Leaving Spain

It's all over. Jordan headed to Salzburg for almost two weeks, and the rest of us went home. The immigration people took us aside to check our passports, but other than the that, we had no trouble.



What a wonderful trip! When we got home, people tended to focus in on the theft of our passports and computer. That was certainly a huge drag, but it was an eye-opener for us that even a disaster like this is just "stuff" -- and we can replace stuff. (We are lucky enough to have insurance!) No one was hurt, and the main thing we are sorry to have lost is the pictures of our visit to Trevélez and the Alhambra. Our memories are especially valuable, since we know we have to keep them fresh without photos to fall back on.

We are planning a follow-up trip in two years, this time to Córdoba (to see the mosque that we missed), Nerja (the lovely town on the Costa del Sol where we reported the theft and hung around while Jordan called the credit card companies, bank, etc.), Lisbon, and the Portuguese coast. Time to start planning!

Day 9 - Our Last Day in Spain

We had breakfast with Lauren and Time at the same place and decided to split up for the morning. Lauren, Tim, Meg, and Margy went to the El Rastro street market, while Jordan and Zac went to the Palacio Real so that they could visit the Royal Armory.







The El Rastro group wandered around the street market and bought a few items -- pants, shirts, etc. The market had normal street-market stuff -- it wasn't the weird and funky market that we were expecting. But it was fun, and we stopped at an outdoor café for some café con leche.

Lauren had loaned Jordan her cell phone so the two groups could text-message each other to reconnect. We decided to meet at the in-town end of the teleférico (cable car) that runs to the middle of a huge park that used to be the Palacio Real's hunting grounds. The views from the 15-minute ride were spectacular, and even Lauren, who is not famous for her head for heights, enjoyed the vista of Madrid.





After walking around the park a bit and returning on the cable car, it was past time for lunch, and we had a tough time finding a restaurant open in the residential part of Madrid where we found ourselves. We eventually talked our way into a little neighborhood joint where we had a random assortment of good food.

Before we left the U.S., Elaine and Shelly, friends of Meg and Zac, had raved about churros y chocolate -- fried dough that you dip in thick hot chocolate, and since this was our last day in Spain, we needed to find this delicacy for the kids. We took the metro to Lavapiés, near our hotel, and walked around until we found a sidewalk café near the Atocha train station that server excellent churros y chocolate -- score!

Lauren and Tim were ready to walk back to the hotel, but our family went into the Estacion Atocha to see the rain forest botanical garden there. At one end was a lily pond with hundreds or turtles, which we watched for a long time.





After some downtime at the hotel, including repacking so that Jordan could take one suitcase to Salzburg, and fitting Zac's sword into one one large suitcase, Meg and Margy found a recommendation for a restaurant called La Finca de Susanna, near the Puerta del Sol. We walked over with Lauren and Time and found a large, lovely, modern restaurant with wonderful Spanish-international fusion food. We had duck, fish, chicken (for Zac, of course), and loved everything. (Well, actually, the desserts didn't live up to the quality of the main courses, except for Zac's tiramisu.) Jordan has an interesting local anisette-like liqueur with coffee.

We walked back to the hotel, happy and replete, leaving Lauren and Tim to look for cognac and cigars.

Day 8 - The Prado

Lauren and Tim had already scoped out the neighborhood and found a nice little breakfast buffet place for one-fifth the price of the hotel breakfast. (!) We met them there for breakfast and walked to the Prado Museum for some art. Kate Gridley had loaned us the Prado guides to El Greco, Goya, and Velasquez, but they were in the computer bad that was stolen, so we got a whole set of new little books, which will be fun to have. We each got an audioguide and split up into pairs to roam the museum, meeting up for lunch (which we decided was second breakfast, since it wasn't 2 p.m. yet) and then again at 3:30.



We won't even try to describe the art at the Prado. They have amazing collections of Goya (including his dark and disturbing Black Paintings), El Greco (who we'd seen a lot of in Toledo), and many other painters from Rubens to Velasquez to Raphael to Titian, and there was a special Tintoretto exhibit, too. Jordan said that he could die happy if he could see one painting -- Hieronymous Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights," and it was even weirder in person than in photos.

We walked to the Plaza Santa Ana for lunch (or third breakfast) at a little table outside.



Jordan decided that since our brains were full we should be entertained this evening. He and Meg found a little, less-commercial flamenco place near the Plaza de España, called Las Tablas. We had no idea what to expect, but it was a small place with a few dozen people, four musicians, and three dancers. As the flamenco started up, it was hard to tell how good it was going to be, but the musicians and dancers got more nad more into what they were doing and the whole experience was fantastic.

Day 7 - Arriving in Madrid

We got up at the crack of dawn (5:55 a.m.) and we were on the road by 6:15. (It helps when you don't bring any luggage into the hotel!) It was amazingly dark -- dawn didn't being to break until well after 7. The kids slept in the back while Jordan drove us up to Madrid, with Margy navigating us to the posh neighborhood where the embassy is situated. We were parked and were through security by 11 a.m. and had completed our passport applications before 1 p.m. when the office closed. The nice embassy man told us to come back by 6 for our passports. Easy enough!

We found an upscale pizza place for lunch, where the waitress refused to reply to us in Spanish. We checked into our hotel, left the kids in the room, returned the car to the rental car place in the train station (the same station that was bombed a couple of years ago), picked up our passports, and got back to the hotel, where we had a big room with bunk beds for the kids.

We were to meet our high school friend Lauren and her new boyfriend Tim in Madrid and we'd gotten a message that they were going to try to stay in the same hotel, so we left messages both and the front desk (who seemed pretty clueless) and in the keyslot of their room. (Why didn't the hotel staff give them our message when they checked in? Who knows.) We even called John in Trumansburg to get Lauren's cell phone number, but he was en route to Dublin via Toronto, so no luck.

We walked around downtown Madrid -- our hotel was just a few blocks from the Prado art museum, the Puerto del Sol, and the Plaza Mayor, which was the most amazing plaza we'd ever seen. We had a good dinner at La Trucha, with lots of little plates (tapas-ish), and came back to a message Lauren and Tim that we'd see them in the morning at breakfast.



We were exhausted from the long day (especially Jordan, who had to stay awake during the drive). But it felt as though the theft was all taken care of, and we could go ahead and have a great time in Madrid.

Day 6 - The Costa del Sol

We were up and packed by 10 a.m., and took a cab to the parking garage to drive out of town. We headed south again, this time all the way to the Mediterranean, which the kids has never seen. We got off the highway in the first town we passed, but there was no good place to stop and stick our toes in the water.



A bit further on we came to a mirador overlooking a pebble beach, left the car in a parking area, and clambered down the cliffs to the beach. We spent a lovely hour playing with the pebbles (or skipping them out over the water, in Zac's case), wading (in Meg's case), and relaxing. It was a perfect beach experience, without actually including swimming.





To our horror, when we returned to the car we found that it had been broken into. (Zac: "Mom, did you leave the seats pushed forward?") Missing were Jordan's laptop, Meg's iPod and phone, all but one of Margy's credit cards, and all four passports. End of the happy day at the beach!

We found the Guardia Civíl in the next town, Nerja, and reported the theft. The nice policeman put through a call to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, and we found out that we'd need to leave at the crack of down the next day (Friday) in order to apply for passports before the Madrid office closed for the weekend at 1 p.m. We got some sandwiches in a little place run by a Dutch woman ("De Gekke Koe") and Jordan used an international phone card to call the States and cancel our credit cards. He also asked a neighbor to find Zac's birth certificate and fax it to the embassy, since Zac is too young to sign his own passport application. Nerja looks like a lovely, low-key beach town, a destination for a lot of English tourist, apparently, and we want to come back under happier circumstances.

We got to Córdoba too late to be able to see the Grand Mosque, so that was a big disappointment. We walked around the outside of the building anyway, and Margy pressed her nose against the doors in an effort to peer in and see something! But Córdoba is a lovely town, much smaller than Granada and much more of a real place that Toledo. We'll just have to come back.

We left everything in the car except a change of clothes and our toothbrushes, so we could get up and out early the next morning. Oh well... Jordan wisely suggested that we not make the theft into the centerpiece of the trip. We've been having a wonderful time, and this doesn't change that. The thing we are sorriest to have lost are our pictures of us in Granada.

Day 5 - The Alhambra

With our newly-acquired breakfast supplies, we made café con leche and ate pastries in our apartment, then walked down the river to the Plaza Nueva, around the cathedral, past some outdoor spice and tea sellers, and into the Capilla Reál, the chapel where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella are buried. Two huge stone sarcophagi indicate where F&I and their daughter and son-in-law lie, but you can also go down some steps to peer in to see their actual simple lead coffins. On the way down the steps, a man with a Cockney accent loudly warned Margy to "Watch your back!" He let her know that a suspicious-looking young fellow in a red jacket had been sneaking up on her, undoubtedly to pick her pocket. "That's my son," Margy replied. They all had a good laugh.

Isabella had a spectacular art collection, including one Botticelli. The paintings that hadn't been plundered by Napoleon were on display.

We had a bit of time before we could enter the Alhambra at 2 p.m., so we wandered around the neighborhood at the base of the fort. Margy was freezing in a short-sleeved shirt, so she bought a shirt at a little Moroccan store. We also wandered into the Corral de Carbón, a large courtyard with wonderful Moorish archway entrance, and had grilled cheese sandwiches in the Plaza Nueva, where we talked to an American father and son who were visiting from Berlin.



At last, we could bus up to the Alhambra entrance, pick up our tickets and audioguides, and enter the Alhambra! We had to wait until 6 p.m. to enter the Palacio de Nazariés (the Moorish palace), so we had plenty of time to see the Generalife (the summer palace and gardens), the Alcazaba (fort and towers), and the Palace of Carlos V, which contained an exhibition of interesting slo-mo video art.

• Great Buildings: The Alhambra


• Wikipedia: The Alhambra

The Alhambra was magical and amazing. It earned Zac's highest accolade -- it was "insane." In the room after room in the Palacio de Nazariés we saw fine tesselated tilework, plaster reliefs like intricate 3D lacework, including stalactite-like ceilings, and the phrase "There is no conqueror but Allah" repeated endlessly in Arabic lettering.



Finally, it was close to 8 p.m. when the Alhambra closes, and we walked down a path round the back side of the Alhambra complex down to the Rio Darro, the Albaicín, and our apartment. We had dinner in the Bodega Castañeda to the sounds of an older man passionately playing flamenco on a guitar, including holding the guitar behind his head while strumming. We didn't know enough about flamenco to guess whether this was normal behavior.

On the way home we bought a few Morrocan pastries from the local tearoom, and struck a conversation with Ahmed, the owner. He asked each of us our names and wrote them our phonetically in the Arabic alphabet on his business cards.

Day 4 - Trevelez in the Sierra Nevada

Having just arrived in Granada, we decided to leave the next day. No, it wasn't that we didn't love Granada -- we did, but our tickets to the Alhambra (Granada's biggest attraction) weren't until tomorrow, and we wanted to take advantage of having a car to get out of the city. Jordan had read about the little town of Trevélez high up on the south-facing slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and wanted to go there.



We hadn't found an open grocery store the night before so we didn't have breakfast-making supplies in the apartment. Instead, we meandered down past the Plaza Nueva and the cathedral to Plaza Bis-Rambla (we love the Moorish names!) for coffee and pastries at an outdoor table.

After getting our car from the parking garage we drove south over the west end of the Sierra Nevadas, which true to their name were still covered with snow. We don't understand how an area with orange and olive trees can be so close to snow. We drove by a grove of huge modern windmills turning slowly and majestically in the winds off the Mediterranean. It was a great to compare them to the Quixotean windmills of yesterday.



We turned off onto a series of narrow winding roads into La Alpujarra, the area between the Sierra Nevadas and the sea. This was the area where Boabdil, the last Moorish king in Spain, was given a small fiefdom after he turned Granada over to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.



Trevélez is at the head of a high valley (below the snow line, though) where the air is pure and dry. Farmers from all over southern Spain ship smoked hams to Trevélez to hang and cure in the dry air. We ate amazing ham and smoked pork loin in every possible form -- everything on the lunch menu included ham. (Zac had to remove ham from his chicken cutlet.) Our favorite was the lomo iberico, a thinly-sliced smoked, dried pork loin. Jordan talked the rest of us into trying blood sausage, and it wasn't that bad!

On the way back down to the highway we came to a huge new dam that we'd been seeing sings about. Higher in the valleys were lots of signs saying things like "Farms not golf courses!" and "Keep the Alpujarra as it is!" We figured that this dam, the Embalse de Rules, must have been what the fuss was about. It was new enough that water had barely begun to back up behind it; it looked as though it would take years to fill the lake it would create.

Before giving up the car, we stopped at a shopping mall to pick up groceries and running shorts (piratas) for Jordan. With our purchases, we parked and look the local bus back to the apartment.

After a rest, we wandered around the Albaicín again, looking for night life, but found quiet, empty cobblestone alleys. We ate at El Aqua, where we had two kinds of fondu (cheese and meat) and another wonderful view of the Alhambra.

Day 3 - Toledo to Granada

After a quick breakfast and a turn around the new part of Toledo in search of a SIM card for John's phone, we took off on the highway for Granada. About a half hour out of Toledo, we saw some windmills, but they were the modern kind for electricity, not Don Quixote's kind. But on the facing hilltop, we saw a fort, which Margy determined was called Almonacid. Possibly used by El Cid befpre 1100, there was no clear way to get to it. After nosing around some olive groves in the car, and a turn-off to no-where, we were wandering around the town at the base of the hill and asked for directions. "Sure," he said, "people do it all the time. Just go to the end of the street and turn left." And so we did, and climbed a moderately steep set of switchbacks to an abandoned fort. It was magnificent, and dominated the plain around it. You could see the whole plain, maybe a 30 mile radius. The fort had an outer curtain wall and a keep. It looks to be at least 10 feet deep in dirt and fill, and would make a fascinating site for excavation. Zac was as happy as I've ever seen him, bounding about.







Almost as much fun as the castle was driving through the very sleepy town of Almonacid. Market had been set up in the central square, so we had to detour around it and didn't get to see the church. But it was very clean, very quiet, and I don't think we saw a single person under 50.








About a half hour later, after passing several other castles on hilltops, we saw castles and windmills. That was Consuegra, on the "Ruta de Don Quixote." The local trade school has been
restoring the castle and windmills as part of their trades program. So it's somewhat rebuilt, with some furnished rooms. The windmills have beeen restored as well, and at least two could be moderately functional. The enthusiastic and warm door keeper didn't have change for my 20 euro note, and so sent me down to the tourist office (2 minutes) while engaging Margy and Meg in intense conversation.




Frankly, I'm not sure the rebuilt castle was that much more interesting than the ruin. I think an archeological and historical dig might have been the most interesting.

By then we had burned up enough time that we had to boogie on to Granada, driving through flat countryside filled with a mixture of grape vines servely pruned to the ground and gray-green olive trees. But we had to stop at the pass of Desapenaperros, where the Christians threw the Muslims to their deaths in 12 something or other. As they were moving south, this mountain range (the Sierra Morena) served as the boundry between the two empires. When the Christians finally decided to invade, this is where they had their decisive victory. The mountains aren't much to look at as you're approaching them, but the pass is quite spectacular and very narrow. We stopped at least to look around for a bit - it's all national forest.



We were going to detour though the largeish town of Linares for lunch but as soon as we got off the highway we saw a restuarant with enough cars in front of it to be plausible - the typical travellers' hotel and restaurant that have all been replaced by chains in the states. We had a plausible dinner - lamb stew, saladas, pasta, etc. And back on the road to Granada, with the entire landscape carpetted in live trees as far as the eye can see. We calculated that we saw at least 100,000 olive trees , maybe as many as a million. (20% of the world's supply of olive oil comes from Granada province.)



Granada is a big city. That fact seems to have escaped us, and we were thinking of it as Toledo, which is quite a small city. Our apartment had complex instructions about parking the car with a weekly pass and taking a taxi to a bar to meet the owners. Without a phone, we couldn't call ahead to say that we were running late. After a trip down the bus-and-taxi-only lane of the Gran Via de Colon (named after Christopher Columbus), we turned around and went back to the parking garage, not without some twisting and turning through the streets. We reorganized the bags and walked a fair distance to find a taxi (one of the surlier taxi drivers I've ever dealt with), and finally go to the bar to meet the apartment ownwer about a half hour late. He was quite nice about it and showed us our lovely apartment, which is exactly as it claimed to be in all the web information. Here's the view from our terrace:



The Albaicin (old Muslim quarter) is a rabbit warren of streets, some as narrow as 1.5 meters, but all with car traffic - though on what schedule and by whom we're not exactly sure. There is bus service to the car park, which I guess we wish we'd known about. But Meg and Jordan walked to the nearby main square and finally bought a telephone card for the pay phones. And we walked around the Albaizen and had a lovely (if chilly) dinner in a Morrocan restaurant. After having all the restaurants closed in Toledo on Sunday, most of the ones in Granada seem to be closed on Monday.

But we're tired and tucked in and ready for bed, wondering exactly what we're going to do tomorrow, since we don't have Alhambra tickets until Wednesay. A trip to the mountains, we think. Meg and Zac and Jordan joke that they want ot go skiing, but it would be too big a hassle.

If this is posted, it's because we got to the Internet Cafe with the data on a memory stick and that all worked.

Day 2 - Toledo, Visigoths, Synagogues, and Views of the City

Today was a fine touristing day.

Not surprisingly, we all slept like the dead, but Margy and I were pretty happy that we kept the kids up until about 11 so as to adjust to Spanish time.

We also forced everybody out of bed at 9AM, which felt like an appropriate moment on a Sunday morning. The surprise of the morning came at the hotel's breakfast buffet, which included two excellent hams and some excellent sausage.

As museums and the like are only open from 10 to 2, we hustled downtown (well, uptown, up the hill) to the Museo de Santa Cruz.



Normally the home of a large number of El Grecos, along with ceramics and an archaeological museum, it had been taken over by an exhibit of Visigothic Spain.

Now here's a piece of history not well known by us Americans casually familiar with Spanish (or European, for that matter) history. Greatly elided, the Goths came out of the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea in the early 200's AD, and by 375AD, having migrated down the Vistula river through Russian and the Ukraine, ended up near present day Romania. Under pressure from the Huns, they sought refuge in the Roman Empire which they began by conquering, and ended up being assimilated by. By some time in the middle of the 500's, they had conquered Rome, become Romans (and Christians), and established a kingdom based in Toledo. It was they who brought Christianity to the Iberian peninsula. The Unitarian Universalists among us will be surprised to find out that that they adhered to Arianism, making them our spiritual kindred, and making theirs a non-trinitarian empire.

Most of this came from a video in Spanish only, that I simultaniously translated for the kids. That was harder than I remembered... What I found more interesting was the way the exhibit placed the Visigoths at the origin of Spanish national identity, as the first people to unify present-day Spain. In a town that in some ways still feels steeped in the Spanish Civil War, I found the emphasis in this exhibit on national identity to be intriguing. Also the fact that none of the material was available in any language other than Spanish.



The exhibit at the Santa Cruz museum also highlighted the history of Saint Idelfonso, the patron saint of the Toledo Cathedral, and apparently quite a scholar in his time (early 600's). The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that "one day [he was] praying before the relics of Saint Leocadia, when the martyr arose from her tomb and thanked [him] for the devotion he showed towards the Mother of God. ...[O]n another occasion the Blessed Virgin appeared to him in person and presented him with a priestly vestment, to reward him for his zeal in honouring her." We saw endless paintings of him being presented with the vestment, including one by El Greco.

Also at the museum were some beautiful ceramics, many from Portugal, highlighting the unique role of ceramics in Portuguese architecture.





After the Santa Cruz museum, we had intended to go to the Museum of Visigothic history, but we were all Visigothed out. So we walked over the hill to the old Jewish quarter, and had just enough time to see the Sinagoga del Transito, built in the mid 1300's. According to the exhibit, it's one of three synagogues surviving from the expulsion of the Jews under Ferdinand and Isabella. It is now a Sephardic museum (Museo Sefardi), and quite a good (if compact) one.



On the way to lunch, we stopped in at the church of Santo Tome, where the El Greco of the burial of Count Orgaz was painted. Looking like an active church, the painting is in an anteroom to the whole church, and had an excellent (if extensive) audio narration, which only Zac listened to. James Michener couldn't say enough bad things about this painting in his Iberia, but we appreciated some of the imagery more than he did, and the amazing effects on some of the vestments.

We had walked by a lovely square with a couple of restaurants with outdoor tables, and had a lovely lunch at one. Margy had a great goat cheese salad, and Jordan had bacalao (dried cod fish) with white sauce. It was a thoroughly pleasant lunch in the sun.



Our only agenda item for the afternoon was a visit to Ferdinand and Isabella's church, San Juan de los Reyes, which they built in the middle of the Jewish quarter before they threw out all the Jews, but it was closed for renovation. But we came across the Jesuit church beforehand and went up the bell tower for a great view of the city. We also enjoyed this Renaissance church far more than the others we had seen for its relatively spare decoration and simple lines.



On our way back to the hotel Zac bought himself a copy of Ving Carlos V's sword, for which he had been ferociously comparison shopping, and Margy bought some earrings.

We got back to the hotel at 6, but by 7 we were taking a ring-road tour of Toledo in the car, including some spectacular views of the city across the Rio Tajo, and a turn around the new part of the city where people actually live.

Having eaten a big lunch, we were up for a light meal in a nice place. The bar down the street, recommended by the front desk, looked a little down-market, so we followed our noses to the new part of the city and found one of the few places open - a bar with a dining room and menu. We sat out on the street cafe and had a light supper - very pleasant, if a tad chilly.

Finally, on our way home the churros shop was just closing, but we go their last two churros, just so the kids could try them. We'll work up to fresh churros tomorrow.

The kids are watching Harry Potter on TV (in Spanish), Margy's plotting tomorrow's route to Granada, and I'm blogging. ...

Don't know when the next update is since the apartment in Granada doesn't have WiFi. So absent an Internet Cafe, we'll be checking in from Cordoba on Thursday.

Day 1 in Toledo

After an uneventful flight with a change in Philadelphia, it felt good to leave the April Vermont snows and arrive some place fairly warm (well, upper 60's).

We rented a car at the Madrid airport (just barely big enough for us and our bags), and headed out to Toledo. We're staying at the Hesperia Hotel which is a bit nicer than we're used to, and worth it after just a half a night's sleep on the plane. Since it includes free wifi, we'll try blogging as we go. We also tried out Skype through the wifi and it works great.

We got checked in and showered by 12:30 and took off to see the city on foot. Almost right outside the hotel is a lovely park, just outside the gates to the old city.

We took a number of snaps as we walked around the the old city, with incredibly narrow twisty streets going up the hill to the Alcazar:





We ate a light lunch at a rather peculiar bar/restaurant overlooking the river Tajo (which surrounds the city on 3 sides) and the Academia Infanteria (which used to be in the Alcazar).



We spent about 1 1/2 hours in the Cathedral and Jordan took lots of bad pictures, some of which can be saved. The chancel of the cathedral contains an amazing series of bas-relief carvings of scenes from Jesus' life. The Sacristy is a veritable art museum, with Goyas, El Grecos, Zubarans, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velasquez, and others. In a very relaxed atmosphere; they're very matter-of-factly just hung on the wall. Here's one snap of the Cathedral:



One of the whole charms of the place is the mixture of cultures. The mosque with the peculiar name "Cristo de la Luz" is under renovation/excavation. (The story is that the Muslims, upon taking the city in the 8th century, found a statue of Jesus with a burning oil lamp in a niche. Rather than desecrate it, they walled it up with the lamp still burning. When the Christians re-took the city in 1085, they discovered the statue behind the wall, with the lamp, of course, still burning. The mosque:



Finally, on our way back to the hotel, we got a good view of the old city walls:



We'll try to update as convenient.

Tsau for now.

Our Trip to Spain Starts

For the first time in years, our family is taking a trip together to somewhere we've never been. We're using the kids' spring break to travel to Spain for 10 days, flying into Madrid and traveling south into Castille and Andalucia. We'll post photos and notes as we travel.