Parador Cazorla; Parador Jaen Spain

The Cazorla parador, a newbuild, has an isolated location in the middle of a nature reserve in Andalucia. It's reached by driving almost twenty miles along a winding mountain road. The decor is fairly simple, with a decidedly rustic accent. The rooms are spacious enough but hardly lavish. There's an outdoor pool but its not heated. The environs are heavily forested. The whole atmosphere is that of a hunting lodge in the mountains. Obviously, one comes here not for the creature comforts, although those are certainly more than adequate, but for the absolute quiet in which one is immersed the moment one enters into the surrounding woods. There are hiking paths in various directions, game abounds. Out for an evening stroll, we encountered a whole family of wild boars. This is an ideal spot if you need to recharge your batteries after a concentrated and arduous period of sightseeing.

Jaen is a different proposition entirely. The parador is a thirteenth century Arab fortress, built at a time when the Moors were being hard pressed by the Christian Reconquista and increasingly retreated into hilltop fortresses whence they imposed an indirect control over the irrigated lands below which were cultivated for the most part by Berber peasants. And this is certainly a hilltop. In order to reach the parador one drives, seemingly forever, upwards through the town. Whenever one thinks that surely one has arrived, there's another set of hairpin curves to surmount. The parador, once one has reached it, is a massive structure with a huge square tower built of massive stone blocks. Inside the decor is vaguely oriental, some of the public rooms echo parts of Granada's Alhambra and the overall feeling is one of tasteful opulence. The views of the surrounding mountains are stunning and there's an outdoor pool. The town has a splendidly decorated Baroque cathedral and the largest Moorish baths in Spain. Just to the north is the junction of the Guadalquivir and Guadarama rivers and it's worth one's while to make a little circle drive through the region in order to get a feeling for the immensity of Andalucia's olive plantations.