure to medieval and modern urban design.
And even though we didn’t make it there, you can visit the archaeological site of Complutum (the Roman precursor to Alcalá), which includes a forum, baths and a domus (villa), plus the House of Hippolytus, a school for kids of wealthy families in the third and fourth centuries. (Yeah, I know, great travel blog, right? “There’s a very interesting historical site in this town that’s not to be missed…so I hear.”)
Source: Noticias para municipios
Exploring Alcalá de Henares
Although I was in town mainly to visit my friend, we wandered around and saw some interesting things.
University of Alcalá
Alcalá de Henares is famous for the University of Alcalá, founded in 1499, which was one of the first planned universities in the world.
This is the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso, the main building of the University of Alcalá, which I at first thought was a government building.
We happened upon it while meandering through the narrow, café-lined streets of old town:
Aside from just being gorgeous, the University of Alcalá helped shape modern Spanish language/grammar (<— side note, why is this historical place rated 2.5 stars on the World Heritage Site web page??). Famous alumni include Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo and Tirso de Molina.
Resident Storks (Cigüeñas)
As we continued our perambulations, I would from time to time whip out my phone and snap a pic of something beautiful or interesting, which the town was full of: buildings, parks, statues… and storks.
Cigüeñas (storks) have built nests all over the rooftops and bell towers around town. Not only do the residents not mind them, they fully embrace them with pride—there’s even a cigüeña festival in their honor and regular guided tours.
Miguel de Cervantes Casa-Museo
Although C wasn’t too keen to visit a museum of some old guy (Miguel de Cervantes) whose book (Don Quijote de la Mancha) she never read (hey, not everyone’s lucky enough to be an English Lit major in which you pay a university a gazillion dollars to read books for four years), I talked her into visiting the Cervantes museum with the promise that we wouldn’t spend more than half an hour there.
Quick FYI: It’s Don Quixote in English, and Don Quijote in Spanish.
I called it the Cervantes Casa-Museo, but the official name of this place is Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes (Cervantes’ Birthplace Museum), because this is just where he was born. He lived in other places in Spain, like Valladolid and Seville (where he worked as a tax collector and was jailed for “irregularities in his accounts”—which wound up being a good thing because while incarcerated he came up with the idea for his novel Don Quijote), as well as Italy, and finally died in Madrid.
What I really like about the Museo-Casa is that, as with the Lope de Vega casa-museo, this museum is basically a recreation of the writer’s house. So rather than just stare at a bunch of old books under a glass case or some paintings of the writer lining a long wall, you walk through the casa-museo (house/museum) and get to really imagine what a day in the life was like for the historical author.
We learned that there was a surgery room in the house, and at first I wondered if that was because Cervantes was either sick a lot or a hypochondriac, but it turns out his father, Rodrigo de Cervantes, was a surgeon—or, more precisely, a zurujano sangrador, something between barber and doctor. (Eesh, that’s a big gap between these two professions!)
Even the smell of the wood (the house itself, but also the furniture) was enough to push us into the 16th century.
On the way out, I saw this sign, which says:
Aquí nació Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. "El manco sano, el famoso todo, el escritor alegre, el regocijo de las musas." AÑO 1997. CDL. Aniv. Nacimiento de Cervantes.
Translation:
Here was born Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. "The maimed but whole one, the universally famous, the cheerful writer, the delight of the muses.” Year 1997. 450th Anniversary of the Birth of Cervantes.
A few notes:
In Spanish, a person usually has two surnames, the first from the father (Cervantes, in this case), and the second from the mother (Saavedra), but most people just use the first surname.
"El manco sano" refers to Cervantes being wounded at the Battle of Lepanto (he lost the use of his left hand) — thus he was called "el manco de Lepanto".
"CDL" is the Roman numeral for 450, which marks the 450th anniversary in 1997 of his birth (1547).
After we left the museum, I was tired of being on my feet, so I had a little sit-down on a bench between two guys:
La Costrada de Alcalá
After walking all over town for most of the afternoon, we stopped for a) a cool beverage, b) to get off our feet, c) to get out of the heat, and d) to try a pastry that was recommended to me (by the same person whose recommendation of Yemas de Santa Teresa was a hit).
La Costrada de Alcalá is a traditional dessert from Alcalá de Henares, and is quite famous. It’s made of: layers of puff pastry filled with pastry cream and meringue and then topped with toasted almonds and powdered sugar. The mouthfeel (to use a wine term incorrectly here) is both crispy and creamy. It tastes divine, but both C and I agreed that it was too sweet (and for anyone who knows me, that’s saying something).
Earlier, we had lunch at a restaurant called Hemisferio Loft. The food was decent to good and the service was good, but the place itself was a delight (well, at least for a writer). As soon as we entered the restaurant, I saw a couple of old typewriters and, of course, was compelled to hit a few keys.
Trying to Leave Alcalá de Henares
It was time to leave, so C and I walked to the train station in Alcalá de Henares. We hugged goodbye and she watched me not go through the turnstile to my platform.
Remember earlier when I mentioned that tip my friend L had given me? When entering and exiting the station, always tap your ticket. And remember how I wasn’t able to tap my way out of the station? And remember when I said, oh-so-callously that “returning home on the train was future Selena’s problem”?
Well, I couldn’t enter the station. With my train due to arrive in seven minutes, C and I hurried over to the info counter and she explained my problem to the woman in Spanish. After a brief exchange and the examination of my round-trip ticket, the kind woman told us to enter the train’s platform from a security or employee gate. C and I hugged once again, and we went to our separate platforms to wait for our trains.
Forty minutes later, I arrived back at Atocha in Madrid, tired but happy from a lovely day spent with a good friend in a quaint town. When I went to tap out of this station, the turnstile did not move!
Fortunately, I was too tired to practice my colorful Spanish swear words. I calmly walked up to a station employee, explained my issue, showed him my roundtrip ticket, and he just tapped me out with his all-powerful employee card.
Another successful day trip from Madrid accomplished! Five pueblos down, 8 gazillion to go!
Click here to read the next post, Adjusting to Life in Spain: [TBD]
Note: All photos taken or created (using DALL-E) by Selena Templeton, unless otherwise noted.
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