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

The Burning of Atlanta Completed

Trail of Beers

Nov. 23-24

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so most of the bars were closed. 

Maryellen and Kenny were coming to pick me up a little after one, so I set out in the direction of Max Lager’s in search of beer shortly before noon. 

On the way, I passed what qualifies as a historical site. This is the kind of stuff you find all over the former slave states, and most of it dates to the period after Reconstruction until the 1930s or ’40s. 

A plaque in a park on Peachtree Street has the headline “Historic Reconciliation.” Jefferson Davis sometime in the 1880s (long after the armies of the rebellion lost the Civil War) was dedicating a statue in memory of some local bigwig. According to the plaque, the former rebel general James Longstreet, who had been “estranged from Davis since Reconstruction,” rode up on his horse, dismounted, and gave Davis a big hug. 

Big deal. By then the slavery side leaders were all dying off. Robert E. Lee had his stroke in ’69. So they couldn’t be as picky any more about who they would associate with. 

This was an unusual find for my secessionist memorabilia collection because, on the one hand, it didn’t commemorate the boys in gray who fought for the principles of the Founding Fathers, and on the other, it had nothing to do with Stonewall Jackson.

While I was wiping off the oak leaves to photograph the plaque, a guy named Scott came up to me and started talking. He knew a lot about the neighborhood, or just as useful, was very skilled at making things up.

Max Lager’s is next to that little park, but it was closed.

The oldest church in Atlanta was down Peachtree Street, St. Luke’s, founded in 1864. The Methodist Church on the right was burned by Sherman. All that’s original is the bell.

Scott pointed out some other stuff, too, as we walked down the street together. Then we parted ways when he directed me into St. Luke’s Park, which is part of the church grounds. That’s when he asked me for a little help. Hell, the tour was worth five bucks, easy.

I got back to the hotel in plenty of time to meet Maryellen and Kenny at one-thirty. So I had a couple of beers at the hotel bar. The Stella was better, but still too close to flat. They also serve a local IPA there called Hoplanta, and that was very good.

Ken and Mare’s son, Thomas, was with them. 

We went to a very good place called Legal Seafood, which is part of a chain that has restaurants up and down the East Coast. There’s one in Paramus, N.J., and I saw one in Washington. This one, on the west side of Midtown Atlanta, is in a perfect location, directly across the street from the Georgia Aquarium. Fish doesn’t get fresher than that. (After all, Legal says it’s seafood is so fresh that “one day the main course took a bite out of the appetizer.”)

This franchise was running a turkey special for Thanksgiving. 

There was a nice wine menu, so I had a Latour Chardonnay with dinner. Raw oysters are always terrific, and they are very good for dietary iron. I know this from the Internet, so it must be true.

Turkey is great because of the go-withs. The meat itself isn’t all that tasty, but the gravy and the stuffing are always comfort food. So are Southern style vegetables. I never enjoyed broccoli more. It was cooked soft and mixed with a cheese sauce.

The chocolate pudding cake went perfectly with port. 

After dinner, we walked down the block and took a stroll through the Centennial Olympic Park, where the Olympic games and the bombing took place in ’96.

The park apparently replaced a rundown neighborhood and now is crowded by commercial and cultural buildings, including the World of Coca-Cola. The photo of the day is a feature of Coke World, with a four-story Coke bottle inside a glass tower.

The skating rink was playing loud music, but the real attraction was the fountain. Maryellen pointed out to me that it is a mosaic of the Olympic rings. Jets of water come up in various patterns out of the rings, and that’s what I saw first. People cross the jets to have their photos taken. One lady was stuck inside the fountain for a while.

Friday morning, I got up at five so I wouldn’t have to rush and would still get to the airport early.

I walked uphill a couple of blocks to the Peachtree Center MARTA station, and was at the airport in about half an hour or so. I was there a couple of minutes past eight for a ten-forty five flight.

All I had taken was a couple of cups of coffee, and when I started for the gate, I became concerned. Except for a Starbucks, the only food and drink that I could see were Cokes out of vending machines and pre-made sandwiches offered on shelves behind plastic curtains. I walked to the other end of the D gates terminal. There were two bars, but they were closed. Just about when I was ready to despair, I fell on the Georgia Peach Bar and Grille.

They couldn’t draw beer before nine. Fair enough, I guess, so I had the BLT with a glass of water and waited. At nine, the bartender started mixing a champagne cocktail (another excellent breakfast drink) and let us all know the taps were open for business.

While I was nursing a Sweetwater 420, a lady came in and asked, “What local brews do you have?” Like wow, man, deja vu. That’s my first question.

I’ve got this good system worked out. You drink on the ground and sleep in the plane. I was so far out that when the plane touched down in Charlotte, I got tossed. I thought we were dodging missiles.

The Taste of Carolina in the B terminal at Charlotte has North Carolina brews. I sampled the Olde Mecklenburg Brewery Copper, an amber ale made in Charlotte. It was Americanized, quite a bit lighter than I expected. It won’t replace Duvel or an ESB, as ales go, but it was still good.

Hoppyum IPA from Foothills Brewery in Winston-Salem is well named, very tasty and bitter.

I’m on the last leg of the trip right now. I’m waiting for Joanna, who’s coming in from Phoenix at seven. 

I killed an hour at Ruby Tuesday next to the gate in terminal A. My bag was waiting in an office next to the baggage claim.

I’m in terminal C and have two hours to kill. I may have to go back to A, though, to find a bar.

P.S. Terminal B has the City Point Bar outside the security perimeter. I’m sending this from there.

Except for the cab ride, Harry’s back home for a while.

Be well, all.

The Burning of Atlanta, IV

Communing With the Plant and Frog World

Nov. 22

It’s a little bit different here. I looked it up and Atlanta is about seven degrees of latitude south of home. It’s late November, and half the trees are losing their leaves. Even so, the pansies are still in bloom.

Inspired by my insights into the wonders of Nature, I headed for the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in Piedmont Park, one of the city’s principal public spaces. When I got there it was sunny, and it looked like a regular park.

But that’s not the case all over town. I passed Mayor’s Park, a triangle on Peachtree Street, a block from the Folk Art Park, at dusk a couple of days ago and people were bedding down there in sleeping bags. 

On the way to Piedmont Park, I passed an ancient (or ancient-looking) brick building labeled “Atlanta Chapter, D.A.R.” It was clear that the ladies hadn’t been there for a while. I can’t imaging the Daughters of the American Revolution letting the paint peel that much. Or living with a window out.

I learned many things at the gardens. Camellias bloom in the winter here. Some vegetables—collards and spinach, for instance—are also in season all winter long. I found a recipe for kale chips. 

The Canopy Walk is an elevated walkway a few hundred feet long that lets you get above the shrubs and walk among the upper limbs of the trees.

This trip has not been hard traveling. I haven’t been lost once. But I did have some trouble finding my way out of the Conservatory (Yes, as in “Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe.”) but that was only for a few seconds. 

The Conservatory is one of several climate-making enclosures in a complex at the Botanical Gardens. There is an orchid house. That was almost spooky. Orchids take many shapes and come in a wide variety of colors. Some are huge, like the Flower that Ate Cleveland, and others are tiny. They’re beautiful, but somehow they all manage to look dangerous. Some samples were n pots and others were growing out of the bark of trees. 

To give the orchids and the jungle the moist climate they need, a misting system spreads a fine artificial rain from time to time. It kicked in while I was in the orchid house, so I had to get out before the mist took the creases out of my suit.

The same complex also houses a desert exhibit of plants from Africa and Madagascar. The sign says none of the plants is a cactus. Cacti are American. But like cacti, the plants are frequently covered with spines and thorns. This is to keep animals from eating them for their stored water. Some have developed toxins for the same purpose.  

The most striking thing of all was the exhibit of frogs. They live in miniature rainforest habitats, and it’s sort of like those puzzle illustrations where you have to find the hidden animals. The something or other terribilis is a yellow Colombian frog about an inch long. It carries enough toxins to kill six people—that is, if the poison gets into the blood stream by eating it or through the skin. At least, that’s what the sign says. 

There’s another variety of frog that is almost transparent, as some tropical fish are.

But the photo of the day is of the blue frogs. They are just about that blue. Some fish and birds are blue, but this is the first time I have seen a four-legged animal this color.

There is an extensive “edible garden” outside. That’s where I learned about winter vegetables in Georgia.   Kale chips is one of several recipes on signs designed to be photographed. A striking feature is a wall of herbs trained to grow in horizontal flats.

One of the real reasons that I wound up at the Botanical Gardens is that it is in Midtown. I have learned since Sunday that Buckhead has lost its position as Atlanta’s top party spot. Now it’s Midtown.

It seems most of the beer I have been writing about was unavailable only a few years ago.  Nobody in town was allowed to sell a beer with more than 5 percent alcohol by volume. An ordinance changed that in the middle of the last decade and the craft beers started to flow in.

Most of them are available in Midtown. 

After the Botanical Gardens, it was past three o’clock. So I strolled back to Peachtree and 10th Streets, near the Midtown MARTA station. A chain of bars down here under the unlikely name of Taco Mac sells a selection of literally hundreds of beers. Most are craft beers from the United States. I stayed with Georgia beers to maintain some focus. There were only one or two dozen of those.

The food menu didn’t look great, but I had had a sandwich at the cafe in the Botanical Gardens, so I wasn’t looking for food. Red Brick Laughing Skull Amber is nutty with a bitter finish. Terrapin Golden Ale is flowery. Joanna would say “like drinking perfume”—but in a good way. 

O’Dempsey’s Big Red, at 6 percent, was the strongest of the three. After all it was still mid-afternoon, and I didn’t want to incapacitate myself that early. This one tasted a little more like an IPA than an Irish red. It was less nutty and more hoppy. 

I went back to the hotel to rest, and to call Maryellen about arrangements for Thanksgiving Day.

Later, I went to Maxwell’s Tavern, also in Midtown, for dinner. They served up steak frites with a filet mignon and a salad for twenty bucks. The bartender, Matt, introduced himself and asked me if this was my first time there. A few minutes later, the manager came up to me, called me by name, and set down an appetizer of nachos, because this was my first time at Maxwell’s and they wanted to make sure I had a good time. 

With the filet, the bacon in the nachos, and fried potatoes, I didn’t even try to finish it all. It would be enough to stop my heart. And if my vices are going to take me out, then dear God, please don’t let it be something as boring as eating too much red meat.

By the end of the evening, I was feelng my age and took a cab back to the Hilton.

To Kate

Another note to Brian

If you blow up the photo and read the signs on the windows, you'll see that Brian doesn't have to go to Pattaya, after all, to find an establishment that needs a sign specifically prohibiting weapons.

This is Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles on Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta.

Love ya, Darlin.

Dad

The Burning of Atlanta, III

Folk Art and House Brews

Nov. 21

I needed a map to find a place to have breakfast outside a hotel. It seems this part of downtown is hotel central. The Corner Cafe Bakery is easy to find. Turn right outside the hotel, left onto Baker Street, cross Peachtree Center Avenue to Peachtree Street, and there it is.

A block away, West Peachtree Street branches off Peachtree Street. At the corner of West Peachtree Street and West Peachtree Place, there is the Best Western Plus Inn at the Peachtree. That “at the Peachtree” really narrows it down.

A brewer at Max Lager’s brew pub told me Atlanta has 84 streets with “Peachtree” in the name. Maryellen said more than a hundred, but she may have been counting the suburbs, too.

I stepped out of the hotel and noticed a building in the distance. It may have been there the day before,  but I was only now catching up. Very tall, red, and by itself. But the funniest thing is the top, which looks like the framework for an incomplete pyramid. And then instead of the usual Zeppelin mooring mast in the manner of the Empire State Building, the thing is capped with what from a half mile away seems to be a marble obelisk, like something Cleopatra lost.

After breakfast I went out to see what it was. on fhe way I passed a memporable piece of work. Anything involving nake ladies dancing with whips is notable.

I found that the mystery structure was the Bank of America building. I had passed the Bank of America Plaza, the building’s front yard, in the dark the other night on the way to the Fox Theater and the Publik Draft House. The large plaza in front of the building was lined with lighted trees, and I didn’t notice the top.

In the morning the tree lights were out. It’s November and the petunias are blooming next to the walk.

On the way up I passed Max Lager’s Wood-Fired Grill and Brewery. I made a note of that. 

On the way back I passed something very curious. There was a windmill, almost a large pinwheel, turning so I went to find out what it was.

What I found is called Folk Art Park. It occupies three corners of the intersection of Frank McGill Boulevard and Courtland Street. Interstate 75 runs under the intersection. You can zoom in and see the top of all this on Google Maps in the satellite view.

One corner has a painted wall and several cylindrical structures dressed as heads—a little touch of Easter Island here in Atlanta. Another has fantasy animals, striped and polka-dotted creatures on cutouts that suggest a rolling meadow.

The wheels are on the third corner, and part of that is the picture of the day.

I was hanging out at the hotel for a while reading the Times, checking e-mail, and being lazy. So in the afternoon when it was time for a beer, I walked back to Max Lager’s. 

The building is (or is decked out to look like) an old commercial site—iron stairs, plenty of room for vats and barrels and pool tables. It was the middle of the afternoon and when I got there it was quiet. One guy was eating his lunch and talking with two men behind the bar.

It really is a brewery. So I started with the house wheat beer, Collaborator Wheat Wine, so called because it runs about 8.5 percent alcohol. It was like no wheat beer I’ve had before. It was dark amber and downright smoky. Very full of flavor, too. 

The Abbey Ale was weak as Belgian knock-offs go, but still very drinkable. Many Belgians are too strong to go comfortably with most meals. That’s why I often save Chimay for dessert. This was a little tamer and probably would go well with a steak.

According to Gene, the bartender, the beer list keeps changing. They make a wide variety and frequently swap selections in and out. 

One of the brewers, Ron, said you won’t find any fruit beers. Maybe pumpkin ale once in a while, but nothing with blueberries, for instance.

The man finishing his lunch was Alan, the owner. He said the brewers tend to be conservative in their approach but always try to add “mmm” to the beer. They’re not looking for exotic flavors, but for something that makes you go “mmm” when you drink it.

Nothing like having a beer with guys who enjoy their work.

One that’s almost always on the menu, Gene said, is the Hopsplosion IPA. According to the menu, it is “intensely hoppy India pale ale with a toasted malt backbone to back up a citrusy/spicy finish from aggressive hopping with a blend of hops from the Pacific Northwest.” It was sharp, nicely bitter, and full.

I was dressed in the usual way for visiting a city—jacket, vest, and flannel trousers, black and grey. While I was working on the IPA, a guy came up to me and said I looked sharp. He said, “We were joking in the back. We said you must be James Bond’s consultant.”

All right. It was almost as cool as having a nomad call me “frequent flyer.”

But after three beers I was ready to go back to the hotel to wait for Maryellen and Kenny.

They were delayed so we went right out to dinner when they got to the hotel. 

We strolled to Baraonda, about a mile from the Hilton. It’s an Italian restaurant a block up Peachtree Street from the Fox Theater. 

The food is not generally good in Atlanta. I told you about the Brunswick stew. I had country fried chicken at the Publik House. It may have been country fried, but the meat clearly had been factory breaded and packed.

Baraonda (I don’t know if the “a” and “o” in the middle are pronounced together or separately) is another story. The food was terrific. I had a wonderful pasta dish with meat sauce. Maryellen gave me a sample of her lasagne, which is the best I’ve ever tasted. The Sangiovese and Chianti were good. This was another mild Chianti. Larry says Chianti has generally high in tannins, but oddly enough, the last two Chiantis I’ve had have seemed relatively mellow. But then, I was eating a very savory dish, and that would affect my perception of the wine.

The Valpolicella was terrific with dessert.

It wasn’t too late when we finished, but all the museums and the zoo were long closed, so we finished the evening a block south, at the Publik Draft House. This time I had their house brand IPA, which was crisp and tasty, as a draft IPA should be. I had another local brew, too, but I was wearing down and didn’t take notes.

We strolled back to the hotel. Mare and Ken went for their car.

I went upstairs and conked out. I found my money clip lying on the floor this morning and have no idea how it got there. So far, so good.

Nov. 22

Good observation on the Chianti....fatty food will mellow tannins and acidity in the wine. That's why it's so ideal with food! And some Chiantis are made in a more "international" style for the world market; the emphasis is on fruit and softness.

Larry