Last Day in Barcelona / Last Day of this Trip

We are now almost ready to go home. Today we take a two-hour train ride to a small town called Figueres (feeg-YARE-us) to the Dali Museum. A fitting end, I guess – some wild and crazy art in a wild and beautiful country.

Going to another country is, I believe, good for one’s soul and good for one’s outlook on life. My cousin Jill, who just returned from a family trip across Europe wrote that she is “Grateful for life and love and beauty and kindness and a big world worth saving.” That is a good summation.

There is something about the experience of disorientation as one adjusts temporally and spatially to another place, another culture, another group of people that is healthy and mind-opening. There is an odd sort of beauty in the dazed moments generated by travel. In those moments I gain empathy in the frustration and joy in working things out. Then too, there is the joy in all the beauty and art and architecture, in the helpfulness of people with whom communication is limited, in the wonders of experiencing a different way of life and a different perspective on the world.

On this trip we experienced the places where Christian and Muslim cultures have met throughout history, often with disastrous results. It makes me more aware of who I am in this world and what my history has been. It makes me appreciate other cultures, whatever their flaws – and more appreciative of my own culture, whatever its flaws. There is beauty everywhere.

Perhaps the only photo and last comment is this: In both Barcelona and Madrid, the city hall buildings had large banners reading “Refugees Welcome.”

That’s all and perhaps that’s enough. We'll be home in Reedley soon.

On Barcelona's Placa de San Jaume 

Montserrat and the Sardana Dance

We took a day trip to Montserrat, a Benedictine monastery in the mountains to the northeast of Montserrat. It is nestled into a dramatic setting of serrated mountains, hence the name of Montserrat. Although it was foggy in the morning, it cleared off and was a beautiful day. Montserrat has an 800 year old black Madonna in the basilica which was found in a nearby cave in the twentieth century.

On Sunday we wandered through the oldest part of Barcelona, the part that was once the center of the Roman settlement founded here around 50 B.C. Barcino, as it was called, was a type of retirement location for Roman soldiers.

In front of the cathedral on Sunday noon we were privileged to see the Sardana dance being performed. It is a Catalonian circle dance that is significant to the people here in the northeast part of Spain known as Catalonia. It appears to be a little un-dramatic when first seen, particularly when compared to other dances in Spain such as flamenco. But it has some interesting connotations to the Catalonians who see themselves as different from the rest of Spain and who want political separation, too. There are aspects of community that are signified by the dance, such as the way they always place their belongings (coats, purses, etc.) in the center of the circle. So, despite its mundane appearance it was good to be able to catch the Sardana by the cathedral.

A small sardana dance took place beside the main dance circle. This one included a Catalonian flag.

Likes / Dislikes

There are things I've enjoyed about Spain and things I will leave behind with a wee bit of joy.

Things I like:

1. Tapas -- this is simply a great idea. Getting small bites or plates of food means you can try a few more things. I wish this idea caught on everywhere.

2. The beautiful tile work -- it turns the most mundane wall, building, or bench into a work of art.

3. Plazas -- the idea that everyone gathers in central places, spaces that are created specifically for that purpose. Makes one more neighborly and keeps people in touch. It might get to be too much at times, but my instinct is that it is a good community builder.

In this square in Granada a theater group started performing rather unexpectedly. People sat on the cathedral steps to watch or continued to drink and eat at the restaurants on the other side.

4. The layers of history and culture, particularly in the south of Spain. Those reminders of all the life that has gone on before us, and being able to see it all around continues to move me.

Things I don't like:

1. The idea that dinner is at 9 and everyone (children too) stays up until all hours of the night. And are pretty loud about it. I say go to bed. Get some sleep. There is not much to be proud about in not getting enough sleep. One young person I know (unnamed) even has the theory that some of the economic problems could be better and more quickly solved if the people weren't so sleep-deprived. I don't know, but it sounds logical.

2. Along with the late nights is the excessive amounts of noise that goes with staying out late. I had to wear earplugs to sleep in a few places. Enough said -- I can be a grump if I don't get enough sleep.

3. No good coffee until Barcelona. For sure Spain is not Italy or France when it comes to coffee. We even broke down and went to Starbucks today. But still, in Barcelona we've found a few good places.

Dancing Eggs

Doug's nephew Marty joined us last night. He was studying in Budapest, Hungary this spring and is now on his way back home to Indianapolis. Marty is Colleen and Ron's son. Today we walked the area of the Eixample where there are some more funky buildings by Modernisme architects. These guys who designed the buildings had some kind of fun or were some kind of crazy -- or both. In any case, the buildings were fun to see. Between the sites, we stopped for coffee and then for lunch, and we had a good time catching up with Marty and his time in Europe. In addition to studying, he traveled a lot, north to Estonia and Finland, east to Istanbul, around parts of Austria and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Romania, and Amsterdam. He is ending the trip with northern Italy, southern France, and now with us in Barcelona.

Today is Corpus Christi, a big celebration that comes about 60 days after Easter. One of the things that they do on Corpus Christi is this dancing egg thing. Everything we found about it says that the eggs are carefully drained and the holes are plugged, then it will dance and spin on the top of a fountain of water. Marty is quite skeptical, certain that there is some trick to it. The fountain itself was beautifully decorated with lots flowers and everyone gathered to watch the eggs dance on the water.

I'm sad to hear that Uncle Ellis (my mother's brother) is not doing well. He's 94 and lived a long and good life. Still it is hard to think of the world without him. He's been a good storyteller in the last years and I have enjoyed hearing about his years in Civilian Public Service and working at the Case store and more. He's a special uncle. I wish his family peace in these days.

Bread and Barcelona

After a day in Palma on the island of Majorca, we are at our apartment in Barcelona. Doug's nephew Marty will join us about midnight tonight. If we walk out of the balcony of our apartment we can see the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral that was designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi. It was begun in 1882, but Gaudi took over in 1883 and continued to work on it until his death in 1926. Its a bit funky, to say the least.

The other wonderful thing about the location of our apartment is that directly below us is a little bakery with bread and pastries. It was the smell of baking bread that woke me this morning. When I went down to buy a loaf for breakfast the woman said it would be eight minutes before the bread would be out of the oven and ready to sell. It was hot and delicious with some butter and jam.

I think I'll join the people of Spain in a siesta this afternoon, although Barcelona doesn't seem to slow down in the afternoon as was the custom in other cities we visited. It is, afterall, a large and cosmopolitan city. But I'll take a nap and dream of baguettes and surreal cathedrals and riding the Metro. Then we'll go out on a walk to hunt down some good coffee. Good coffee hasn't been easy to find but perhaps in this city that is more like Paris than Madrid, a city that has good bakeries, we will find good coffee to finish off our afternoon.

Meditation on Water

We’ve been in Granada several days now, with a grand tour of the Alhambra and an olive oil tour/tasting. Granada was the last place in Spain to be reconquered by the Christians in 1492. The city is more multi-ethnic than many places and it has a definite North African flavor to it, at least in parts. There are remnants of the Silk Road marketplaces while the Alhambra (the Moorish fortress) sits on a hill overlooking it all.

The conquering Christian king fortunately did not tear down the Moorish palace. He built his own and kept the Moorish one. That makes the palace at the Alhambra a wonderful remnant of the Moorish world, a place to see the elaborate architecture of a different time and culture. In much of Spain the story has been that the Moorish mosques were torn down and the cathedral built in its place, leaving mere remnants of Moorish architecture. Here one gets to see it in all its glory.

A tour of the palace is a walk into a different world. And a major component of Moorish architecture is how fountains were built into the living structures as well as into the gardens. Water was an important part of Islamic culture. They were, after all, originally from the desert and water was an important symbol of life. All the fountains and pools in this palace give it a particular peacefulness as you step from a courtyard into a living room with the two spaces connected by narrow little channels of water in the floor, water that is flowing from a fountain in one area into a fountain in the next.

Sometimes there are pools, sometimes fountains, sometimes little canals. And always the water is running quietly giving it a particular peacefulness and creating a cooling effect in the process. In the gardens where there were a number of water spouts pointed into the air the effect was quite different, it was much noisier with splashing water. This type of fountain was a nineteenth century Christian addition to the place. The Moors preferred the quieter effect of water running down gently or standing still, at most a low gurgling.

My favorite spot in the entire place was the staircase in the gardens called “Escalara del Agua.” At each landing of this long flight was a small fountain and the banisters doubled as small channels for water to flow downward.

Perhaps this is all more noticeable and meaningful to someone from a drought-stricken place like California. It seemed simultaneously extravagant and peaceful and beautiful. Whether it is listening to the rain on the roof or hearing it gurgle in a brook or standing under a stream in the shower, water is a wonderful thing.

Now for Something Completely Different

After days of art and cathedrals and beautiful medieval towns, we did something different. We took a hike at Caminito Del Rey. Only this path is not quite like any other path I've been on. There was something close to this on a smaller scale near Lake Bled, Slovenia, but this was a bit more extreme. Of the 7.7 kilometer trail (about 5 miles), 2/5 of it was a fairly normal mountain trail through the woods and along a beautiful turquoise river. But the other 3/5 of it was on a board walk hung on the side of a cliff. It was well built -- I checked the large bolts and cables that were drilled into the rock.

Actually, it sounds (and looks) worse than it was. There was only one small stretch where I looked straight ahead so that I didn't get a little dizzy with the height. It was a great walk and we chose to walk the canyon from north to south, which happens to be the mostly-downhill direction. And at the south end we could catch a bus back to our car.

The Monkeys of Gibraltar

This week we're driving. Like my dad, I love public transportation especially riding on trains. But this gives one a different view and a bit of freedom. We'll have the car until we leave Granada next Monday. Last night we stayed in a wonderful B&B on the Mediterranean coast.

Yesterday we spent part of the day outside of Spain in the city of Gibraltar. To get to Gibraltar (which is a British territory), we parked in a little town in Spain and walked through customs. Gibraltar is a narrow peninsula and its airport is between customs and the town which means you have to walk or drive across the runway which runs the width of the peninsula. There is a sign at each end asking pedestrians to please remember that this is a working runway and don't litter because any piece of litter could cause an accident. Here is Doug on the runway with the Rock in the background.

The town itself is rather nondescript, hardly worth the time. We went for the fun of taking the cable car to the top of the rock and walking down. There is a type of ape that lives on the rock that is called the Barbery Maqaque. It is the only wild monkey population on the European continent. They are everywhere at the top of the rock and quite used to people. We were warned many times not to carry plastic grocery bags and to watch our backpacks as the apes are known to grab them hoping for food. We had no problem with them, but then we weren't carrying anything.

Because of its strategic location where the Mediterranean flows into the Atlantic Ocean and being just a few miles from the coast of Morocco (we could easily see it from the rock), it has had an interesting history. It is a mix of Spaniards, Brits, Moroccans, and us ubiquitous tourists.

In this photo we're looking down on the town and north into Spain. The runway is visible on the left near the center of the photo.

The Grandeur of Age

There is something about the age of things that is incredibly moving. I used to feel such awe when I worked in the archives and handled handwritten letters that were a hundred years old or even, for that matter, fifty years old. The thought that another human being, a living and breathing person, was at the other end of the pencil that wrote this note always moved me. I felt connected to that person when I handled that paper. So here in Spain there have been many things even older than those letters that we have been seeing and touching. It is difficult to describe the feeling when I connect to other eras and other peoples in this way.

A few of the many old things we saw today were a candle from 1767, a carving of a palm tree from the third century, a fourteenth century wall painting in a church, and mosaics from a Roman town that was founded in 206 B.C. It was humbling to stand near, even to touch these objects and consider the life of those who created or handled these things in earlier times.

A restored 14th century wall painting in the Church of Santa Maria in Arcos de la Frontera.

A Roman era Palm Tree of Life carving that was from a third century Roman altar. It was then incorporated into a Moorish mosque. After the Christians reclaimed this part of Spain in the thirteenth century, they tore down the mosque, but kept this palm tree in the foundation of the Church of Santa Maria in Arcos de la Frontera. 

A bird mosaic from the Roman town of Italica. Italica was founded in 206 B.C. I'm not sure when this mosaic was laid. There are more than thirty species of birds depicted in this mosaic.

A rather funky Easter candle from 1767, still residing in the Church of Santa Maria in Arcos de la Frontera. It is about six feet tall.

Sevilla

We're staying in Sevilla in a beautiful little hotel in the old Jewish quarters. All indication of the Jews were erased from this ghetto just like the Jews were eraticated (either exiled or killed) during the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. It is a maze of very narrow alleyways where no cars can drive. The reason it has such narrow alleys is that the Jews were confined to a specific, very small space and couldn't build up more than a story or two. So they had to make use of all space as much as possible. Below is the small plaza just outside the door of our hotel.

We saw the Sevilla Cathedral and the Alcazar (pronounced Al-CATH-ar) which is the palace. The Alcazar was impressive in its utilization of both Moorish (Muslim) architecture and Christian/western architecture; this style is called "mudejar". The palace was built by Muslim craftsmen and builders, but built for a Catholic king, Peter. The palace and the gardens were beautiful, but I was completely smitten by the underground pool that they built on the grounds -- a welcome relief on a hot day like today. This idea was genius, especially in a hot climate with no air conditioning.

a door with the beautiful tile that is everywhere in the city, as well as everywhere in the Alcazar

Can't you almost feel the coolness of this subterranean pool?

Arches and entry into one section of the palace

Finally, the specialty of all of Spain is jamon (ha-MONE/ham.) Each area has its own way of making it. On the street you can buy it in little white paper cones for a snack, which I tried several times, of course.

And now for a shot of Doug outside the castle, keeping the sun from beating down on his pate.

Toledo

We took a day trip by train to Toledo. By bullet train, it is only a half hour trip and well worth it. Toledo has one of the most impressive cathedrals I've seen. It was built between 1226 and 1463. The site where it stands was first a Visigothic cathedral, then a mosque, and then this cathedral. It is a hodge-podge of styles that has many impressive features, but one stands out. About 60 feet up, a sculptor cut a hole in the ceiling that would shed light on a wall  of his alabaster sculptures of biblical scenes at the back of the altar. The detail in the wall is amazing, but even more so are the carvings around the hole in the ceiling.

This is only one of the things that made a trip to Toledo worth at least a day.

Toledo is also known for the place where El Greco painted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His paintings were all over -- in the cathedral, in San Tomas, in several museums.

Then there is the mazapan that Toledo makes. It is in every shop and made in every shape. It was especially fun to buy some from one of the convents. The nuns are particularly good at making different versions of this confectionery, which is quite tasty. It is made mostly with almonds and honey. We had more than one piece.

The streets of Toledo were a maze, fun to find our way around. Even a map was of little help at times. It was an interesting challenge to not get lost -- and we didn't. I would never have considered driving in this city and you can see why in these photos.

Last full day in Madrid with Rachel

On our last full day in Madrid with Rachel, she took us on a nice long walk through Retiro Park. Then we went to La Mallorquina, a confiteria with great pastries, after which she took the Metro back to her host mother's home for a late dinner. The pastries were exquisite -- Rosaquillas and Napolitanas for all -- and as full as the place always is, it's obvious we aren't the only ones to think the place is great.

Tomorrow we take a day train to Toledo and Rachel goes to meet her parents in Rome.

This is at the turtle pond by the conservatory in Retiro Park.





Last night in Plaza Del Sol eating Napolitanas together.

Prado and a Walking Tour

We spent the first full day in Madrid at the Prado, the art museum. One can only see so many "Mary and child" paintings, but I lasted the full day. I even found a few lesser known Spanish romantic artists that I liked and had never heard of before. They tended to paint every day life instead of grand biblical scenes. I went in fully expecting to leave after a few hours and let Doug look to his heart's content, but I stayed.

In the late afternoon and evening we did a walking tour of the center of Madrid and had a bite to eat in a little hole in the wall where they were watching Nadal play tennis. I tried a local special -- bocadillo de calamares (fried squid sandwich.) Once was enough but I'm glad I tried it once. We got dessert at La Mallorquina, a confiteria with very tasty pastries. It was a good day and I walked almost 20,000 steps -- over eight miles. I feel great!

Spain and the Spanish people are on a very different schedule than I am used to. They eat dinner about 9 pm and seem to stay out all night (or much of it.) Even children are out late. Rachel can vouch for this difference -- she must have had quite an adjustment this semester. We hear people on the street outside our apartment until almost 4 a.m.

Here are a few shots of street artists we saw on our walking tour.

We couldn't figure out the trick of the first person who is resting on one arm with feet in the air. The chess player is a real guy, but he certainly looked like a statue.

We also saw a political demonstration in the Plaza Del Sol. They were calling for reparations to families who lost members during the Franco regime. Franco's reign ended with his death in 1975.

First Day in Madrid

Time to go to bed. We've been up way too long, but we arrived safely in Madrid this morning and found our way downtown. We located our apartment, got our keys, and then Rachel met us for lunch and a walk around this part of Madrid.

Rachel is a wonderful and knowledgeable hostess and tour guide. Her sociology classes and her own curiosity have served her well and she can tell us much about Madrid, Spain, and the Spanish people. After lunch and a walk around the area, we shared chocolate and churros. 

That's all for now. Happy to be here. And good night, Mom. It's time to sleep so we can get up and go to the Prado tomorrow morning. The rain held off until now, so I get to go to sleep with the pleasant sound of rain falling on our balcony that overlooks the narrow little street outside our apartment. And even if it's raining in the morning, we'll be in the Prado which Doug declares to be the best art museum in Europe.