Hi travellers, we are planning a trip to Extremadura following Paradores route:
Gredos, Jarandilla de la Vera, Plasencia, Oropesa. I would appreciate your comments for villages to visit, restaurants/taverns and site seeing tips.

Thank you!

Of those places I have been only to Jarandilla,where I stayed at the parador. Here is the report I wrote; perhaps you will find it helpful:


http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...2&tid=34810840

Gredos to Jarandilla is over 2hr drive non-stop. Arenas is worth visiting, and not very big as the interesting part in the town center. Candeleda and Madrigal are much spoiled by tourism, being the first ones on the road. Villanueva and Valverde are worth a stop and walk, especially Valverde old quarters which is very small, it won’t take much time to visit. Losar is nice with the topiary along the road. You must stop at the Roman bridge, and walk down to the river. I remember it was just before entering the town, there is a sign and a restaurant. Jarandilla: the Parador is a nice building, with a good restaurant and an impressive breakfast. Another restaurant option here is Meson del Altozano, at calle del Altozano. It is worth a visit, has some enormous wood beams, and a cellar. You can ask them to prepare a cochinillo or whatever. Phone 927 560 716, I recommended to previously check as some places close on monday.
Visit in Jarandilla the Roman bridge (there are many in this area), there is a pond to bathe, charming. Nearby are Cuacos de Yuste, a nice visit, and the Monastery. Past the monastery you find Garganta la Olla, I rec driving there and walk the town, and drive back the same road, as continuing to Piornal and Jeste is a bad idea, very slow and winding.
At La Vera (the general name of the region) you can buy Pimentón, dried ground pepper, very good Buy it fresh, not in cans.
Plasencia is a bigger city, the Parador is well located with a private parking lot, as parking here is very difficult. Impressive monuments. Therer are several restaurants besides the Parador: Casa Juan (trad. food with a french touch), Viña la Mazuela (off town) and Los Monges.
Navalmoral de la Mata I have not visited.
Oropesa’s is one of the most beautiful Parador. I recommend to visit the building thoroughly, you’ll find the cell of San Pedro de Alcantara, who lived there as a guest in the mid XVI century. The restaurant is good with a good view if you get the proper table. The town is easy to walk, everything is around the Parador. In nearby Lagartera (2km.) there is a museum of their famous needlework, and a nice restaurant, Llares, www.llares.com, in a beautiful restored traditional house (reservation recomended). For shopping lace/ embroidery, I recomend the store of the late Eufemio Lozano, now run by his daughter Rocio. It is easy to find as when you take from the road the street up into town, it is the first on the right. (Av. Maestro Guerrero 61, phone 925450494, cell 607559041). Any Fodorite can say I'm sending him/her.

Thank you Fodorites!

Geokit,
We did a very similar trip to yours, following the Parador route, starting in Gredos and ending in Oropesa (Castilla la Mancha). It was one of our best explorations ever of rural Spain.

While staying at the Gredos Parador we discovered a great dining spot, the Milano Real, which I recommended to a Fodorite who loved the place. It's a sophisticated B&B with restaurant, whose owner is a sommelier. The best place to dine in that area, much nicer than the Parador's own restaurant.

While in Gredos we day tripped to charming, highly atmospheric, medieval Candelario (in the Salamanca province, near Béjar), we visited El Barco de Avila for white bean shopping at the Monday market on the square (be sure to try the local "judiones") and ventured as far west as the Parque Natural de las Batuecas and sierra de Francia to visit the virtually unchanged medieval village of Miranda del Castañar.

One day we stopped for lunch in Béjar at La Bejarana, a nice tip from poster, cova. We could have kept busy with walks in the Gredos park for several days, but needed to press on to Extremadura.

In Extremadura, from our base at Jarandilla in the pimentón (Spanish paprika)-rich Vera valley, we explored the eastern towns that josele mentions. We were quite amused by the topiary of Losar (a horticulturist has gone wild there prunning the village's trees), but our favorite medieval, highly picturesque towns in the valley are Valverde de la Vera and Villanueva de la Vera with their narrow, cobblestone streets with streams flooding through the center of them. Make sure you venture that far east, if time allows.

We also visited Cuacos de Yuste, the town of Juan de Austria, son of Emperor Charles V, and Charles V's final resting place, the Monastery of Yuste, which is surprisingly austere and a haven of tranquility. On the way up to the Monastery, be sure to stop on the right hand side of the rode to visit the German cemetery-the final resting place of 180 German soldiers from the 1st and 2nd World Wars whose ships capsized on Spanish shores or whose planes crashed on Spanish soil. An evocative spot.

If time allows, you should venture beyond Cuacos de Yuste up to the mountain village of Garganta la Olla, another very pretty place that time has forgotten.

The best views in the entire valley can be found from the village of Guijo de Santa Bárbara, above Jarandilla. Great at sunset!

Another excursion well worth the effort is to Hervás (south of Béjar, a a 5 km. detour off the N 630, on the EX 205), which has a very atmospheric ancient Jewish quarter. Quite a picturesque, unspoiled town, one of Spain's "most charming villages".
http://www.redjuderias.org/red/en/rv...vas/index.html

For lunch in Hervás I recommend Restaurante Nardi on Braulio Navas 19 (closed Tues.) Try the rice pudding cream and mango foam for dessert.

I would couple a visit to Hervás with a drive on west on the C 513a to the "resurrected from the floods" village of Granadilla (which I discovered in Penelope Casas "Discovering Spain"), which may seem to you like a beautiful abandoned movie set. It's a village that was abandoned when the area was flooded to create the Gabriel y Galán reservoir and is now being painstakingly restored, block by block. Climb up to the top of the castle for panoramic views.

On the drive down south to the Vera Valley on the N630 past Béjar, down the Valley of Ambroz, you could detour east just 8 km. on the CCV 11.2 to the Roman settlement of Cáparra.
www.guijodegranadilla.com/caparra.htm

For dining in the Vera valley, I feel the best place now is Ruta Imperial in the hotel of the same name in Jarandilla.
www.hotelruralrutaimperial.com
Again, a better choice than the Parador dining room.

We didn't stay at the Plasencia Parador but did lunch there in its beautifully tiled dining room (a real treat and good value for their 2 course with wine set lunch menu), visited the cathedral and and shopped for cheese at the Tues. market which has been going strong on the Plaza Mayor since the 12th century! And Plasencia's old quarter is filled with palaces and manor homes.

From the city, you should certainly venture down on the EX 208 to the National Park of Monfragüe (take a picnic lunch). You don't need an entire day, just a morning, entering the park at Villareal de San Carlos and driving as far in as the famous "Salto del Gitano", where you'll see a large collection of griffon vultures soaring overhead and the nearby castle in ruins, which you can climb up to for really wonderful vistas. This is a bird watcher's heaven.
www.monfrague.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3jiwnuAJ-E

We coupled our morning in the Monfragüe Park with a detour south off the A66 (before Cañaveral) to the diminutive Monasterio del Palancar (another Penelope Casas rec). Only 74 square meters in size and inhabited by only a half dozen Franciscan monks, it's considered the smallest monastery in the world. It can be visited by guided tour only.

If you had another morning, you could drive east towards the Portuguese border and the Alagón river valley to the town of Coria, a real "diamond in the rough", with its well preserved Roman walls and gates, the Duques de Alba castle and Santa María cathedral.

BTW, the Extremadura Tourist Board produces some really excellent brochures, booklets in English and a great driving map. There's a tourist office in Plasencia on El Rey 8 plus smaller offices in Coria, Hervás, Jarandilla de la Vera. And before you depart, take a look at
turismoextremadura.com

And for Oropesa, just follow josele's recommendations to the letter, including his dining reco and the lace/embroidery shop. At this Parador on a Sunday night we were rewarded with the best room in the house (other than the tower suite, El Peinador de la Reina), the huge one right above the castle entry, and we had the grandiose public rooms all to ourselves. Just heaven!

We also shopped for ceramics, reproduction pieces of 17th century patterns, in both El Puente del Arzobispo and Talavera de la Reina, which are chock-a-block with shops. We purchased from Cerámica Santa Fe on Ramón y Cajal in El Puente and Artesanía Talavera on Avenida de Portugal in Talavera, but if you're interested, you'll find plenty of wares in all price ranges in both towns-just stop at whatever store front that strikes your fancy. Prices here are much lower than at the Antigua Casa Talavera shop in Madrid.

Have a great trip!

Fantastic help! Thank you all once more!

Garrovillas had a wonderful town square, but that was 25 years ago, and who knows what development brought.