November, 2010


Final Impressions: It’s All About the People

What a trip! Seventy days, nine countries, eight plane rides, an overnight cruise, multiple trains, taxis, buses, subways and trolleys, several outside elevators and almost 5,000 miles by car. We can’t forget that there was a new language for each new country with some interesting regional twists.

Somebody, maybe Rick Steves, said that travel is accelerated living. For a rural Minnesota couple in their dotage we found that all of our senses were engaged and active at hyper speed for over two months, now followed by deceleration akin to running into a brick wall.

The smells in the streets of garlic, onions and meats cooking; in the markets of spices and fresh fish; the prevalent aroma of wine in St. Emilion and Porto; cooked sugar and coffee in the patisseries and baked bread in boulangeries; the sight of laundry drying on lines everywhere; the timber frame architecture of Scandinavia; the walled cities of France and Spain; the yachts and the worn fishing boats in the harbors; the little old ladies drying fish in Portugal and the North African men gathered in the coffee shops in Arles; the magnificence of the churches and mosques counter imposed over centuries of strife and bloodshed; the mountains and valleys and rivers all with stories from the past.


There is the feel of cobblestone streets underfoot; the cool breeze in the morning sunshine on the Mediterranean coast or the blast of the wind off the ocean or the mistral from the mountains; the light touch of a pickpocket in your pants or the crush of a crowd on a packed subway; the morning aches and pains after a ten hour day of hiking urban hills; the sounds of vendors in the outdoor markets hawking their wares; of bands parading and playing in Carcassone and Granada; the wailing laments of the Fado singers in Lisbon and the sensual rhythm of the Flamenco artists in Seville; the shouts of the protests in the squares and the ladies peddling lottery tickets.

And the tastes. Pickled herring, lingonberries, smoked trout and salmon, croques and cokes, pork and kraut, waffles, fondue and raclettes, beef bourguignon, tuna ten different ways, foie gras, cassoulet, fresh baguettes and pastries every day, Belgian, Swiss, Dutch and French chocolates, hundreds of different tapas, our first racions in Santiago, Spanish tortillas, paella, octopus and squid, cod everywhere, pizza and pastas, and ham, ham and ham. Not to forget the Belgian, Danish, Dutch and German beers to go along with the French, Spanish and Portuguese wines and the occasional Coke Light or cappuccino.


While Europeans are usually portrayed to Americans as sophisticated, continental and educated individuals who care deeply about the environment and their fellow man, let it be said here that there are also a lot of European idiots. There are small minded business people who can’t get out of their own way, lazy unmotivated workers who wouldn’t last a day in the same job here and with many, a sense of unfriendliness that would be considered rude in New York and all with a cigarette hanging out of the mouth.


With all that being said, the highlights of our trip were with the people we met along the way, most of them our hosts. A few of those moments: Our first B&B hug from Elisabeth as we left Stockholm; spending quality time with nephew Patrick and his lovely Nina in Copenhagen; laughing at the dramatic stories of Peter in Amsterdam; chatting with the slightly bratty Leslie in Colmar; sampling cheeses and pastries at the market in Beaune and nodding and smiling with the owner of the nearby barrel factory; the quest for the perfect apple pastry with Pat; getting the lowdown from Amanda and Chris in Sarlat; getting welcome kisses from kids Ben and Georgie and “discussing” politics with Alison over several wines in Bordeaux; chatting with Ben in Carcassonne; our long “conversation” in Spanish with Leira’s mom in San Sebastian and subsequent hugs and kisses from Leira; talking business with Carmen and Joao in Porto and sharing their favorite neighborhood restaurant.


Then there is Luis from Lisbon. Luis is your friend immediately. Not a friend from work or the club, but rather the friend you grew up with who knows everything about you and still likes you. The guy who calls you (on the phone he gave you) to let you know where he is and let’s do something together. Luis was followed by the super Argentineans Adriana and Jorge who fed us and chatted with us under a starry sky in the south of Portugal; the personality of Seville, the city that seduced us from the start; Ian and Jane in Nerja who hung our laundry on the terrace one afternoon and fed us breakfast there the next morning; and Manuel and Catarina who taught us about Granada without giving us Manuel’s cold. This is the most outstanding group of hosts we have ever had on any trip. Even without the exceptional, the other places we stayed were very nice—not a stinker in the bunch, and we couldn’t be happier with our lodging choices and the relationships we take with us.


Obviously traveling is fun for us. We don’t ski or snowmobile or go to Las Vegas. We don’t drive big cars or wear fancy jewelry and much of our clothing still says “Manhattan Beach Lodge.” We don’t have ipods or cell phones that really work and we usually eat in. We finagle frequent flier miles any way we can and are always on the lookout for a good value. All of this frugality allows us to have a “trip of a lifetime” every couple years.

When we visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam we heard a recorded interview with her father Otto who said upon finally reading her diary that he had no idea she had such deep and mature feelings about their hidden confinement. We learn that every experience is personal and our reactions are always our own. Even after ten weeks together, Mary and John have their own memories, and after a couple weeks with us, Pat would come away with different impressions. As we always say, our journal is to enable us to relive these personal experiences as we slide further into old age and if it is in the least bit interesting to others, so much the better.


One of our mantras is that on these trips we miss more than we see and we forget more than we remember. The little that we remember of the little that we saw is plenty though, and we are still the luckiest people we know.

Today's Picture:  The lucky ones.

Tuesday 11.23.2010


Heading Home


Dear Blog, it has been a wonderful 70 nights in foreign lands, but all good things must come to an end. Is that really true? We have a 5:00 am wakeup this morning with plans to be packed, checked-out and heading for the subway tunnel by 7:00. We have rationalized that the train is much more reliable in potential traffic situations than surface transportation, and besides it is 6.30 euros instead of 50.

As is always the case there is a learning curve involved in new experiences and when coupled with the truth that a 50-50 chance is always 80-20 against, there are definitely things that can go wrong. We are efficient, however, and out the door by 6:45 for the 50-yard walk across “our” square to the elevator down to the trains. This is a “Renfe” train, part of the Spanish national train system (like Amtrac) that happens to run locally in Madrid. We have to find out which train to catch when we get to our track level and while Mary guards the bag and John checks the system map we let two trains go. We find out that actually any train going this way goes to the next station which is where we switch to the Metro Line to the airport. No problem, another comes along in a few minutes and we are on our way.

Things get a bit more complicated after that. We are three levels down and at this point figure out that we should have bought our Metro tickets when we bought our Renfe tickets because we have to leave one gated area to get into the other. Again, Mary guards the luggage while John goes up the three levels to buy the Metro tickets, and to do that he must leave the Renfe area. Now, of course, he can’t get back in the Renfe area so has to buy another ticket so he can get to Mary and they can make the move to the Metro. And here hilarity ensues. It turns out that there are several more steps to this process, and like a good Broadway farce there are slamming doors and bumbling characters who can’t find their way or sometimes each other. Suffice it to say that we are at the correct airport terminal by 8:00 AM for our 11:00 flight so all is well.

It is a pretty easy check-in with some extra beefed up security for flights to the U.S. There is a rigorous Q & A session before we get our boarding passes and a pretty extensive screening process. Mary has to repack a small scissors that has been ok on previous flights and she gets a pat down at the X-Ray machine. John loses a corkscrew that has also been ok in the past and is disappointed that he doesn’t get a pat down. There is another pretty long train ride to get to our remote gate area and it is closing in on 9:00 by the time we get through the process.

We have access to the Iberia Airlines Club as they partner with American Airlines on these flights. There is a nice breakfast buffet set up for John and an equally nice serve-yourself bar for Mary’s pre-flight medication. We can relax now that we can see our plane outside and we have plenty of time. Mary does some last minute duty-free shopping to use up our last few euros while John contemplates seconds at the breakfast buffet.

It’s an easy walk to the plane, we board immediately, somebody gives us a glass of champagne and as much of a hassle as flying can be, this seems fine to us. The flight is uneventful although long at nine and a half hours. We get a couple nice meals, sufficient beverages, a plenty on-demand movies and a nap. It is shades of our B & B experiences as our flight attendant, Kevin, comes by for hugs and handshakes before we get off. We must just look huggable.

It is now a 3-hour layover in Miami and here we find the American Admiral’s Club. We are starting to get tired and a little edgy and the late afternoon business crowd are here in big numbers all shouting into their cell phones about this deal or that. Welcome home.

Finally our three and a half hour flight to Minneapolis is underway, we get fed and beveraged yet again and we are perfectly on-time for our 10:00 pm scheduled landing. It is exactly 24-hours since our alarm went off this morning. Two things that have never happened before occur at this point: (1) we are first off the plane; and (2) when we get to the baggage carousel our bags are the first to drop out of the chute. We call sister-in law Lynn, she is outside within minutes and we are in her vehicle on our way to her house at 10:20. Does the cold weather make people that efficient?

We will record our reflections of our trip here within the next few days after we have had a chance to recover a bit. The one thing we agree on for sure is that this is what we really like to do, and while we may fine-tune based on our experiences, there will most certainly be more adventures in the future. Stay tuned.

Today’s Picture: Checking out our chariot from the Iberia lounge in Madrid.

Monday 11.22.2010


No Toledo


As we made our original plans, we worked our trip around available flight dates using frequent flyer miles. While that plan called for us to be home last week, the flights didn’t match up so we added more days. Why not? Part of that involved adding another day to Madrid and when we planned the details of the itinerary we thought we could day-trip Toledo. It is a half-hour train ride on the high-speed line so we planned on a 10:30 trip down and a 5:30 trip back.

As it turns out we were both lukewarm on the idea of another day in a walled European city on a hilltop with a big cathedral and twisty streets. We went through the motions of taking the Metro (subway) to the big train station (Atocha where the 2004 terrorist bombing took place) where we found the train to Toledo really leaves at 10:20 and it was now 10:15. No chance. Neither of us was disappointed.

Instead we decided to have an easy last day in Madrid and hit some parts of town we hadn’t seen yet starting with the “Dunkin’ Coffee” across from the train station. The new plan took us through Retiro Park, a 300 acre former royal hunting ground that is now ponds and paths and all types of flora and fauna. It is clear and cool again so a delightful morning for a walk in the park that eventually takes us to the lovely rear end of the Prado.

From the Prado we hopped on the number 27 bus going north into the new part of town. This is a whole new part of Madrid that takes us into shady shopping areas, embassies, and ministries. The US Embassy was along our route but hard to see with screened fences and security barriers. We also passed the big 80,000 seat Bernabeu Stadium, home to soccer superstars Real Madrid. Our ride ends at Puerta de Europa (the Gates of Europe) twin office towers leaning inward at a fifteen degree angle from opposite sides of our boulevard. Very impressive.


We get right back on and ride back down to Grand Via and wait around a bit for a restaurant to open for lunch at 1:15. La Gloria de Montera Restaurante had been recommended and John is determined to have one more “menu del dia” before going home. Today’s choice is a shrimp and rice appetizer with a fried egg on top, an entrée of tenderloin medallions and vegetables, a flan for dessert and a couple glasses of wine for E9.50. Mary has the Bolognese pasta and wine so we are fat and happy. We walk off lunch for another hour and decide to take an early break so we can have an early dinner so we can get to bed early so we can get up early for the airport tomorrow. Early has suddenly reappeared in our lingo. Mary runs over to our local patisseria to load up on some goodies for our breakfast in the morning.


We want to do the tapas tango one more time before we leave Spain so we walk southeast to Plaza Santa Ana where we started on our first night here. We work our way through several good stops all the way back over to Plaza Mayor southwest of our hotel. We even stop at the bar with the bull heads on the wall and watch a DVD of bullfights on their little TV. How Spanish is that?

When we’re almost back and it is sneaking up on 10:00 we decide one more stop for the last hurrah on our trip. It is pretty sleepy in this place with only a few other people around. There is a couple at a table behind us, and we hear the fellow saying something sort of loud. When we turn around we see he is talking to us, asking where we are from. We tell him we are Americans from the United States and he says his hometown is Cadiz in the south. We chat a bit more in half English and half Spanish about our travels, and finally he says he just wanted to thank us for visiting his country. He is very proud of Spain and hopes that we enjoyed our stay and will encourage others to come to visit. We all shake hands and wish each other Buenos Noches and it is all a perfect ending to the last night of this trip.


Full moon, nice night and great finish. The alarm is set.


Today’s Picture: Our last night at the Torre del Oro Bar Andalu.

Sunday 11.21.2010


The Separation

We never thought it would come to this, but after 22 years of working and retiring together, over 8000 days Mary and John are separating—but only for a few hours. But first there are pastries to be had. John runs for pastries and coffees while Mary gets ready for the day. Mary gets the same as yesterday and John opts for the Napolitana and both are as good as one could hope. The trip is harder this morning because there is a marathon going on and there are thousands of runners on the street crossing the south end of our square. We must be near the start because the runners are tightly bunched for a good fifteen minutes.

The separation occurs because John thinks that if in Madrid, one should visit the Prado, one of Europe’s great art museums. Mary thinks that a study of the present is much more valuable. After the pastries and coffees are downed and meeting plans made, John walks the 15-minutes to the Prado and is concerned with the line that goes around the block. Fortunately there is a special Rubens temporary exhibit and that is what those people are waiting for. The general exhibition line is short at 10:30 on Sunday morning and he gets right in.

John rents the audioguide to get through the labyrinth of art works inside and to better get his brain wrapped around the process. There are basically two very large floors in the Prado exhibiting more than 3,000 works. While the Prado doesn’t reach into antiquity like the Louvre, it also doesn’t do modern so there is nothing later than the 18th century. The key players here are the Spaniards or those who spent time here, Goya, El Greco, Titian, Velasquez and Murillo. There is also a nice sampling of Northern European art with key works by Bosch, Bruegel and Durer.

Most works from that period tend to be biblical, Grecian, or portraits with a sprinkling of landscapes and still-lifes. After covering one floor completely, John concentrates on the guide to the masterpieces among those on the second floor. There is only so much time a non-artsy person can devote to this exercise. It is amazing that there are paintings here that were done 700 years ago, are still in their original frames and look like they were painted yesterday. It is raining lightly when he leaves at 1:30 for his 2:00 meeting with Mary so he covers up and hustles back to the hotel. What was Mary up to? Let’s ask her.

Well, Mary has decided to visit the Plaza Mayor to check out the Sunday morning market but finds that it’s only a coin and stamp market. So she heads back to the Puerta del Sol for some people watching. As she arrives, she notices a sea of lilac colored umbrellas – another protest is in progress. The leaders of this protest have organized the umbrellas to form the symbol for “woman” as this is about eliminating violence against women throughout the world. After worming her way through the crowds to the information table, she comes away with 2 umbrellas, 4 t-shirts and several pamphlets about the cause, which she can’t read because they’re all in Spanish.

When we reconnect we decide to eat at the first available option down “that” street. It turns out to be a little chain place called “Café y Te” where we get a pretty good Iberico ham and cheese pizza and a beer. We go east today and find new ground with parks, monuments and tons of government buildings including the Congress. As a national capitol Madrid certainly has a different feel with the influence of government and all the pomp and circumstance that involves. We haven’t seen this many buildings with columns in front since our last visit to Washington DC.

We end today’s afternoon walk at about 5:30. Our dinner reservation tonight is at the ultimate in touristy restaurants called Sobrino del Botin. It has all of its Guinness book plaques displayed naming it the oldest restaurant in the world (1725) where Hemingway and Michener have hung out and Goya has worked as a dishwasher. Reagan, Clinton and Bush (Nancy, Hillary and Laura) have all dined here as guests of local royalty. It is a traditional “roasting” tavern where little pigs and lambs are cooked in centuries old oak-burning ovens.

Our reservation is for 8:00 and apparently so is everyone else’s. It seems obvious that they fill it up early (8:00 – 8:30) with tourists, clear it out and seat it all again at 10:00 with locals. There is tons of staff and since most of the entrees have been cooked, they only need to slice and serve. We get a bowl of green beans cooked to smithereens with ham (amazingly tasty) and John has the suckling pig while Mary plays it safe with the salmon and scrambled egg dish. As touristy as it is, the food comes highly recommended and it is very nicely done. The service is efficient and professional and we don’t even have to wait to get the check. We are in and out by 9:30.


It is a stop at one of the cave bars on the way back and since it is the weekend we stop at one more little place just off our square. The streets and square are packed with people shoulder to shoulder at 11:00 on Sunday night in November. These recessions are tough. We’re glad we got back together.

Today’s Picture: Mary’s protesting pals in our square.

Saturday 11.20.2010


Mad about Madrid

Okay, that is an overstatement, but after an early overcast the sun has come out and everything looks a lot better to us. While Mary gets ready John goes out to find one of the fifty Starbucks we saw yesterday afternoon and they all give him the slip. He settles for a couple café grandes from McDonalds across the square.

Our walking tour this morning starts in front of our hotel. On the other side of the square is an impressive building that was once Spain’s first post office and is now the office of the governor of the county. In front of that building is a plaque marking the exact center of Spain and we assume it is philosophically true as well as geographically. There are very long lines of people stretching across the square and after some inquiries we find out the people are waiting to buy their Christmas lottery tickets. We have known about the Christmas lottery (20 euros per ticket) for some time and the tickets have been on sale for months. The issue here is that these particular ticket sellers are “luckier” than others and therefore people feel their odds will be improved by waiting in line for an hour or more. Yet another cultural difference.

Across from our coffee McDonalds we find the Salon la Mallorquina, a delicious looking patisseria that is calling our names. Mary gets a crusty sweet round thing and John gets an éclair shaped cream filled piece of heaven. We’re glad we found this on our first morning. From here we poke around some historic buildings and interesting sights on the way to the Plaza Mayor. This is a café-lined square with all the appropriate statuary and where what we believe is a Christmas market just being set up. We have been seeing Christmas decorations for more than a week but nothing really gets started until early December. They are assembling a 75-foot high metal Christmas tree right in front of our hotel but, alas, it looks like we will miss all the fun.


We stick our heads into a bar on Plaza Mayor where several of the famous bulls from the local bullfights have their heads mounted on the wall. Like artists, they tend to be more famous after they’re dead. Below the Plaza Mayor are Mesones, little cave-like bars and shops that are built around the structural support of the plaza above. We sightsee our way down to the Cathedral—yes another one. There is some sort of ceremony going on with a bunch of middle-aged and up people dressed in black capes and hats. Since there are females involved we don’t think this is a Spanish Knights of Columbus, but it might be something similar. This is the newest of the Cathedrals we have visited being finished in 1993 after a hundred and ten-year construction project. The stars of the building are the coffin of St. Isidro, Madrid’s patron Saint, and the 5,000 pipe organ that fills one wall.


Across a plaza from the Cathedral is the Spanish Royal Palace. It is a 2000-room behemoth on the peak of a hill overlooking western Madrid. King Philip V, the builder, was a grandson of Louis XIV of France and obviously was a fan of Versailles. The line to get inside is longer than the lottery lines and we aren’t going to spend a sunny Saturday doing that. Instead we spend our time in outside masterpieces Plaza Orient, Plaza Espana, and Templo de Debod. The Plaza Espana is having a Mexican Fiesta with a Mexican band performing and booths selling real nachos, chips and salsa, and Mexican beer. We felt like we were on the West Side of St. Paul.

From there we hooked up with the Grand Via and strolled through the theater district and big shopping areas for more than a mile. It is almost 3:00 and time for lunch. We pick a spot with sidewalk seating and an interesting concept. You fill out a form with all the little tapas you would like to eat, take it to the counter where they give you your drinks, and call you when your food is ready. The issue is that it takes 20-minutes in line to turn in the order and another twenty in line before the food is ready. A forty-minute fast food experience and they didn’t even get the order right, but we were not going to start over. We aren’t ready to stop yet while the sun is shining so go back through the Plaza Mayor to make a dinner reservation for Sunday night and then slowly make our way back to the hotel.

During our early evening break there is a huge ruckus in the square and we look out to see at least a thousand people marching behind a street-wide banner. We get the drift that it is an antifascista march with some of the marchers carrying USSR flags (they haven’t received the news about that one) and anti-swastika signs (also timely). They stop outside our hotel and pull out the loudspeakers and rant for about a half-hour with occasional chanting and then fade away. There has been a heavy police presence (cars, motorcycles, vans and helicopters) during the entire process so the whole thing was choreographed pretty well. We eventually find out that November 20th is the anniversary of the death of Franco and his passing is marked every year with these “good riddance” types of demonstrations. That puts it into better perspective for us.

We have no plans for dinner and Mary has been talking pasta so we finally find a place that opens a little early (8:40) for us. John’s shrimp and asparagus pasta is pretty good and Mary’s carbonara is not so good. Since the Spanish always cook their bacon medium-rare, that was an odd choice for her, but she plugged away at it. The service was pretty good from a small Romanian woman and her Spanish fellow trainee. She said all the tourists eventually need real food.

We stop for one last beer at one of the little cave bars (messone) below the Plaza Mayor before packing it in for the night.


Today's Picture: On our late afternoon walk we found this fellow slicing his Jamon Iberico in the doorway of his cafe. Every place we have eaten for the last month has had this same setup, but always inside.

Friday 11.19.2010

One More Stop

We’re up at the crack of 7:00 this morning for the last leg of our trip. We gobble down the pastries we bought yesterday afternoon, get packed up and check out of our hotel. We were very pleased with our lodging here—certainly budget level but with a great location and pretty good service from the staff.

It is our normal half-mile walk to the Place Catalunya in sunshine and crisp temperatures. We catch the aerobus for the airport at 9:30 and enjoy the feeling of being in the biggest vehicle on the road for a change. We get dropped off before 10:00 and get in a hundred-person-line for check in for our 12:25 flight on Air Europa. After not moving for ten minutes John spied a sign for baggage drop-off, which Mary checked out. Since the guy at the hotel had printed our boarding passes for us, we could use this line with three people in it. One of the people was a diva, however, and tied up the clerk for 15-minutes before the first class desk person waved us over and got us through in a minute. Another long line at security, but as we approached they opened another line and we were first in the new line. Still lucky.

While we waited we got an egg McMuffin and a real coffee from Mac and got a table where John could get some computer work done. Mary went shopping in the duty-free shop for some pre-flight medicine. We moved to our gate area where Mary produced two little bottles of Rioja and a couple plastic glasses. It seemed a very well thought out plan.


The plane was packed and we all had to take buses to get to it out on the tarmac. There is none of the American sense of personal space as it seems normal to go full frontal contact in tight spaces. We think they must not teach physics in Spanish schools since no one understands that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.


The flight is a bit late arriving in Madrid and there is a bit more of a delay as we wait quite a while for luggage. We have decided that since we don’t know the ropes, we will take a taxi into town as we did in Barcelona and then weigh our options for leaving on Tuesday. The cab driver gets immediately into six lanes of stopped traffic heading into town and does his cabby best of zooming in and out of exit lanes to move up six cars at a time. After about ten minutes of this he explains to us that he is going to take a longer way into town but will get us there much, much faster. We think we understand him. He takes us on a 90mph thrill ride on inner and outer loops and finally into surface streets in the city. When he pulls to a stop we are across the plaza from our hotel, charged about ten euros more than we expected, but are probably an hour earlier than if we would have stayed where we were. It was an ok trade-off and how could we argue.


We have changed hotels here in Madrid. Our original choice was a compromise of price vs. location and we opted for a great price in a mediocre location. A couple nights ago we began to rethink that decision and to explore other options. As it turns out we found a higher rated hotel in the best location in the city for a few euros more. We are now at the Hotel Europa, which is on the “Times Square” of Madrid, the “Puerta del Sol.” The hotel has one star on the sign out in front that certainly made us nervous, but the place looked fantastic when we walked inside. The room was even better. It is roomy with a king bed, a big flat screen TV, a great marble bathroom and a window and little terrace overlooking the square. Mary mentions that there are a bunch of “old guys” downstairs so maybe part of the place is a pensioner’s hotel, but our room is definitely 4-star.


We take our get acquainted walk around “our” square and then up several spokes that run off of it. Virtually every city we have been in on this trip, from the smallest to the biggest, has had a pedestrian shopping area in the center, some longer than others, some wider, and sometimes there are just more of them. That is the case here. Many of the streets running off the square, and there are eleven of them, are pedestrian malls. We walk about six blocks up to Madrid’s “Broadway,” the Grand Via and poke into a couple stores. Mostly we just walk around to get a lay of the land and know which direction we will head in the morning.


It is a gray afternoon in Madrid and not the most welcoming of weather conditions. We are not initially impressed after the elegance of Barcelona, but will withhold further judgment until we get a better look. We go back to our great room and look at the swarms of people out our fifth story window instead of reading a book. It is much more entertaining.


Note: As we write this on Saturday evening there is a march of about a thousand people into our square with banners and flags. They are surrounded by police all the way and are now listening to political speeches. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog.


At about 8:00 we move into the Plaza Santa Ana neighborhood where a lot of the tapas bars live. The first place we try is a tiny operation, which we initially think is a one-man show. The fellow behind the bar is pouring drinks, serving food and cooking on a little grill behind the bar. Eventually someone else shows up to take over the grill. For the first time John gets something even he can’t eat. It is a dish we think is chorizo but it is deconstructed into fat, gristle and garlic chunks that are unchewable and inedible. We have some Patatas Bravas that are always good. A little later we move to a ceverzaria on Plaza Santa Ana and nibble a bit more with a beer.

School is still out on Madrid, but it has been a pleasant evening, we’re in a perfect location in a lovely room so there is a great deal of promise.

Today's Picture: Mary's view of Puerto del Sol, Madrid's Times Square.

Thursday 11.18.2010


Lawdy, Lawdy it’s Gaudy Antonio Gaudi


The rain is gone and the air is fresh and cool this morning with bright blue skies. In order to prevent crabbiness we hustle down to Passeig de Gracia and find “Tapas Tapas” for a morning sandwich for John, croissant for Mary and a couple cappuccinos.


The Passeig de Gracia is the Michigan/Fifth Avenue of Barcelona that extends out of the top of the Placa Catalunya. If you picture a vertical bow tie, the knot is the Placa Catalunya, the lower bow is the old city and La Rambla stretching down to the harbor, and the top bow is the “Eixample,” an upscale neighborhood of fancy apartments and hotels with every big name in retailing represented (we’re not talking Target and Wal-Mart here). The people strolling the streets in this neighborhood are noticeably different than on La Rambla.

Our restaurant is on the “Block of Discord,” a collection of crazy-exotic building designs for a one-block stretch of the Passeig. The culprit behind these styles was Antonio Gaudi, either the greatest or the craziest architect in the world at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. The houses here and elsewhere around the city are fairy tale-like designs with weeping windows and mushroom peaks.

We continue our walk north along the Passeig oohing and aahing at the fancy shops and opportunities to double the expense of our trip with one little shopping bag of goodies. There is one more big Gaudi design a few blocks north along with many copies by his compatriots and competitors. Love it or hate it, it is dramatic and, for many, defines the personality of this city.


We make a right turn and angle a bit back south to Gaudi’s acknowledged greatest work, the “Sagrada Familia,” or Holy Family Church. Gaudi worked on this for the last 43 years of his life, which ended under a trolley car in 1926. The church is still under construction and will be for another thirty years (estimated), but one look and you get the idea. When finished this church will be certainly the most unusual temple of worship in the world. Much of the work since Gaudi’s death has been designed and built by others, but to our untrained eyes it seems they have captured the essence of the original. We took a bunch of pictures, but they don’t do it justice, so once again we suggest that anyone who is curious should find it on the internet and check it out. Our jaws were on the ground.

It is recommended that if one wants to continue the Gaudi tour, one should catch a bus from near the church and ride it uphill a couple miles to Parc Guell. We think, "how far can it be that we can't just walk on such a beautiful day?" We are huffing, puffing and sweating forty-five minutes later as we back door the park and now understand the bus recommendation. There are some hills in Barcelona after all. The Parc Guell was supposed to be a 30-acre upscale housing development when it was conceived and Gaudi was hired to make it a unique property. Alas, the rich folk didn't want to make this walk either so no housing sales and Gaudi's infrastructure was blended into a city park with beautiful city and harbor views.


It is mid-afternoon which means John has to have a small pizza-bread sort of thing and a cold beer from a little stand for the bargain price of 12 euros (almost $17). US Open pricing here to go with the views. Mary passes. While snapping pictures of all the unique elements of the park our camera battery dies, so once again look at the park on the internet. We are a bit refreshed and since you can't remember pain we decide to walk back down and it really is easier. We pass our hotel and find the tapas bar we enjoyed last night so Mary can get something, and with different people and late afternoon aging tapas it isn't the same. It will have to do. There is a little Patisseria on the way back to our hotel so we pick up a couple treats for tomorrow morning.


We take the late afternoon-early evening break and have a plan for this evening. Several people have told us about a tapas bar near the market and we think it is in Rick Steve's book as well. Taberna Basca Irati is "only" about a mile walk from our hotel and near La Rambla which makes it perfect for our last evening memory of Barcelona. Here they give you a plate, you help yourself to anything you see, and at the end of the evening they count the toothpicks and you pay accordingly. They also come marching around with hot tapas right out of the kitchen and you just grab from the tray like an upscale cocktail party. It is easy, fun and the food is pretty good. There are a couple Japanese girls next to us and we volunteer to take their picture which leads to further conversation. They are from Osaka and are doing a week in Spain which is the reverse of our final week so we get some pointers on Madrid. We are toasting with "Cheers!," "Salud!," and "Compai!" Still just tourists.


It is a pleasant evening for our last walk from the middle of La Rambla back up to Placa Catalonya. There is a group of break-dancing gymnasts who are as good as the folks you see on the dancing shows on TV. The finale has one of the guys doing a running cartwheel into a backflip over the top of four standing volunteers he has lined up. Pretty impressive. We're very comfortable here now and our three-day stay is just right for a first impression of the city. This is another destination that we agree we could return to.


No stop at the pub tonight. We actually have to set the alarm to get moving in the morning to catch a bus for a flight to Madrid. Hasta Luego Barcelona!

Today's Picture: Gaudi's Casa Mila on Passeig de Gracia.

Wednesday 11.17.2010


Ramblin’ on La Rambla


We are really dragging this morning and it is almost 11:00 before we get out the door. Some of that is on purpose. We know that when we will be walking all day there is really no hurry because after four or five hours of steady walking we will be finished anyway.

The trouble lies with John who tends to be a bit crabby when hungry and we have plans to eat at a special little tapas bar at the market. We hike the mile to the market and the place we want is packed with people lined up behind the stools shouting out orders in Spanish or some reasonable alternative. We can’t compete. After trying a couple other options we stop at a little organic stand in the back of the market (Orgasmic Organic!?) where there is no line. John orders a taco with peppers and Mary has a cheese crepe thing and once those are in the box, the fellow keeps adding paella, couscous, pasta salad, green salad and some sauces. It winds up being a big box of food. We pull up a table at a little café on the edge of the market and buy a cappuccino to earn the seat. We’re now ready to go.

It’s after 12:00 and the big Cathedral, about six blocks away, closes at 12:45 so we hustle over there for a peek inside. What more can we say about Cathedrals? It is really big, really old and pretty spectacular. When the Pope was on his recent trip to Spain, this is where he came in addition to Santiago. Barcelona’s patron Saint Eulalia is entombed below the main altar. The thirteen-year-old was crucified on an “X” shaped cross after refusing thirteen times to deny her Christianity while under Roman rule. We are always surprised when we read things like the baptismal font was installed in the 1400’s.

We simply wander through the old city and harbor area for the rest of the afternoon. The city and Catalan government buildings are right behind the Cathedral with plenty of Catalan flags around along with one Spanish flag. There is another market that seems a little dressier but without the character of the older, bigger place.

On the harbor we walk out through a maze of pleasure crafts in a huge marina to a big shopping mall with theaters, stores, and McDonalds, all with a sort of seagoing motif. It has been cloudy, cool and spitting rain most of the day so it is a chilly and damp walk back to the base of La Rambla and the Christopher Columbus statue. The old port area here is decorated with old crates, suitcases, shipping containers and raw materials that would have been lying around a couple hundred years ago. Nice touch.

With the weather the crowds are smaller on La Rambla than they were earlier but still substantial. We move undercover to walk the market from end to end. It is an amazing array of produce, pork, fish, pork, beef, pork and pork. There are hams hanging everywhere and cold cases filled with pig heads, feet and everything in between. The special Iberic hams from the acorn-fed black pigs are, of course, the stars of the show, but there has been a recent scandal in that there were twice as many Iberic hams on the market as there are black pigs. The math doesn’t work.

It is late afternoon when we get back to the Catalonya square where we pull up a stool at QueQue for a quick tapas and glass of wine before going back to our room. We think we have logged about five miles so have put in our work for today. We much prefer clear skies and sunshine.


We work up the energy to go back out for something to eat at about 7:30 and try the highly recommended “Tapas 24.” Crabby slow service, mediocre tapas and high prices. We get out quickly and move down the street (about 6 blocks from the hotel) to “Divinus” where everything looks good, the bartenders are smiling and pleasant and the food is terrific. Again we repeat our observation that it would seem to be more fun to work when everybody is happy than when there is constant conflict. Perhaps the crabby ones think that gives them the power. The concept simply doesn’t sit well in our brains.

We stop for a quick beer at our Irish pub on the way back but the big-thinkers are all puffing on their cigars so we don’t last long. Forty-four days until Spain goes smoke free and the suicide/murder rate quadruples.

Today's Picture: Odds and ends at the Barcelona Market

Tuesday 11.16.2010

Adios Monique, Hola Barcelona!

Garrison Keillor once described learning a language at an advanced age as a “leaky boat.” While that sounds colorful in a Wobegone sort of way, it is misused in that things leak into a boat. The truth is that in the language learning business, things leak out as with a leaky bucket. We have been trying our best to keep up with the changes in our languages as we change geography, but it is a losing proposition at best. We probably know less now than we did a couple months ago.


The issue arose last night as our host Nick explained that the people in this area speak Valencian and the children are taught in Valencian in school. This, of course, makes them unable to communicate in 99.9% of the known world, but local pride wins out and the EU’s stance on preserving local idiosyncrasies does not really help. Tonight we will be in Barcelona where the lingua franca is Catalonian, which is more like the Euskara of the Basque than the Spanish of Madrid. We are finding that there is no Spain (but we haven’t been to Madrid) but rather a collection of regional egos that flies the Spanish flag at soccer games, the Olympics and Rafael Nadal matches.

No problem as Nick and Judy are on their way to Jolly Old England and our host this morning is neighbor Sheila, an expat Brit as well. In fact everyone in the restaurant last night was a Brit except the poor father-in-law waiter and us. In reading the reviews of this B&B, the most frequent compliment was that this was the “real Spain.” Right. Anyway, Sheila does a nice job of filling in, explaining that all the church bells this morning were for the funeral of the poor fellow who kicked off yesterday. No time wasted here, but all of the family members are probably in town except those who are off working in a factory in Connecticut. Sheila knows her job as she gives us cheek-cheek kisses and we’re underway.

We ask GPS Monique to look at options with and without toll roads today for our drive to Barcelona. Toll roads get us in at 2:35 and non-toll roads at 6:18. We’re going to have to bite the bullet and pay. It is a sleepy and very expensive drive with tolls totaling over $50 so about $12 for each hour saved, but with a stop for lunch at a plaza we still are dropping the car at a little after three. The drive was fast (about 75-80 mph) with mountain and Mediterranean views all the way so not as unpleasant as driving through Kansas or Iowa. The car agent on this end is a little slippery. He has told us to drop the car at a hotel a couple kilometers from the airport, won’t come to the desk to take the paperwork and won’t give us a receipt that shows everything intact. We feel better when we see a lineup of Peugeots in the lot and the front desk lady signs for the keys, registration and insurance. We kiss GPS Mademoiselle Monique Deneuve adieu and thank her for her service. She lost us a few times, but we would have been lost a lot more without her, and one of us would have had a face in a map at all times instead of sight-seeing.

The hotel lady calls us a taxi, which whisks us into town in less than a half-hour. The driver is coughing and sneezing all the way which will add to the germs we are carrying from Manuel in Granada. Our hotel for tonight is the Praktik, a budget option with a great location in the center of the action. We originally booked it for seventy-five euros per night but saw it on line a couple days ago for sixty-four so we canceled and rebooked, the difference paying for our taxi ride.

Barcelona is a big city on the eastern coast of Spain with a 2000-year history of fame, fortune and failure. These days it is bustling with activity and there is no obvious sign of the Spanish economic troubles. Our room is surprisingly nice at half the price of the hotels around us with a king bed, a little terrace on our active street (we have ear plugs), free wi-fi and a few English speaking TV channels.

We don’t sit long, but get right out on the town. It is about a ten-minute walk to the Placa Catalonya, the center of the universe for the folks in these parts, and another five across the square to La Rambla. Rick Steves describes La Rambla as the best people-watching street in Europe. It is one-way traffic on one side and the other way on the other side with a fifty-foot wide treed pedestrian area in the center. There are people selling touristy stuff from small stands, others peddling birds, fish and turtles, and where we usually see one or two of the “human statues,” here there are a dozen or more. We are dazzled, acting like a couple of tourists from Middle America.

We stick our heads in the market packed with people, produce and pig parts and decide to leave it for tomorrow. At about 7:00 we pull up a stool at Eukara Tapas bar for a couple tapas (two hot, two cold) and a red wine and make a plan for our next few days. We finish the mile-long Rambla walk at the statue of Christopher Columbus, reverse course and walk back up. On the way back there is a dance group of a couple dozen young ladies (ages 15-25) performing for a reasonable crowd. There are four or five featured dancers and the rest are rapping out the beat on tall drums while showing off their own moves. Everything is choreographed well and it is a very entertaining stop. There was a film crew there from Channel Six in case any of you saw us.

There is a two-thirds moon shining clearly on us as we continue our walk back. We find another Irish pub across the street from our hotel, and while we complain about the Brits stealing the Spanish ambience, we sure like a nice cold pint in a pub. We finish our beers and lose about six-months of our lives to second-hand smoke, and tuck ourselves in after hanging our jackets on the terrace to air out.

Today's Picture: A Ramblin' woman on La Rambla

Monday 11.15.2010


Driving Days

When we first planned this trip we were trying to find a creative way to get from Granada to Barcelona and then on to Madrid. It is a long drive to Barcelona from here so the plan was to split it into two days and then turn in the car at the Barcelona airport and three days later, catch a cheap flight to Madrid. The issue is where to stop between Granada and Barcelona.

The obvious is Valencia but with two long driving days we wanted to keep it simple and opted for a little hotel near the highway with a restaurant and free parking in Denia on the Costa Blanco. Mid-trip we got an email from the hotel saying they were closing for five months for renovations and wishing us luck. After scrambling for a bit we were able to book a room at the number one ranked B&B in the area, Casa Les Olives, a few minutes from the highway in the little village of Benigembla. No Problemo.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The rain washed the air last night and we have our clearest morning yet in Granada. Hello to Catarina, plenty of juice and coffee and meats and cheese and cereal and fruit, and a Manuel who can speak a little this morning but is still struggling with his cold. He tells us to let him know when we are ready to leave and he will drive us out. Amen! It is a team effort once more getting the luggage into the car and the master takes over nudging the car from the garage and turning into the street that is inches wider than the car. Manuel then takes us on a roller-coaster three-mile ride through the city going down to the bottom, swirling around in circles and then back up the hill to the Alhambra. He drops us off a block away from where we started but you can’t get here from there. We shake hands instead of kissing (and head for the hand sanitizer) and thank him for providing a brilliant property.


Monique, GPS chick, surprisingly accepts the address for Benigembla and gets us on our way. Not to be outdone by Manuel she is determined to drag us screaming through a maze of Granada city streets before letting us escape onto a form of highway. Because of the distance, we have allowed motorways (not toll roads) to be included in today’s drive and that is where we will be most of the day. We have also programmed in the Barcelona destination so we can decide when to get enough gas to reach our final destination. The car came with a cup of gas in it and we would like to return the favor.


It is a pretty drive mostly east towards that coast and then sweeping north along the water. We are in “sierras” when we start and the terrain is pretty rugged with fifty-mile views through valleys. That eventually gives way to the flat plain that is bordered by the mountains on the left and Mediterranean on the right. Closer to the water we are back in orange and olive groves and thousands of acres of various vegetables. When we have about 150km to our destination and 600 to Barcelona we stop to fill up with gas and nibble on our lunch of potato chips and crackers (we had a big breakfast).


We assumed that Valencia would be the major city of this area, but it seems that the power lies with Alicante. This is where the major airport resides and seems to be the hub of a massive expansion of touristy condos and hotels along the Costa Blanco. Once again we are getting English radio stations so we know who is here.


Above Alicante and below Valencia we are spun back to the west for about fifteen minutes to our stop for tonight. This is rural, semi-rugged hiking country and that is the draw in this little village. After waiting about ten minutes for a truck to unload and clear the road in front of us (yes that is common) we park in front of the post office and walk around the corner to our B&B. The door is open but no one is around. We see our paperwork sitting on the table so we check ourselves in before our host Nick comes tripping down the stairs. He makes up for his tardiness with a welcome beer. His mom Judy also comes popping out. She is visiting from England and is going home tomorrow along with Nick who is returning for a visit.

We have a nice chat as they acquaint us with the details of the village. He normally does a supper, but since they are leaving in the morning he gives us directions to the local bar/restaurant. Nick is a hospitality professional who has worked in the hotel business around the world and bought this place five years ago because he liked the peace of the village. Now he’s a bit tired of it and ready to sell and get back to England. He tells us that most of the locals speak English because there is some connection to a factory in Connecticut where at least half of them have gone to work for a couple years.

Mary has some postcards to mail (what a shock) so we go around the corner to the Tabac to buy stamps (the post office doesn’t sell stamps), but they are closed until 5:00 and it is 4:50. We decide to walk around the town, which gets us back to the Tabac at 5:05. Still closed. We go the other way, find our restaurant for dinner tonight and at 5:15 the Tabac is now open, but no stamps. They are currently out of stock, but as far as we can determine they will have more next month.

Mary reads and John does some computer work in the supper room (fire going and Getz/Gilberto on the sound system). At 8:00 we walk to the restaurant and find that there has been a tragedy. The father of the host/owner died today so he is gone and has been replaced by his father-in-law who speaks no English. Nick, Judy and a friend are eating at another table so they help us through the process. We both have the menu del dia including a tuna omelet appetizer, grilled chicken breast with baked tomatoes and eggplant, and John has a fantastic flan topped with honey and Mary has a so-so cheesecake with fruit. This is all washed down with a bottle of red wine. Total price 16 euros. For both of us. Combined with our “included” breakfast this morning, our chips and crackers for lunch, this dinner is very helpful with our food budget for the day.

We beat our hosts home and listen to the church bells from our room. The bell tower is 30 feet from our third floor room but Nick has assured us that they end at midnight and don’t start again until 7:00. And we were worried they would disturb our sleep. Every day is interesting.

Today’s picture: A final look at our room in Granada, the two windows on the left of the picture. We liked that place.

Sunday 11.14.2010


The Alhambra


It is only slightly less perfect this morning with some low overcast and fog reducing the value of our million-dollar view. We’re moving a little slower as we hobble down for breakfast after our marathon-hiking day yesterday. Catarina is smiling as always and we quickly use up her English and our Spanish vocabularies but breakfast is good. Our host Manuel is speechless this morning, as in laryngitis. He has been sniffling and coughing the last few days so we wonder when it will hit us. Barcelona or Madrid?


This afternoon is our Alhambra visit so we don’t want to kill ourselves before that. We hike down into town and do the arm-in-arm Sunday morning paseo along the tree-lined boulevard with a few hundred other couples. We also get into the cathedral for Sunday morning services. This is allegedly smaller than the Seville Cathedral, but because it is not as segmented it actually seems larger.


There is rain predicted for later and we know we will not want to walk back down here to find a restaurant after another hiking afternoon, so we go in search of a couple sandwiches and perhaps a bottle of wine to have in our room later. We know all the little shops will be closed but we have hopes for a supermarket we found while lost yesterday. Nada. Nothing is open today so we are considering our options when we walk past an Irish Pub that has a lineup of sports events in the window. Lo and behold at 19:00 this evening it will be the Bears-Vikings of American Football. Problem solved. With that taken care of we can hike back up our hill to relax for a couple hours before our tour begins.


We have been referring to our Alhambra tour for over a week and it is a pretty big deal. We won't go into the detail of the tour here - there are plenty of places to get great information if anyone is interested. We will mention a couple of things about the tour and the property in general.


La Alhambra is one of the most visited sites in Spain with as many as 8,000 people per day. It is the ancient palace of the last Moorish civilization in Spain and the final holdout in its struggle with the Christian monarchs to the north. To get in you have to get a ticket with a morning or afternoon time slot that allows you four hours on the grounds. You must also specify a half hour period during your morning or afternoon in which you will enter the palace. You can then stay in the palace as long as you wish or until your four-hour slot is finished. When we got our tickets in Ronda (from an ATM?) we asked for a Sunday afternoon and it specified 4:00 for the palace.

Our time slot begins at 2:00 so we wait until 2:15 to avoid the opening rush and then walk up the hill and find our gate. The audio tour has been recommended so we find the appropriate rental counter and get programmed in. There is also a Matisse exhibit of his works created during the period from 1910-1920 that were influenced by his visit to the Alhambra and we start there. We are certainly not art devotees, but the work is interesting and a good beginning to our tour.

We have been to Versailles which is perhaps the most palatial of the European royal palaces, and it is very much a palace from a "let them eat cake" point of view. We royals live here, the horse are there, the gardens are right behind, the swans are where they should be, and we'll try to find a place for the servants to bed down. The Alhambra, on the other hand, is an all-inclusive enclave of fortress, palace and medina with gardens, fountains and courtyards here, there and everywhere. The palace walls are a mile and a half around and at one point a couple thousand folks lived inside. It is shaped like a ship on the highest hill in Granada with the fortress, Alcazaba, as the prow, the Palacios Nazaries and the Medina occupying the center, and the Generalife gardens in the rear. Joining and atop the original palace is the Palace of Charles V who as conqueror had the right of one-upsmanship.

Unlike Versailles which was very formal, the Palacios Nazaries is soft and comfortable with intricately carved walls, ceilings and doorways, decorative tiles, and water and shrub filled courtyards. There is a much greater feeling of peace and serenity as you wander about and imagine life a thousand years ago. When many people around the world were still wearing skins and living in caves, this was a very civilized place. Unfortunately for him, the last resident of the original palace didn't fare any better than the handsome couple at Versailles, but at least he was hustled off to Africa in 1492 with his head still attached. We won't do a room-by-room here, but if anyone is interested, we have tons of pictures and there must be a DVD somewhere.


We finish our slot at 6:00, take a half hour break and then continue down the hill for the football game. We grab a couple of Murphy's from the bar and get settled in a back corner near the toilet with a little TV. The bartender tells us that there is usually a crowd of American students that come in and they have to put American Football on the big screen, but not tonight. It is raining a little and there is no food to be had here so John scurries across the street where he finds a couple slices of pizza which we wash down with more Murphy's. There is one kid from Atlanta who comes back to chat and catch the score but he is really watching soccer in front so is not to be trusted. Stupid Vikings! We leave after the third quarter and the game decided.

It has stopped raining and we make our final walk up this hill overlooking the city. What a nice stay!


Today's Picture: One of the many courtyards in the Alhambra

Saturday 11.13.2010


Granada!!

We may have mentioned how nice our lodging facility is. It still is this morning with the sun coming up behind the mountains bringing daylight slowly across the city as we watch. Catarina is our breakfast chef this morning and we have the usual assortment of meats, cheeses, cereal, yogurt, coffee, fruit and, of course, all the fresh squeezed OJ you can drink. Manuel pulls out his map to give us a walking tour for the day which looks simple in two dimensions.

We laze around until 11:00 knowing that five or six hours of hiking will be more than enough on this terrain. We start by going uphill around the exterior of the Alhambra walls on beautifully wide, wooded paths and after ten minutes loop around to begin the downhill portion which will take us down to the river. The walk past the original thousand-year-old walls is relatively steep and lined with stones, some of which are loose and some damp and slippery. We think that if this path were in Minneapolis all the children would have to wear helmets to walk down.


At the bottom we have the option of waiting for a little red bus to take us up the other side into the Albayzin (Moorish Quarter) or we can start walking up. Being relatively fresh we start the climb and about halfway take a detour into the Sacramonte neighborhood. Here the houses look normal from the front, but because they are built on a steep cliff, they are literally caves that are dug back into the hill. This area is supposedly now populated by the Romas (generally eastern European “gypsies”) but we don’t see a lot of folks out.


Our hike continues uphill to the San Nicolas viewpoint that overlooks most of the city with great views of the Alhambra on the opposite hill. We see a million pictures of the Alhambra at sunset and this was where they were all taken. St. Nicolas Square is not only home to the church of the same name, but also a Muslim Mosque. We walk the gardens of the mosque but, of course, the building itself is not open to the tourists.


Farther uphill is Plaza Larga where a small market is in full swing with a lot of locals and tourists milling about. From there we go up Calle Agua, a former street of Moorish baths, straddling the indentation in the middle of the street that was used for drainage. We loop around a few more blocks to Mirador Cristobal for a different angle of city views. We can almost see our place below the Alhambra, maybe.


From there we begin the long walk back down that takes us through more Moors, current Moroccans and lots of hippies into another couple streets of tiny shops selling hookah pipes, tea sets and harem pants. This eventually spills out onto Plaza Nueva where we had lunch yesterday. We decide to keep walking a bit further up the river that flows into town on this end and out on the other but is submerged below the city in between. The day has turned warm (mid-seventies), it is sunny and it is Saturday, so there are a million people on the streets. After plodding along with the crowds for a half-mile the street opens into a square of cafes with outdoor tables. A good time to stop.

We get a table in the shade, watch the entertainers and have a beer and lunch (Mary a salmon and cream cheese sandwich, John the chicken fajitas). A little Benji type dog has adopted us and stares at us with the occasional bark while we eat. He eventually discovers that there is slim pickin’s here and moves elsewhere.

For the rest of the afternoon we wander the commercial areas of downtown and eventually wind up on the other end where the river reappears. We are a little surprised to see it since we have no idea where we are, but it will be a nice landmark for us. As we turn to home on streets that stop and start and dead-end without warning, we have to pull out the map at every corner to take a new reading finally getting to the square at the bottom of our street. We are whipped by the time we get back up to our room. It is almost 6:00 and we have been walking up and down hills for seven hours (minus one for lunch) and we find that it isn’t getting any easier.

It feels great to get our feet up for an hour or two and watch another great sunset. Manuel makes dinner reservations for us tonight at 8:30 at the little restaurant right up the hill, Carmen de San Miguel. It is very nice and we get a window table overlooking the city that seems very familiar. John has the specialty of the house, the suckling pig with a vanilla puree and prunes and the meat is the best ever. Mary, breaking out of the box, has a pretty rare venison loin with a mushroom wheat risotto that is dynamite. This is in our top five meals of the trip, but alas, it takes a half hour to get the bill when we are finished. They just can’t figure that part out.

It is nice to have a hundred-yard walk downhill to get back tonight. We’ll probably hurt in the morning.


Today’s picture: Another view from our room of the sunset over Granada. Did we mention that we like our room here?

Friday 11.12.2010


The Home Stretch

Everything we do now leads us back to Madrid and our flight home in 11 days. John goes up to the terrace to check on our laundry and finds it neatly stacked and folded in a little room off to the side. It makes for easy packing this morning as we just put piles directly into the suitcases. We ordered breakfast last night for 9:30 this morning and Ian is busy with sausages and coffee when we return to the rooftop terrace. It is cool but the sun feels good and we have mountain views in one direction and the Mediterranean in the other. All of the roofs here as well as other places we have stayed have hot water tanks and solar panels installed to take advantage of all the sunny days. Probably not a reasonable option for northern Minnesota.


After breakfast we take another walk around town as Mary continues the great postcard shopping tour of Europe, followed by the continuation of the post office stand-in-line-for-one stamp tour. Ian is making beds when we get back to settle up our bill. Jane is off running around today so he says he is adding brownie points to his account. We were a bit worried about this place as it is a fraction of the price of other places we have stayed (35-euros/night) but the room was fine, the location ideal and our hosts couldn’t have been more accommodating so Cheers! to Hostal Miguel.


This is the last of our short-drive days leaving the coast right around noon and due to arrive at our next stop, Granada, in less than two hours. We are taken aback as we start to climb north to see snow on the mountaintops ahead of us and wonder what we’re getting into. There is snow predicted for home tomorrow so we thought we were finally going to be on the plus side of that ledger. We fire Monique when we get to the city as directed by our host for tonight, and follow his directions around the ring road to the Alhambra exit. We then squeeze down a dead end street, park illegally in front of a restaurant hanging over a hillside and walk down the last 100 yards to our lodging.

When we ring the bell, Manuel hustles down to meet us, gets our car keys, turns us over to Catarina for check in and disappears. A little bit later we see our car inching through a turn into a little garage three stories below us. When we climb down to get our luggage the driver is still only halfway in and takes another five minutes to make it all the way. We suspect that is why Manuel didn’t want us to park ourselves. A different person was parking the car (designated parker?) so he, we and soon Catarina and another helper all get our luggage up to the room and we’re settled in for three days.

We are staying in Granada in a Carmen. A Carmen is a traditional house from the Moorish period that encompasses terraces, gardens and orchards within a walled sort-of small area in the midst of a tight urban setting. Ours happens to be on the hill rising above the old Jewish quarter and on up to the Alhambra right above us, and it is unbelievable. If we look left and up we can see the walls of the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada Mountains beyond, and if we look straight or right and down we see the city of Granada spread out before us with more mountains beyond. The room is perfect; clean, spacious, with all the amenities, the gardens and terraces are classics, the public rooms are bright and tasteful, and the staff is very accommodating. Our streak continues.

The only bad news is, like Lisbon, we are built into the side of a hill so everything is either up or down. We opt for down and head for the Plaza Nueva for our now traditional mid-afternoon lunch. It is only about a fifteen-minute walk down the hill but suspect that it may take longer coming back up. Mary is making noise about eating in our big-time room tonight watching sunsets and twinkling lights and that sort of thing, so John thinks he should order a big lunch. He has an egg, ham and asparagus dish with salad and a beer on the side that is just right, and Mary has a tuna and roasted red pepper baguette with beer, all served at a nice sidewalk table under a tree.


After lunch we do a couple hour walking tour of this part of the city that loops around the Cathedral (2nd largest in Spain don't ya know) and into the crazy medina with shops spilling onto sidewalks with all sorts of Arabic finds. The large plazas all have a history going back over a thousand years when silk traders would park their camels near the fountains to tell the usual stories of traveling salesmen. If you let your imagination take over the whole thing comes to life and there are a few things that probably look the same today. Our walk continues through a part of the commercial area of downtown before we make a u-turn and start the return trip.

At a Pastelleria we pick up a box of empanadillas which will be dinner later and trudge back up the hill to our Carmen (Love it!). The sun sets at 6:00 sharp and we watch it disappear behind the mountains from the small terrace off our room. The lights start coming on while the 6:00 pm church bells are still chiming and soon the whole city is twinkling below us. The night is turning cool so we take advantage of the situation by warming our empanadillas on the room heater and pop the top on a bottle of wine. At about 9:30 we hear drums down the hill and soon a marching band comes marching through our lower neighborhood visible for a few seconds at a time from the terrace. The band, and the moon, and the city lights, and our terrace, and the wine are all working their magic. Hasta Manana!


Today's Picture: The view of the Sierra Nevadas from our room.

Thursday 11.11.2010


Spain Light

Our good weather is back. It is cold again this morning but the skies are bright blue with the winds of the last few days gone. We are determined to use this time productively in Ronda before we leave this especially scenic area. Today is the fifth of six short drives between stays so we have plenty of time.

We opt for the walking tour of our previously Moorish neighborhood that gets us into every corner. We start with a relatively easy walk through some alley-like streets with frequent historic buildings on our way to the gorge. Right next to the hotel is the former home of the last of the Aztec Kings who decided to live out his days here and the street is still named Avenida Moctezuma.

When we get to the gorge there are nice views of the new bridge and a stairway that goes down a couple hundred feet to one of the old town gates. We get about halfway down for some dramatic photo ops and decide that will be enough of a climb going back uphill. The tour takes us through back streets and squares that were one thing in the 700 years ending in 1485 and something else since. An interesting and yet obvious fact that we acquire along the way is that the Muslim inhabitants of this area were not interlopers, but had been here for seven centuries before being thrown out by the Christians from the north. That seems profound considering the diapers that our country is still wearing.

There are churches that used to be mosques and you can still see the bases of minarets with replacement tops that are now bell towers. There is also a former Moor palace that is perched atop the gorge with steps all the way down to the river so the Christian slaves could haul the water back up to the top. The square that used to be the Muslim marketplace is now where our car is parked.


Speaking of which, Mary goes back to finish packing up (all the dirty laundry in one suitcase), and John gets the car squeezing into the little spot in front of our hotel. We leave our very lovely staff and promise to come back another time, a promise we might very well keep. Monique gets us on the road to Malaga down on the coast and then we will turn east to our stop for tonight, Nerja. About halfway to Malaga she tells us to turn left (east) through a little town even though the highway signs suggest otherwise. We blindly follow her directions and find ourselves driving though multiple mountain ranges on minimum maintenance roads. We have ignored her advice in the past in order to follow rural country roads and she has apparently picked up on the theme. It is slow but exciting with breathtaking views and breathtaking gasps.

Once we get to Malaga it is smooth sailing along the Med coast to Nerja (Nair-Ha). There is free parking at a big lot a block from our little Hostal in the middle of town and smooth sailing through check-in. We have been emailing our host Jane about the possibility of getting our laundry done somewhere nearby and she takes control immediately. It is a little after 2:00 so she thinks there is plenty of time to wash and hang a couple loads out to dry and tells us to go have fun while she gets washing. OK.

It is a fifteen-minute downhill walk to the biggest of the Nerja beaches where we find “Ayo” the “famous” seaside restaurant where they cook Paella over open fires. We have beers and plates of Paella served from a 3-foot-across skillet, toast Jane the Laundress and watch the few brave sun worshippers on the beach. It is now in the mid-seventies but the water is cold and the sun is low in the sky. We consider a second beer before deciding that we should get back up the hill before we have more. One quick walk on the beach gets us back to the walkway up and more heavy exercise.

Nerja is called the “Balcony of Europe” because of the high promontory that extends into the sea where you can see for many miles in either direction. The “Balcony” is a couple blocks from our Hostal so when we get back to the top huffing and puffing we go that way for a sunset and that second beer. Mission accomplished as we get both things done. Jane should be hanging out our laundry about now.

After a short break, we (accomplished tapas travelers) do a half hour tour of the small downtown area and then head for a targeted tapas spot, “The Round Bar.” The place is packed, and with the tapas displayed around the bar, they are hard to pick out. There is also a guitar-playing singer shouting out the moving songs of Spain. We get a couple red wines and two tapas (free here with a drink) and watch the show.

Here’s the big deal about Nerha. Jane and Ian, our hosts, are Brit transplants. Everyone seated near us at Ayo was a Brit. Everyone we heard talking at the Balcony was a Brit or a German. Everybody we see in this bar is a Brit or German except the bartenders and the guitar player. Around the bar are 70-year-old guys playing bongos on the bar, 60-year-old bottle-blondes shimmying to the tunes and everyone watching everyone else and shouting “ole” at the end of every song. This is Crosslake, Minnesota in the summer, Puerta Vallarta in the winter, but it is certainly not Spain. There is plenty of sun here which makes it a lovely holiday or retirement spot, and we are in no position to be critical. These folks are all having fun, and obviously in their comfort zone, but nothing we see has any resemblance to anything we have seen over the last two months in Europe. It’s interesting for a night but we’re glad we’re moving on tomorrow.

At a break in the music we move down to the square near the Balcony and Bar Lizzaron. Here you pick out your own Tapas, keep the toothpicks and pay for the number of toothpicks on your plate at the end of the night. Very civilized. We can’t resist stopping at an English Pub for a final beer on our way back to the hotel. We chat with a couple of Brits from near Bath (we’ve been to the baths in Bath—they haven’t) before calling it a night. We check the clothesline on the terrace and some things are still damp. It’s not our problem.

Today's Picture: Paella and cold beer on the beach in Nerja.

Wedenesday 11.10.2010


Help, Help Me Ronda

Note: Brother Joe has been hinting through email that we have to figure out some way to incorporate the title of an old Beach Boys song into our blog while we're staying in Ronda. As a person with multiple communication degrees, he should know that would be way too obvious and too much of a cliché, even for us. Not going to happen.

We have chores on our list this morning. The housekeepers here all wear pink work dresses and they are flitting around like a flight of butterflies this morning buffing and polishing glass and wood while they wait for the guestrooms to become available. John nods an hola as he hurries into town for a haircut. It was suggested that he be at the door at about 9:30 where he finds a sign that says Barber Juan Jose will open at 10:00.


We have made another aborted attempt to buy Alhambra tickets on line, so John decides to kill the half hour to try the Caixa Bank office again to see it they can help with the purchase. We have learned that bank lines take forever, but a young lady employee is working her way down the line to see if she can help dispense with some easy stuff. She understands the Alhambra issue and walks John over to the ATM and has him put his card in. She then steers him through the process and lo and behold, out pop a couple tickets to the Alhambra for Sunday afternoon. Who knew you could buy tickets from an ATM. John also scouts out the laundry since that is also on our list, but that too opens at 10:00.

Juan Jose finally shows up at 10:20 and seems to be apologetic—a woman came by earlier who said he would be poco tarde and John didn’t know if that was a little late, or if he would come in a little later. The nuances kill us. Haircut accomplished, Alhambra tickets scored, let’s get on with the laundry.


Mary and John haul two big bags of dirty clothes, almost everything, the better part of a mile to the only laundry in town. After confidently plopping them on the counter the lady tells us that today was not possible. Tomorrow morning? No way. Maybe tomorrow afternoon which means after 4:00. We’ll be long gone. We haul the same two bags another better part of a mile back to the hotel where we spend a while with the desk person to see if there are other options. There aren’t. We will hope for the best that there is an option in Nerja tomorrow afternoon and Mary washes out some underwear and socks.

The day is chily but there are some peeks of sun so we want to do the town tour today. We start at the gorge, a 360 foot deep, 200 foot wide chasm that runs right through the middle of town. Our side is the old Muslim city with whitewashed plaster buildings, narrow alleys and former mosques that are now churches. The other side is the "New City" built by the Spanish when they kicked out the invaders in the 1400's. This is where most of the commercial areas are along with the bull rings and swarms of hotels and restaurants (McDonalds). Standing on the edge of the gorge you can visualize the Moors throwing barbs at the Spanish and the Spanish throwing barbed things back at the Moors. This is where the tour groups mostly hang out and the photo ops are incredible, although the bottom of the gorge probably only gets an hour of sun a day.

Walking the very nice terrace that runs along the length of the gorge on the "new" side brings us to the city bull ring, the Plaza de Toros. In the late 1600's and early 1700's bullfighting became favored by those in power and bull rings popped up all over the country, probably financed by a 1% hotel and restaurant tax. Ronda was an early leader in the sport and is considered the birthplace of the modern style of bullfighting with the capes and flourishes and one fellow on foot with a sword at the end. There are tons of artifacts, costumes and gear along with an impressive firearm museum and equestrian school. They still hold bullfights here every September but the rest of the time the museum and a walk through the bull ring itself is the attraction.

It's mid afternoon and time for our Spanish time late lunch. We cross back over the bridge where we coax a ruluctant lady to wait on us and sell us a couple big burgers (which is what happens to the bulls at the end of their afternoon in the ring). We toast them with a Coke Light and capuccino before hunkering down for a late afternoon break.

It's tapas again tonight. Last night we made it to Bar Lechuguita, Tragatapas and El Porton which were all good. Tonight we start at Bar Faustino where we make the mistake of being led to a table. It is a good thing in that we avoid all the smoke in the bar, but once again our server gets busy and disappears while we wait to pay and leave. We are tapas professionals now and the unwritten rules require that you eat and move and here we are thrown off our timing. Finally we move on to Bar Maestro where there are two bartenders, a cook and us. Obviously the service is better here so we stay put to finish our evening.

It's still cold and we have limited protection since most of our clothes are still stuffed into a laundry bag so we hustle back across the bridge to be with the ghosts of our muslim predecessors. No help from Ronda.


Today's Picture: Ronda's Muslim Quarter, Gorge and New Bridge.

Tuesday 11.09.2010


Costa del Sol

It isn’t pretty this morning, cold and rain predicted all day, and we have come to a change in our itinerary. Our plan was to move a couple hours down to the coast to Tarifa, where tomorrow we would take a ferry on a day trip over to Tangier, Morocco. Mary has never been keen on the idea and after getting many comments from our fellow travelers in Lisbon, we have decided to can Morocco. Luis said it best: “You will only see theater with the Moroccans playing the part of the annoying pests pulling on your sleeves and you playing the part of the annoyed tourist, too intrigued to walk away.” So it is three days with Ronda as our base instead.

The little British lady we met yesterday caught us to tell us excitedly that there were four more Minnesotans at breakfast this morning and she tried to find us. We told her that it was ok since we see Minnesotans at home all the time.

So, what should we do on a rainy day in Ronda? Let’s drive to Tarifa. We did decide to poke our way through these hills, maybe as far as the coast anyway, so let’s see if we can find some better weather. The total drive is only about 70 miles, but it will take us two hours as we wind up, down and around these beautiful hills. Every twenty minutes we see another little white town in the distance trickling, like a pearl necklace on a beautiful woman, down between the mountains. (Very steamy, right?) Eventually we start to ride a gradual downhill grade toward the water.

We hit the coast at La Linea, the gateway to Gibraltar. Apparently there is a bit of a tiff going on between the Spanish Government that thinks the “Rock” should be part of Spain, and the British who have controlled Gibraltar since the 1700’s. It has historically been petty, for example there are no signs on the Spanish roads that point to Gibraltar, but lately it is getting more serious with the opposing law enforcement agencies glaring at each other over disputed territorial waters. We’re happy because we get some English radio programming.


It is windy and rainy when we get to Tarifa and we recognize the symptoms from Nazare where the high winds would change the weather every few minutes. In spite of the misty air we can make out the distant shore of Africa and the white buildings of Tangier. We park by the docks where ferries steam back and forth across the Strait of Gibraltar departing every couple hours. It is an uphill walk through the town walls and into the city which is quiet in November. In addition to the Africa tourist connection this is a big-time wind surfing community with the gales blowing in off the North Atlantic and being squeezed between the two continents. It must be too blustery because we only see vacant, uninviting beaches.

We find the “Central Café” that is protected enough that we elect to eat lunch at an outside table. The temperature since we left the mountains has risen from the mid-forties to the high sixties and that makes the trip seem worthwhile. John has a Sandwich Especiale (everything in the kitchen between three slices of bread) with fries and a cinnamon coffee and Mary digs into a tuna salad and cappuccino. There are only a few other brave souls around today so the square is peaceful.


We try to talk Monique into a different route home which she finds disturbing, so we temporarily fire her and go back to manual navigation (Mary with a map). We follow the shoreline east through Algeciras and Estepona to San Pedro, the latter two being east of Gibraltar and therefore on the Mediterranean coast. This area and beyond is the “Costa del Sol” which is beaches, condos, golf courses, hotels and tons of new construction. The Brits love this part of the world and make up a huge percentage of the population.

For us it is one photo op after another. The mountains here stretch almost to the water’s edge, the water itself is magically colored and the sun and rain are continuing their dance resulting in a rainbow around every bend in the road. It is the type of picturesque setting that might cause a high number of traffic accidents if it were only Minnesota tourists driving here. We’ll have to watch out for the other four.

It is mostly dark by the time we get back to Ronda. Mary spends some time on the computer in the breakfast room (where the reception is reliable) and John finds Judy from Alexandria, MN, one of the elusive four, on the house computer. They are soon joined by “Chickie” (really) and eventually, Mary. Their husbands are knocking back a couple cocktails up in the rooms. They are here for two weeks of Spain, don’t care much for the food and are leaving in the morning. Well, okay then.


We hold out until 8:00 and have a list of four tapas bars for tonight. We make it through three of them before giving up and going home. We have gourmet tapas (really good!), and cheap tapas (0.75 euro each). The last one was a fried quail egg on a little square of toast with a slice of great ham on top that you popped into your mouth all at once for a little explosion of breakfast. Too bad for Judy from Alexandria.

We debate stopping for a local Sherry, but good sense wins out and we make it home to bed by 11:00, early for us Spaniards.


Today’s Picture: A slightly misty Gibraltar from just outside Algeciras, Spain.