Last weekend the hubby and I took a trip to a little known city in Madrid: Morella. Our visit was in celebration of the baptism of our friends' new baby - Isabelle. This is the new arrival for the friend whose baby shower I went to a couple of months ago. This little girl is a perfect angel - beautiful and mellow. Our friends have been visiting Morella for years - its a special town for them and they thought it would be the perfect spot for the baptism. The city is about 4 1/2 hours from Madrid by car and about an hour outside of Valencia. I was surprised that not too many Spaniards I asked were familiar with the city but, having visited now, I'm going to recommend that they check it out.

As our friend told us, Morella is "a town of about 3,000 inhabitants that dates back to the indigenous Iberians and that has seen the Romans, Moors, the Christian Reconquest, the Carlist Wars, Napoleon's occupation, and the Spanish Civil War. Even El Cid fought battles through here." The whole town is enclosed in the ancient castle walls.

It's a cute city and the hotel we stayed at was The Hotel Cardenal Ram. It is the former palace of Cardinal Ram, the senior clergy member of Morella in the 15th century. It was pretty - but we ended up with two twin beds that were a little small for us. Still, the general history of the place made up for it:

After checking in to the hotel, the hubby and I walked around a little bit and then had dinner in a pretty good restaurant:


I liked the grey and orange decor of the place and the dishes all had a nice presentation. Voila:


We had carpaccio and pulpa (octopus). The carpaccio was great but the octopus was a little bland - one of my consistent complaints about Spanish food. It's usually prepared grilled with a lot of paprika and can be great when done right, but this was just eh.
The next day was the baptism and it was held in the beautiful cathedral in Morella:


The inside of the church was also really beautiful:



The first picture there was of the star of our story, little Isabelle. She didn't make a peep through the whole service. After the baptism everyone headed down to the main street of Morella. There is a custom in Morella that the parents of a newly baptized baby throw candy and coinds to all the local kids. It was a melee.


I seriously thought someone was going to lose an eye - especially when they started chucking the coins. Despite being told this was a tradition, I'm not quite sure how well known this "tradition" is. Apparently one of the guests of the baptism over heard two locals talking. One asked the other what all the hubbub in the street with the candy was all about. The other responded "oh, I think one of the Americans converted to catholicism!" Awesome.
We had some time after the baptism to walk around the town a bit. There are some really adorable shops - Morella seems to specialize in honey and sheep cheese. I'm not sure what that's about - but every othe store sold honey and cheese. There were a lot of pretty little streets and corners:



We finished off the weekend with a brunch in the hotel and then a drive back to Madrid. It was a relaxing weekend and great to spend time with friends in such a pretty setting.