Roman Villa Ruins in Almedinilla

These Roman ruins of a Roman villa date to the 1st century AD. 

The villa was destroyed when the Visigoths came.

Below is a drawing of the villa with a central courtyard.

Here is what exists now as the courtyard..

The floors are still exquisite mosaics.  I took lots of photos of these mosaic floors as you will see as you scroll on.

The ruins are totally under cover now with a raised walkway throughout to see it.

Above is the formal dining area.  A waterfall down that sluiceway in the back and a fountain came up through this center.

This picture in the museum represents how the dining area would have been used.

Grave stones above laying flat.

The engineering of the water flow was amazing.  All of this disappeared with Visigoth invasion.

We were told the story of the statue of  Hypnos that was found when these ruins were excavated. The mayor of Almedinilla took the statue and hid it behind his bed because he knew that it would end up in Madrid.  Once the museum was built  20 years later, the statue was brought out for display.

Somehow when the Visigoths smashed the statues they only managed to break off a hand of Hypnos.

This statue would have had prominent place in the Roman villa.

Cooking Lesson

 Pablo, our Untours guide, gave us a cooking class using his mother's home.  We were on the patio.

First we made sangria.  We peeled and sliced peaches. Into the pitcher with a stick of cinnamon, white wine, seltzer and some sugar.

In preparation for making a Spanish omelet, next we each peeled a potato and diced it.  Pablo put it all in a pan with a small onion diced and lots of olive oil to cook.

Below his mom was draining off the excess olive oil in preparation for adding the potatoes to 6 beaten eggs.

All of that then went back into the skillet for the eggs to cook.

While eggs cooking we prepared the sauce. Three tomatoes, peeled, seeded and dejuiced went into blender. Part of a green pepper and a clove of garlic were added.

That was topped with day old bread with crust removed and then lots of olive oil.

Blender went for several minutes.

Meanwhile omelet was flipped to a plate and placed back in pan to brown on both sides twice. Below the finish.

My slice.

Topped with tomato sauce.

Since arriving home I have made the omelet and the sauce. Both are easy recipes and quite tasty.

Above and below were the plants on the patio.  Plants where I live that are considered indoor ones.  Not in Spain!