My Brain in Spain

First Pause on the Journey

Reached Dusseldorf around 6 this morning (22nd) and had a place to land. I don’t want to get too confident, because I realize it’s still December 21 in a large stretch of the world. But even so, it makes me wonder if the Maya haven’t printed another calendar overnight.

Now that the world hasn't ended, we have a two-hour layover before we board for Madrid. We will have a fruit cup and maybe a Pilsner.

I don’t know what to call the photo of the morning. It’s something we saw at the airport. Does somebody want to start a caption contest?

Dec. 22

Yum! It's nice when airlines offer free snacks at the airport. 

Larry

Dec. 22

Gorilla marketing.

Karl

Onward to Valencia

December 24

My computer says it’s 12:04 p.m. Sunday, but it’s on New Jersey time. It’s 18:04 here. We’re on a train about a half hour out of Madrid on the way to Valencia. We’re doing about 300 kilometers an hour in coche 8.

My ticket says coche 7, so it looks like I’m in the wrong car, but nobody seems to care.

The ground is flat here, though there were some mountains on the horizon. It has grown too dark to see the horizon well now. We’re due in Valencia around 7.

We got to Madrid on time, and cabbed to the hotel with no incident. Lots of Baroque buildings and fountains on the boulevards, or paseos.

I’m looking forward to Valencia, but Madrid is a fairly fantastic place on its own. Narrow cobblestone streets with speeding cabs.  Mostly pedestrians, though. Many of the squares are filled with Christmas vendors. Some are devoted to creche figures. Others are more in line with the secular Christmas. You can buy a hat with fuzzy reindeer antlers, for instance, or an effigy of Santa Claus. We have observed that fright wigs made of Mylar are a popular seasonal fashion statement.

Joanna took a nap in the afternoon, while I went out to visit the bars at a square near the hotel. There’s a statue of Garcia Lorca there. I guess it was built after Franco died. Garcia Lorca was one of the people that Franco’s supporters murdered in a roundup at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

We had been out strolling earlier and I noticed a sign for Naturalbier. So I went there first. It’s the name of the house beer, a German style Pilsner, and very good. 

When you order a beer here, you also get a snack with it. Twice I got a small plate with green olives, marinated pearl onions, and some sour gherkins. The olives are salty enough, but nowhere near that briny flavor I expected. They are very tasty, in fact. The onions also are very good, more savory than sweet. 

I strolled down the other way to the courthouse plaza, where I got a shot looking over the Paseo del Prado. 

Cervantes was also there, maybe in recognition of his being hounded by the Inquisition.

By the time Joanna woke up, around 5, all she had since Dusseldorf was a hot chocolate. I had taken several olives and a tomato salad. 

We stopped at a place near (I believe) Plaza de Santa Ana for tapas and a glass of Rioja. It was a plate of cold cuts and cheese. One of the cold cuts was supposed to be wild boar, but I don’t know which one. The weather was mild enough that we sat outside to eat.

The bars and restaurants were quiet during the afternoon and early evening. We got to the main square, Plaza Mayor, around seven or so. That’s where everybody was. They were crammed in there among the vendors and mountebanks and street musicians. It must have been Joanna’s birthday party.

A dog carrier sat on a small table. I heard the dog bark and then the box shook, as if the animal were going to jump out, but didn’t. The carrier door was open, so I figured it was a very disciplined dog, or timid, for one that sounded so aggressive. But no, it was a guy’s head inside, and he didn’t look like a dog at all. His nose was wrong for it.

Three guys were doing a similar table gag as skulls in top hats.

From there we went to the Market of St. Michael—so called because it’s on St. Michael’s square by St. Michael’s church. They sold us a glass of great Rioja there, too. 

The cathedral is on Calle Major, downhill a short way from the market. This is Spain, so it was pushing 8 o’clock at night, and places were starting to open and the streets to fill. The cathedral was open—just finishing a sung mass—when we got there.

After the service, we followed the crowd up a set of stairs to a shrine that overlooks the nave. I’m not sure what the shrine represents, but there was a silver medallion that seemed to be the center of attention. I include this bit of ignorance because, although I had no idea of what it was about, it was downright spooky. Like maybe a hangover from Fascist days, although I have no evidence to think that. It was very strange and a little disconcerting. That made it fun. 

The royal palace, unlike the castle in Prague, was closed, so we didn’t get to buy Juan Carlos a beer or even a Rioja. We had to go get that for ourselves across the street afterwards.

There was a fence at one end of the plaza between the palace and the cathedral. We were able to stand on the concrete base of a lightpost and get a glimpse over it into a valley full of lights.

We tried to get into a restaurant on the Plaza Mayor, but couldn’t get near the door.

We wound up at a place on the Calle Mayor that served a fantastic plate of bacalao. Not the dried salted cod but fresh cod done in a garlic and butter sauce and served with roasted sweet peppers. I don’t eat filets much because if there is going to be a single bone left in the meat, it will end up in my portion. Even with the damned bones, this was terrific.

We had dessert at La Pitarra Bodega. To me, a bodega is the Hispanic prototype of 7-Eleven. This one had a fantastic Rioja. Of course, that’s redundant. All the Riojas we’ve sampled have been fantastic. We also had pieces of cake flavored with almonds.

It was after 11 and these places were jammed, not only with the college-age crowd as you’d expect, but also with families. It seems that the later it gets the more the kids like to roughhouse in restaurants. They’re fun to watch. I remember doing the same thing myself.

It was after midnight local time that we got to the hotel and to sleep. It was 10:30 in the morning when I woke up. 

Today’s photo, by the way, is a view of the wall the hotel, the Vincci Soho. It’s sister hotel to the Vincci Avalon on 32nd Street where I’ve stayed a couple of times.

The wall may be decorated for Christmas or look like this all the time. I don’t know.

We went to the Prado, which is a five-minute walk from the hotel, which is on a street called Calle del Prado, which is just uphill from El Paseo del Prado, where the museum is.

We spent more than two hours in the Prado, looking at Goya, Velazquez, and general 16th and 17th century work, which included a lot of Titians. There was a special exhibition of work by a 19th century painter named Rico, whom I had never heard of. He was a landscape painter and did surprisingly tactile renderings of trees.

We didn’t try to see too much. There was no way to see even a quarter of it. 

The language and cultural barrier cropped up at the Atocha train station. I got into line and when it was my turn, I was told that the window only sold advance tickets. Tickets for today were available only at the one window with the longest line.

It went fast. We had an hour to kill and so we filled it with Rioja and tapas. But first we passed something I had never seen before. In the middle of the station is a solarium with palm trees. OK, that’s common enough, I guess, but it includes a pond with requisite goldfish, but also hundreds of turtles. I thought that was a bit creative.

We caught a 5:40 train and reached Valencia around 7.

More later, when I get another Internet connection.

Love to all.

 Dec. 25

Feliz Navidad y prospero año neuvo! to y'all from New Mexico!

Jack

And likewise everyone from Django Unchained (the D is silent)!

Karl