Blanche and Eleanor

Blanche of Castile

In the year 1200, Princess Blanche of Castile and her grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine -- the wealthiest and most famous woman in the world -- set out from Blanche's home in Burgos to travel to Paris. There, twelve-year-old Blanche was to marry Louis, son of the king of France. 

Where did they go? What did they see? What adventures did they have?

Eleanor of Aquitaine

As you read their story in my new middle-grade novel The Queen's Granddaughter, you can follow in their footsteps with my husband Phil and me. We'll retrace their route (by car, not on horseback!) over the next two weeks, from Castile in what is now Spain across the Pyrenees Mountains, through Aquitaine to Paris.  Our route, and the routes they might have taken, are shown in the map below.

Watch this space!

In Old Madrid

 We've made it to Madrid, though as far as I know Blanche never did, perhaps because she didn't have to fly in from America. An on-time drive to JFK, an on-time flight, a very early landing -- which proved problematic because we arrived at our hotel six hours before we could check in. And we were TIRED. 

We went to a restaurant called Billy Brunch for breakfast (probably the only time in my life I will ever have to wait for a breakfast restaurant to open!) because it serves eggs benedict, and one of us is enamored of the dish. I have to find it for him every place we go. It was worth the slight wait, especially accompanied by mimosas (not necessarily recommended at 9:30 a.m. after no sleep). Then we wandered around the beautiful Retiro Park, where I was interviewed by some college students about my thoughts on trans athletes (responses for another blog entirely). 

"The greatest painting of the 20th century" -- Phil Sicker 

It was still early, so we went to the James Joyce Pub (I guess there's one in every city?) downstairs from our hotel, and during our libations
we heard the room was ready. We crashed for several hours, then headed out to Reina Sofia museum. The line was long but moving very quickly, and it turned out this was because entry was free on Friday nights. Lucky us! We viewed Picasso's Guernica, which Ben had never seen, several Dalis, and paintings by Miro. Then we went to Calle Cava Baja for tapas. The whole area was hopping; Friday nights are lively in Madrid. The place we ended up at made their own vermouth and used it in a delicious though brown cocktail, and we tried six different tapas, including fois gras on toast, squid in its own ink, and pork cheeks in red wine, before we started to power down. We peered in the door of the oldest restaurant in Europe, Botin, where we couldn't get a reservation without taking a tour. Then back to the apartment, thoroughly exhausted.

After a nine-hour sleep, we woke refreshed and headed out to the Prado, passing a huge demonstration in favor of pensions on the way. We had advance tickets so got in quickly, and spent a couple of hours looking at Velasquezes, Bosches, Goyas, and El Grecos, as well as a couple of Fra Angelicos, Raphaels, and Breughels for me. Crowded (especially the Bosch room, everybody loves his weirdness) but absolutely stunning.

We stopped off at a renowned sherry bar, La Valencia, where Hemingway often drank (yes, he probably drank at every bar in town) to introduce Ben to the beverage. We sampled fino, manzanilla, oloroso, amontillado, and cream sherries, and all preferred the amontillado. Now we must hunt for a bottle to bring home.

We walked to Plaza Mayor after resting and passed the second demonstration of the day. The first was in support of pensions, but this one...well, maybe it was against cremation in general, or maybe it against cremating the remains of an anti-Franco freedom fighters' graveyard. We were unsure, but the marchers felt strongly.

We ate black-ink paella for dinner, quite delicious though it's always a little unnerving eating food that is black. Phil almost devoured a customer's Iberian ham appetizer because he thought it was on the counter for entering diners to sample, but Ben slapped his hand and prevented an international incident.

Tomorrow we head to Burgos -- where Blanche, known as Blanca in her own country, was born.

Finally Meeting Blanca

Leonore's actual pellote

Las Huelgas courtyard

We said goodbye to Ben and drove off to Burgos, the birthplace of Blanche (whom I will call Blanca while in Spain). Our first stop was the Monasterio de Santa Maria Real de las Huelgas, a convent founded by Blanca's parents Alfonso VIII and Leonore. I stood in the courtyard -- where Blanca had stood! I saw Alfonso's and Leonore's tombs. I saw the actual pellotes (a kind of overdress) that Blanca's mother had worn. I admired the stonework done by the Almohad (Muslim) artisans during the few years when the Muslims, Jews, and Christians were at peace in Castile. 

Apparently I twitched and squealed in an embarrassing way, and pointed out to the guide that Blanca had been left off the family tree posted in the convent. She had never HEARD of Blanca. I had to explain where she fell in the family order and what she did and what happened to her.  Neither of us could figure out why she wasn't on the graphic. The whole thing was really very exciting for me. I get to be a specialist only...well, never.

Tombs of Alfonso and Leonore

We wandered the streets of the Old Town as I tried to imagine Blanca and her friend Suna running through them on their way to Suna's aunties' house. Old as the Old Town is, I think Burgos in the year 1200 was probably very different. Back then, it was divided into Christian, Muslim, and Jewish quarters, which I think it is no longer.

We ate at a tapas place but had to order from the regular menu, because...it was Sunday? I'm not sure. But it was delicious. We also noticed the mark of the Camino de Santiago on the street; the Way of St. James, on which Phil and Ben walked 130 miles, runs through the city (and appears in The Queen's Granddaughter).

Our apartment was directly behind the glorious high gothic cathedral, built after Blanca's birth but still worth a visit. We spent an hour there in the morning. Sadly, we couldn't see the castle of Burgos; it was closed for renovations. The castle that exists there now isn't the one Blanca was born in anyway. It became a prison later on, then a gunpowder factory; parts of it burned, part was blown up by Napoleon. Then it fell into ruins. But at some future time, they say it will be restored to its medieval glory, and I'll come back to see it.

We had an appointment for wine tasting in Rioja, the area where Spain's best wines are made. The bodega was a very small one and slightly odd -- it produces only a few thousand bottles a year, none of which make it to the US except those ordered by people who've visited and love their wines. The owner is a very eccentric guy. He insists on using oversized casks because he doesn't like the taste of oak, and because of this he can't get the special government label of approval. He has aged wine at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. He ages some wines in giant clay amphoras. We tasted three, and they were fabulous. Of course we bought a bottle.

As we neared Bilbao, I tried again to imagine Blanca -- and her 77-year-old grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine -- as she traveled with an enormous entourage over the foothills toward the higher mountains of the Pyrenees. It's mind-boggling to consider what traveling must have been like in the thirteenth century. On horseback, to 

start with -- cars are uncomfortable enough! On dirt lanes. No comfy beds at the end of the day. No baths. No tapas (or pinxtos, as the Basques call them). I would probably have stayed home more.

Our GPS stroked out -- a combination of high mountains and the Basque language, maybe? All those X's were too challenging for her to pronounce. After considerable angst and a small amount of profanity, we finally found our hotel. Then we headed out to see the Bilbao cathedral, a small gothic gem, again built after Blanca's time. And shortly we're off for oysters and roasted meats, which Blanca herself might have eaten back in 1200. But probably not while traveling.

Some Not Blanca, Some Blanca

Bilbao was strange and wonderful. A very diverse city, much more so than the parts of Madrid and Burgos we saw. We reprised one of our first meals in Spain nearly 40 years ago by eating suckling pig and suckling lamb for dinner (and feeling appropriately delighted, nauseated and guilty) and slept the sleep of the overfed.

In the morning we headed for the Guggenheim Bilbao, a remarkable museum on the city's river. The first exhibit we saw was by an artist, Richard Serra, whose work we'd seen at the Dia Beacon in the Hudson Valley. He creates massive spiral works in metal that one walks through and that make the walker extremely dizzy and disoriented. Then we saw a very odd anime exhibit by a Japanese artist, Hilda de Klimt's mystical paintings, and an exhibit with light that made it seem as if we were walking through solid objects and caused us more dizziness and finally an acute panic as we tried to find our way out.

We left Bilbao, ascending the Pyrenees through crazy switchbacks that made me wonder how Blanca and her entourage ever managed such a journey. We headed toward Roncesvalles, a tiny village high in the Pyrenees. It is a town that Blanca probably passed through on her way to France, and she certainly passed through it in my book. Historically, it's the site of a 778 AD battle between the French king Charlemagne's army and the Basques, though in the epic poem "The Song of Roland" (quoted in The Queen's Granddaughter) it is reinvented as a battle between the French and the Muslims. 

The church where Blanca
may/may not have worshipped

Me on the Camino

It's a beautiful mountain village with lots of ski-type lodges, and the Camino de Santiago passes right through it, ensuring that indeed it was probably on Blanca's route since there
were very few other roads over the mountains in her day. We saw numerous pilgrims in worn boots and heavy packs and ate a fabulous lunch of squab and wild mushrooms (Phil had to pick buckshot out of the squab). We looked at a chapel that existed in 1200 where Blanca probably worshipped when she stopped there and another slightly newer church that featured a stained-glass window commemorating the battle in 1212 where Blanca's father finally conquered the Almohads, ending the many years of peace in Castile.

And thence to the seaside resort of Biarritz, beloved by Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill (I like to imagine them at dinner together), where Blanca definitely never went, down the mountains and through innumerable roundabouts, causing the day's usual amount of angst and profanity. 

Eleanor Eleanor Everywhere

 

Biarritz was gorgeous, as it should be -- long stretches of sandy beaches, fancy apartment buildings, ritzy boardwalks, pretty people. We strolled on the sand and watched dozens of chilly-looking surfers waiting for their waves. Then it was back on the trail of Blanche and Eleanor!

Arthous Abbey

Our first stop was Arthous Abbey. We couldn't go in, but we got a good sense of it from the exterior. In The Queen's Granddaughter, it's the site where monks feed the travelers and provide them with the first bath on their journey. It could have really happened...

Chateau la Brede

Then we drove on to La Brede chateau, rebuilt by the Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu. In the book, Eleanor and Blanche stay in the house of the Templars in La Brede, which no longer exists (though we drove down Rue de Templiers). Blanche and her friend Suna fall in the lake in front of the empty chateau -- to my shock, there is actually a lake there. Life imitates art! Or something. The estate now has gardens and farms and some very pleasing cows.

We stopped at the church of St-Maurille in St. Morillon, where I have Eleanor and Blanche taking sanctuary as they are chased by kidnappers. It is only open once a week for mass, and it's somewhat smaller than I imagined, but you might notice from the photo that it has a small bell and a larger bell. In The Queen's Granddaughter, Eleanor sends the town a new bell as thanks for their hospitality. Did I invent that? Or could it actually have happened?

St.-Maurille Church

There was a short break for winetasting -- and buying, of course -- and then we went on to Bordeaux, with a hair-raising drive through streets filled with bicyclers and trams. Who knew there were two Hotel Particuliers in the city? We got SO lost going to the wrong one. 

The place is almost ridiculously full of Eleanoriana. But more on that next time!

A Whole Lot of Churches

Our hotel balcony has a view of the Bordeaux cathedral, and a split of champagne is chilling in the mini-fridge. What more could one want?

Maybe a whole lot of churches. And an abbey!

Our day began, after a delicious sleep fueled by the previous evening's escargots and foie gras, with a visit to aforementioned cathedral, St. Andre. Gothic, very high, built between the 12th and the 14th century. It turns out that this is where Eleanor of Aquitaine married her first husband, Prince Louis, who later became king of France. So naturally I got twitchy and excited again. There are links to my characters everywhere! 

Eleanor and me, chatting

As in Spain, everything closes here for lunch between 12 and 2, except for the Porte Cailhau, a tower built in the city walls where I imagine Blanche and Eleanor met the bishop of Bordeaux when they entered the city. We climbed many stairs and found an animated narration from Eleanor in the tower, explaining which of the buildings we could see from the windows were around in her day. See what I mean? They are EVERYWHERE. 

Tomb of St. Severin

Eleanor spent a lot of time in Bordeaux, both growing up and after her marriage -- but not so much later in her life, because she didn't like Louis much and I guess Bordeaux triggered her.

We lunched and then went to the Church of St. Severin. Both it and the cathedral are UNESCO sites and are on the Camino de Santiago, so they receive hundreds of pilgrims every year. St. Severin's body is kept on the high altar, and in the crypt are the bodies of many bishops and another saint -- and one tomb that contained the heads of 22 nuns and a priest who were guillotined after the French Revolution. We looked for the horn of Roland, who blew it when he fought beside Charlemagne in the battle of Roncesvalles (another link!) but it had been moved to Paris. Supposedly it was made from a unicorn horn, but I'm not sure how historically accurate that is. 

St.  Louis

Our final church was the Dominican church of Notre Dame, which was not linked with Blanche and Eleanor in any way. We were told to see it, though, by someone who knows about things, and were very pleased by its somewhat restrained Jesuit baroque style. All three churches have very unusual gray brick ceilings, which I've never seen before. And Notre Dame DID have a link -- a painting of St. Louis, who was Blanche's son. 

In the morning we headed to Poitiers -- the real seat of Eleanor's power. But because of distances and highways and mistakes with maps and itineraries that you don't need to know about, we went first to the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, north of Poitiers in the Loire Valley. 

Maybe the kitchen?

The abbey was founded in the early 1100s as part of the Benedictine order -- most unusually, with structures housing both monks and nuns, and with both sections ruled by an abbess. 

Eleanor and her descendants funded the abbey, and Eleanor moved there in 1200, as she does in The Queen's Granddaughter. She lived at Fontevraud until her death in 1204 and is buried there alongside her husband King Henry II of England and her son Richard the Lionheart. King John's wife Isabelle is also buried there, though her effigy is weirdly smaller than the others. Eleanor herself commissioned the effigies (making sure she was shown reading a book!), so we can only speculate what this means she thought about Isabelle, whom she sort of kidnapped to give to her son John as a wife.

Fontevraud has been declared a UNESCO site since our last visit, and it shows -- much of the abbey has been renovated and it is more crowded. Still, a hush falls when you enter the chapel that holds the bones of the Plantagenet kings and queens. To me, Fontevraud is the place where it is easiest to imagine Eleanor of Aquitaine -- weary at the end of her life, but completely in charge, designing her own tomb and still holding court, even if she ruled only over monks and nuns.

City of Eleanor

Saturday market in Poitiers

Okay, now I want to move to Poitiers. 

But we cannot do this for two reasons: first, one of us inadvertently destroyed the plumbing in our Poitiers hotel, and second, the other of us insisted on speaking broken Spanish instead of French to the waiters and museum docents throughout the town and then, when they replied in perfect Spanish, not understanding a word. We were revealed as the worst kind of tourists and are probably no longer welcome here.

Poitiers was the home of the Dukes of Aquitaine -- and the Duchess, Eleanor, of course. This was Eleanor's beloved city, where she grew up and where she married the favorite of her two husbands. It was also where, I was informed by a tour guide today (to my embarrassment), her son Richard the Lionheart was born. (Oh dear, I just looked it up and apparently she was wrong. He was actually born in Oxford, England. Misinformation is everywhere!)

Notre Dame Grande

Poitiers was foggy and chilly but a lovely little city, not too crowded, relaxed, full of good food. Our first stop of the day was St. Peter's Cathedral, built by Eleanor and her second husband, King Henry II. 

St. Hilaire

On the way we passed a huge Saturday market, the early Gothic church of Notre Dame Grande, closed for renovations, and the Romanesque church of St. Hilaire, a UNESCO site because it is on the Camino de Santiago. It too was closed -- a fire last month did considerable damage. We knew about the closures so weren't unpleasantly surprised.

We went on to St. Peter's Cathedral. It's a very tall early Gothic church, full
of light. There is an original stained-glass window in the apse depicting the Crucifixion, commissioned by Eleanor and Henry, that has a pane showing the two benefactors presenting a copy of the window itself to God. There is another panel below the main part of the window featuring the royal couple's four sons: Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, and John. It was just glorious. I took maybe a hundred photos.

Salle de pas perdus

Then we visited the Palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine (and the Duchess), of which only one room is viewable. Luckily, it was a room that makes an appearance in The Queen's Granddaughter -- the great hall, called the Hall of Lost Footsteps because it's so huge that one's footsteps cannot be heard in it. It wasn't hard to imagine the banquet I describe in the book taking place in it, with its immense fireplaces and lofty ceilings.

Baptistry

After that we headed to the St. John Baptistry, an edifice begun in Roman times and remade through the 8th century. Octagonal like many baptistries (representing the seven days of creation and the Resurrection), it contained original wall paintings of John the Baptist and Christ from the 11th century, which Eleanor would have seen, and one of Emperor Constantine from the 13th century. The colors were still remarkably vivid.

Done for the day with history -- and, I fear, with Eleanor and Blanche, unless we find further traces in Paris (we're kind of addicted so we're going to keep looking!), we drove out for a Haut-Poitou wine tasting to make up for the closed wineries from the day before. We tried something called a sauvignon gris that I'd never heard of -- very local, sprightly and refreshing -- from a charming woman in our third tiny family-owned winery, and bought a bottle. And then bought a bottle of Gamay. No chance those will fit in our luggage! We'll just have to leave some clothes behind.