My Brain in Spain, tres

Feliz Navidad

Christmas Day

Still running on New Jersey time, I got up and made a quick run for coffee around 10:30 Christmas morning. Then I sent the previous e-mail.

We are continuing to celebrate Joanna’s birthday, and now we get to add Jesus’s birthday too. The bells rang all morning to say “feliz cumpleaños” to both of them.

It was one in the afternoon before we were on the street, so we took a short stroll to see a curious bridge. It has a semicircular array on one side that gives it a kind of post-modern feel. I assume this feature is entirely decorative. We had passed a store selling kitchen ware, and when we first saw the bridge down the street, Joanna said it looked like a paella pan.

The bridge spans a wide gully that used to be the Turia River. Apparently there was a bad flood in the 1950s and the city decided to divert the river. Now the old riverbed is filled with parks and a museum complex.

From the far side of the bridge, we took a cab to the restaurant where we had Christmas dinner reservations. It is one in an avenue of restaurants set side by side, and they were all busy. And they all had views of the Mediterranean.

At one window, kids were opening their Christmas gifts at a table.

This was the first time I had seen the Mediterranean. We went in and asked our restaurant to change our reservation from 3 to 4, and then we went onto the beach. 

We passed a man spraying water on a sand castle with towers that had to be 6 feet high or more. It included an effigy in sand of Spongebob Squarepants.

The sea was calm and dark blue, with very small waves, like a bay rather than an ocean. I’m not sure, but this arm of the Mediterranean may be called the Balearic Sea. Mallorca is out there somewhere.

We strolled along the beach for a while. Joanna was surprised (and so was I) to see ladybugs in the sand. Also a naked man sunning himself.

Dinner was a salad followed by paella Valenciana El Coso (the name of the restaurant). It had chicken, rabbit, artichoke, and snails. It was terrific. So was the house wine. When you walk in, you pass a wall of it in a glass case. The label is a wax (or maybe plastic) seal.

This was not a Rioja but, according to the label, a wine of Castille and Leon. It was sharper than Rioja, but then, it comes from a colder climate. 

We went back to the beach for another look after dinner, then cabbed back to the Plaza de la Reina, where all the shops and most of the restaurants were open. The streets were packed. 

I guess everybody gets tired of being inside all day, so they have to come out in the evening. 

We walked to City Hall Square and around some side streets. On the way back, just across from the top of our street, was a tapas bar that had a word like “euskali” on the door. I think that’s what the Basques call themselves, so we went in there.

I don’t know if we saw any Basques, but we did meet Bob and Meg from Appleton, Wis. She studied in Madrid years ago, and they travel to Spain every year. 

He owns a deli that among other things, serves tapas and only Wisconsin cheeses.

She teaches kids in the local lockup. They are doing time for anything from breaking and entering to truancy.

It rained for a while when we were inside. When it let up, we went to the hotel where I believe I passed out. I am not sure.

A feliz Navidad indeed.

Harry

Dec. 30

A little more wine knowledge tutoring. You mentioned in a previous e-mail you drank a wine from Castilla y Leon and you noticed how it had less body and "stuffing" than the Riojas you were enjoying so much.

You postulated that the weather was probably warmer in Rioja, making for riper, more intense wines.

Well, Riojas are generally much better than wines from Castilla y Leon, but it's not because of the weather. Indeed, Castilla y Leon is one of the hottest growing areas for wine in Spain—lots of flat land and high yields. Rioja is cooler with more hills (and even mountains, if I'm not mistaken). Yields are kept lower, and the struggle of the vines in harsher conditions—cool nights, rockier soils, etc. —make for more interesting, more complete wines.

Even if the grapes can actually get riper in Castilla y Leon, they don't have the complexity and other characteristics you'll find in Riojas. It's why Rioja is one of the premium wine producing areas in Spain, not far from the Basque country in Northwest to north central Spain. 

You are actually closer to another important area for red wine that some say is even better than Rioja, if not smaller and less well known, but the wines are generally even more expensive. It's also made from the tempranillo grape, which is known by other regional names in some parts of Spain.

The wine to look for is called Ribero de Duero. Might be tough to get by the glass, and best to find a bottle with a little age on it. I bit "stiffer" than Rioja—more tannin and acidity; less use of American oak to soften it during aging. You'll enjoy it.

Larry

My Brain in Spain, 2

Feliz Cumpleaños

December 24

The first place we saw in Valencia after we checked in was the view from the balcony.

We walked the short distance to the Plaza de la Reina, where the cathedral is. There is a Nativity scene inside where people were having their photos snapped while a mass was in progress in another part of the nave.

After the mass, we were looking at some of the side altars. I don’t know if we’ll get to see the Holy Grail or not. We also missed the left arm of St. Vincent, which is supposed to be behind the main altar, because they started to turn off the lights at 8 and chase everybody out.

We went back today and discovered that the cathedral is open for tourism during the day, Maybe the grail and the left arm of St. Vincent will be part of the self-guided tour for 4.5 euros. We’ll try that later.

We had dinner at La Taberna Vintara, a restaurant on the Plaza de la Reina: Three different Riojas (all splendid), pan fried squid, and pan fried salmon. This comes with french fries and green salad on the plate. The food here so far has been terrific. I didn’t even mind the mouthful of bones with the salmon. I just was careful to check before I bit down hard.

After dinner, the waiter poured us glasses of something I couldn’t identify. It was delicious, a little sweet, but not too much so. We asked what it was.

It was moscatel. It’s the inspiration for the cheap wine that the old winos used to drink.  But this was good.

We left the restaurant at quarter to 11 and started to wander. We came without plan to the Plaza de la Virgen, where there is a church with a great name, Our Lady of the Forsaken. So of course we had to visit there. Another mass was in progress, so we stayed for part of that.

Then we strolled through some of the narrow winding residential streets of a neighborhood that I think is called Carmen. We found a pleasant little Socialist wine bar on one of the side streets. It was full of kids and books and a projection screen, probably for political nights. At least, I guess it was Socialist rather than Fascist literature on the shelves. 

We bought a few glasses of wine and ate olives. Then when it was near midnight, the official start of Joanna’s birthday, we headed back in the general direction of the Plaza de la Reina. 

On the way, we found what we wanted. It was a shop that sold tapas and wine. We had a Rioja and a Moscatel, and some cake, so Joanna would start her New Year with wine and dessert.

One of the great things about visiting Spain—aside, that is from the great food and wine, beautiful architecture, dark history, and general exoticness—is that we Yankees don’t have to reset our internal clocks. It seems that the Spanish circadian rhythm is just about in synch with mine. I get up around 4 or 5 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and go to bed around 8 p.m.

So does everybody else around here. After her birthday dessert, we strolled some more and then called it a night.

It was sometime around 2 local time, but only 8 at home.

Same thing with waking up—10:30 local time is 4:30 at home. There were lots of people up already at that hour when I went out for coffee, but nowhere near the crowd that would be on the street later.

We started the day around noon with a visit to La Plaça de la Ajuntament, which is Valencian for City Hall Square. The entire square is surrounded by Baroque buildings. Most date from the early or mid 20th century, but were designed to look old. They have domes, niches, animals, and allegorical figures. I think the city’s official bird is the bat because there’s one on top of city hall.

Almost every window has a balcony, but then, that’s true all over town. Maybe all over the country, but I wouldn’t know because I haven’t seen that much of it.

In the park across from the city hall, there was another Nativity scene and people getting their pictures taken in front of it.

From there we walked up to the central market. It was packed with people getting ready for Christmas dinner. Everything looked so bright and fresh it was hard not to buy stuff. We wound up restricting ourselves to a couple of oranges, a few dates, and a baguette, for breakfast Christmas morning in case there was no place open.

Eels are sold live at the market. The vendor puts the ones you want in a bowl and then cuts their heads off for you. It sucks to be an eel.

The market shut down around 4, so we left.

We wandered around the old city. In fact, everywhere we have been so far is within the old city. We came to the Square of the Patriarch. Don’t know who that is or what he is patriarch of. It may have been Pope Alexander VI. His statue was there along with one of King Ferdinand and a few others. 

We have been watching “The Borgias” on Netflix. Alexander VI is a Borgia pope, father of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. In one of the episodes, Cesare Borgia is made bishop of Valencia.

There were orange trees in the plaza. There are orange trees everywhere here, planted in parks and by curbs. Some of the trees in the Plaza del Patriarca were in flower. Others had green and ripe oranges. Maybe he oranges grow all year round in this climate. Palm trees also flourish here.

In yet another park, we saw huge banyans. That park had a tent with a scary looking guy in a gold suit and turban. On the other side a sign explained what that was all about. Your kids can tell what they want for Epiphany to the emissaries of the three kings. They can sit on an emissary's knee to have their photos taken. Santa Claus gets a break over here.

Workmen are restoring a courtyard at the University of Valencia. The courtyard, from what I could make of the inscriptions, was dedicated in 1902 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the start of classes there. The school was chartered in 1499. Medallions on the walls memorialize illustrious graduates from previous centuries.

At one point we were almost lost. We had taken a few narrow streets and were getting a mite peckish. So we checked out a couple of places, but they were drinks only, which is kind of rare in my limited experience here.

I didn’t really know where we were, but then noticed a street sign. Some are in Valencian here and others Castillian. It was the Carrer dels Cavillers, or Calle de los Caballeros. (I’ve seen it both ways and can’t remember which this one was.)

I actually knew (almost) where we were. This, according to one of the guide books, was one of the original Roman roads back in colony days—which here run back to the B.C.s.

All I had to do was stop somebody on the street, try to say “La Plaza de la Reina” without overaspirating the “p” and trilling the “r”, because Gentlemen’s Street comes near there.

It was just before the Plaza of the Virgin that we found a promising looking restaurant called Generalife. We stopped for food. It was getting dark and we were concerned than everything would close for Christmas Eve, leaving us with a baguette, a couple of Mandarins, and yogurt for dinner.

Not to worry. This guy wasn’t even starting to serve food until 8. So we made a 9:30 reservation and moved on. We had already stopped at the cathedral and learned that midnight mass started at 11:30.

We had a couple of Riojas—along with a plate of olives—at Generalife for refreshment first. Well, I had the Riojas. Joanna had hot chocolate.

We went back to the hotel to rest and change into black and red Christmas clothes.

For dinner we had the fish casserole for two: langostinos, tiny clams, mussels, tuna, and monkfish in a rich red broth. We arrived early, but they took us to a table up on the balcony. The roof had dark timbers and white vaulted stucco. One wall had a copy of a medieval painting celebrating one of the many conquests of Valencia from somebody else, probably the Moors. There was the Valencian flag with gold and red stripes and a blue field. The pole was topped by a helmet and a bat in the spread-wing Dracula pose.

The place was packed. There were only two waiters. I think they cooked the casserole while we waited.

It was good that we started early. We were late to church. Not that it mattered. The service lasted two hours. The sermon alone ran more than 20 minutes.

When we came out at 1:30, I think I may have been tired. There was a bar open across the street, and I only took two steps in that direction before I gave up and headed back toward the hotel. 

The hotel management gave us a bottle of cava, made not far from here, in fact, for Christmas. We toasted Joanna’s birthday and Jesus’s with sparkling wine.

I’m wiring this on Christmas morning while the bells of St. Martin next door are ringing in the holiday. Here are more bells, from Christmas Eve.

Dec. 24

Can I have your frequent flyer miles from this year as my Christmas present?

Quaff one for me and enjoy the holidays with our prosperous friends!

Charlie

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