I Wouldn't Blithely Say

 

Listening to John Scofield’s “Kool” here in row twenty on United Airlines Flight 50 back home to Newark.  Appears we’re halfway over the Atlantic from the look of things in on the map over at next guys screen.  The gent in the seat ahead of me is watching some dark film where what appears to be a Chinese man and woman have been battling for the last eight minutes.  I do my best to ignore it.  I finished off Giles Trimlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” which I quite enjoyed.  There was a chapter there at the end that focused on Galicia, which provided a warm afterglow of our time there earlier last week.  Two rows up and off to the right someone is now playing “Imagine” and it is essentially impossible to not glance over and over again at John’s visage. 

 

There were not insignificant risks in traveling this month.  We were vaccinated, Spain’s number of cases was declining and unlike so many other places we might have headed to or from we were welcome in Spain and free to come and go in the US.   We were, in no small part due my younger daughter’s persistence, negative upon testing and registering these facts with United was straightforward.  As we sat there in the airport cafeteria reflecting on things, my kids seemed to all agree that this had been a good one.  Very grateful once again, that none of the many things that could have gone wrong did.

Hugh Thomas’ history of the Spanish Civil War is imposing. Nineteen pages into the nine-hundred-and-thirty-page brick I’m not sure if I’ll get drawn far enough in to where I’ll need to end it.  It is surely one enticing piece of the puzzle that merits more time.  But how much longer will I invest in this particular enigma?  Reading the Trimlett I noted some of the interesting (inevitable?) comparison point to China.  The turmoil and injustices of the last century, remain unexamined in the swift catch-up to wealth and normalcy.  I’d assumed that the western nations with Christian ideas of confessions were places where the mothers of “the disappeared” of Argentina would not rest until their children were remembered.   No stranger to confessions, Spain however did not set up truth and reconciliation committees after the death of Franco and the end of censorship.  Thomas suggests in his prolog to the 2012 edition that a monument be created that simply lists all the names of everyone died during the conflict, with no regard for affiliation. 

 Regardless of whether or not I decide to finish off the work or the other two or three that remain around the house, my brain feels well exercised having slammed all the titles I did in during the last six weeks to complement the two weeks of time in the Spanish indigo vat.  I won’t teach my Chinese history class the same way again.  Some of the platitudes I rushed through distinguishing the Conquistadors from Zheng He were naïve and I’d speak more cautiously now, knowing more about the kingdom they sailed from and the heroes like El Cid, that informed them.  I wouldn’t blithely say that Paris was the largest city in Europe during the twelfth century, juxtaposing it with Hanghzhou which was much bigger, without considering Cordoba.  And as always, I hope that this new component of civilizational, and historical mapping will make my girls stronger and give them more confidence and richness as they consider what it is they want to do, with whom and where.

Monday, 8/30/21

 

 

Beat an Early Retreat

 

We ended up speaking late into the evening, over one and then another bottle of white from Rias Baixas with the French family across from us there at the Mercado San Miguel.  No joke finding a place to sit in there, we had to cobble together our chairs and our tapas slowly, methodically and my family was chatting with theirs when I returned with a last few plates of food.  My daughters, the younger of whom’s French is pretty good, beat and early retreat.  We were left with four adults and their unfortunate daughter who was lovely and had strong English, but wasn’t able to cut away home, like my kids did. I tried for a bit but ceded my fledgling French to their somewhat better English and agreed that Covid was a mess, and that Spain was great, and that Trump had been wretched. 

This morning I lay in bed indulging in chapter after chapter of Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” which proved a much better read than I’d anticipated.  My older daughter came and knocked around 8:00AM reminding me that we’d discussed heading to the Rostro market this morning, early, before it closed.  The little one had already announced that she wasn’t interested.  My wife groaned when asked and suggested she wasn’t going to make it either.  I think this was the first time on the trip, well the second as it had happened with the pool in St. Vincente as well, someone else was pulling me on, asking me to join in on something.  Tempted, certainly to demur and finish this book I suited up, made some coffee and headed out as a duet with my older one. 

 

We followed a trickle of people which turned into a flow towards the Rostro Sunday market and soon found the beginnings of the long row of stalls.  First, I’d need cash. We asked one of the many cops about and he directed us down the road.  I got a shirt.  My daughter got some earrings.  But soon it became clear that we were progressing at different velocities.  So, we agreed to meet back by the public fountain in forty-five minutes.  The stalls started to look the same after the first hundred yards or so and I became interested in finding a gallery or perhaps some antiques in one of the stores along the side of the street stalls.  I visited one and another which were not particularly inspiring, but further down the road I cut off the main strip and entered an alley that led to a courtyard of sorts with two dozen different antique shops.  Here I could buy a twelve-foot watercolor of the Madonna with flying cherubs, or a life size statue of Augustus.  Culling about for the next half hour I found many things I’d have loved to secure, but nothing practical for my purposes.

I returned to a simple acrylic painting I’d notice on the way in of some fishermen with their boat on the shore.  I decided to ask about it and one gent found a lady who found another young gent with large forearms who told me it was a very special painting, a beautiful painting.  It was probably of Valencia and it was €1,200.00 which was rather beyond what I wanted to spend for something I was lukewarm about.  I thanked him and beat a hasty retreat, back to the rendezvous with my older daughter.  I explained where I'd been and we returned. I asked her help to find a painting I could take home but we searched in vain.  Nothing really made any sense until just at the end, as it often happens I saw a lovely water color of a moody urban shoreline.  It had a large, ridiculous frame but I was able to look beyond that.  I asked and he said it was of a town in Galicia.  Much better answer.  It seemed green and moody like Galicia.  “How much is it?”, I asked the old gentleman who asked a younger gentleman who said €250.00.  Much better answer.  “Yo quiero.” I indicated.   But can you take the frame off?  It will be hard to travel with all that.  He dropped the price to €220.00 sans-frame and we had a deal.  But his credit card machine wasn’t working so I needed to a long trek up and around to find another ATM machine.  Then, on the walk home, painting in hand we discussed just how we would pitch the story to my wife, who was bound to be skeptical about this new piece of art we'd just bought.

 

 

 

Sunday, 8/29/21

Clinic Full of Buoyant

 

Saved the metropolis for the end of the trip. Driving across Saturday morning Madrid, with a driver named Lovely.  I ask him something in broken Spanish and he replies clarifying that he's an English speaker.  Lovely hails from Lagos and we shift and discuss the West African community in Madrid and that fact that Fela has a song bemoaning Lagos traffic.  The moment of reckoning this morning, we’re off to a local clinic to get our antigen Covid tests.  We won’t be able to board the flight if any of us are positive.  I’ve already crafted out a special thank you to our younger daughter, should we all test negative.  But the alternative is rather real, regardless of the fact that we’ve all been vaccinated.  A happy ending where the risks were justified or a bitter lesson to reckon with, confronting the fact that they had not been?

 

A clinic full of buoyant young Spanish women are at the ready to help.  We each fill out a form and wait, but not for long.  Soon we are led down the hall.  One, after the other we are escorted to the room off the hall where a nurse penetrates our noses, deeply, uncomfortably and with that we are on our way.  “We’ll email you the results in less than thirty minutes.”  Just like they said they would.  I thank the staff and exit though before I do, I check one last time that they see plenty of Americans and that their test should be sufficient?  The blond with glasses assures me that all will be fine.  Out on the street we wait a bit beneath trees that look like walnuts but my Seek app suggests are Chinese Pistache.  A lady at the nearby café asks me a question and I say: “Yes.  It’s clear.” But I have no idea what she’s talking about and hope she directs her attention elsewhere.

 

The Uber driver on the way back is named Jose and it appears that Jose is from Madrid.  But more importantly he is playing glorious Newyorican music from the early 70’s.  One Fania All Star after another Pete Rodriguez, Ishmael Riviera and soon he and I are discussing whether salsa is popular or not, here in Spain.  His phone suggests a name I don’t recognize but that voice could only be Hector Lavoe and Jose confirms.  By the time we are approaching the Prado twenty minutes later I think to check my phone and the first result has already arrived.  My older daughter has tested negative.  Now, one after another the other results arrive and, after checking each one with some hesitation I exhale, confirming we’re all clear and there behind the Goya statue, in front of the Prado I make an elaborate gesture of thanks to my younger daughter, who’d been a strict disciplinarian about keeping masked the whole trip.  I’d grumbled about wearing one when no one was around in 110 degree heat in Toledo and more than a few other places, but now the thanks belong to her. 

We’re early and stand in a short line of people who also already have their tickets and soon I am standing before El Greco’s El Caballero de la mano al pecho; The man with his hand on his chest which has stared back at me from my virtual ticket receipt for weeks now.  Here are the portraits that adorn the covers of all the biographies I’ve recently read.  Hi Charles V, Hey there, Philip II.  What a remarkable transition Goya makes from the La maja vestida in 1804 to the darkened, terrifying La romería de San Isidro in 1823.  Early, at the beginning of Covid, we’d done a large puzzle of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, and considered it all in great detail, and now, here alive before us.  Wait, there’s some Albrecht Durer and wait, these are by Tintoretto!   I pushed my kids for as much as they could take before the mood shifted and then acknowledged that it was time to go after an obligatory run through the gift shop.  Yes.  I do want a refrigerator magnet of that man with the long-fintered hand on his chest.  Outside we marched past the Goya statue, up the stairs and this time hailed a cab with what turned out to be the first of many young, female Ecuadorean cab drivers we were to have here in the capital. 

 

 

 

Saturday, 8/28/21

Crowd in Goya's Pilgrimage

 

If you’ve gotten used to the “EZPass” way of paying tolls here in New York, the traditional coin-toss is suddenly stressful in other places.  More than a few times on this trip I’d rolled up to tolls, put my card in, had it not accepted.  Fuddled for bills, scrummaged for coins, only to find that this only a place to grab a ticket.  At one garage in Cordoba, I had a line of four cars beeping at me which was soothing.  This morning speeding out from Pontevedra towards Santiago de Compostela I asked for money as we approached the toll.  My older one asked: “How much?”  “Look, just give me a big bill and leave it up here.  I’ll get you back later.’ This, I was told, had been “rude.”

 

We’d gotten a late start as usual, and I was keenly aware that the site online had suggested the famous Cathedral would close at 2:30PM.  I met some fugly traffic coming into town but eventually got the car settled at a public parking spot and told everyone we’d need to hurry if we were to make it on time.  It was a schlepp up to the Cathedral and by the time we’d got there it was just 2:30PM.  Fortunately, whatever had been written online was wrong.  The building was open and we got ourselves in line to enter.   As we turned the corner with the line I noticed at the entrance to the adjacent Cathedral museum, a site we wouldn’t have time to visit, a large photo of a woman looking up at God with the word fe written at the bottom.  “Faith” would certainly be required to believe that St. James not only preached here but that his body miraculously returned here from Palestine after his death. 

An urgent, living edifice, the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela breathed an immediate, rather than merely a historical relevance.  Finally, a Church that didn’t charge us to enter. It reminded me of visiting a temple in Varanasi where the pilgrims were extremely serious about their devotions and where I’d felt out of place, in comparison.  Eyes are bought upwards towards an elaborate orange, green and gold pattern in the ceiling.  And the alter . . . what remarkable amount of Atahualpa-gold must have been melted to make this priestly backdrop.  It isn’t hard to see why Luther and his cohort would have been repulsed by all this finery. 

Outside, we hadn’t much time to explore further, and everyone was hot.  Five or more hours of driving still lay in front of us.  We opted, reluctantly, for one of the café’s there in the square outside the cathedral and had a middling lunch.  They warned us that the food would take twenty-minutes, so I took a stroll around to the front of the remarkable sandcastle-like edifice with the stone, quarried locally which seemed a different hue, a different consistency than the ones in Castile.  One after another, groups of the athletic faithful charged into the square with cheers and Galician bagpipes playing in accompaniment.  It occurred to me that this must be tradition at the end of the arduous pilgrimage, like the boisterous crowd in Goya’s Pilgrimage to San Isidro.

Friday, 8/27/21

Overcast, a Bit On

 

Finally got around to Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” yesterday and was glad to find it more substantive and analytical than I’d expected.  Reading on a couch here in the rural peninsula of San Vincente do Grove, in Galicia I was particularly intrigued to note that while Galicia has, like the Basques and the Catalan’s its own independence movement, that both Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro both hail from the place ancestrally: (Ferrol & Lancara, respectively).  Tough soil, it would seem.  I’d been plodding around in medieval and baroque Spanish history before coming and once here, have made my way through some lighter fare.  I had to take some time to re-research just why it was Franco wasn’t all in with the Axis in WWII and how it was he wasn’t toppled at the end. 

 

As my kids say, other people go on “vacations” and generally lounge around somewhere, by a pool for their holiday. We “travel” and often travel hard.  These few days here near O Grove were intended to be more vacation-like.  The first day was pool and ping pong.  When my daughters finally awoke yesterday morning we began talking about a walk to the beach.  A small, peninsula, there is water all around us.  Before we left, I wanted to call and double check that my reservation up the road at Culler de Pau wasn’t a mirage.  I’d called a half a dozen restaurants yesterday and when they said “nothing tonight” I asked, how about tomorrow and the booked me. It was only later that I realized that this is the Culler de Pau which is Michelin starred and had appeared booked out for the next month when I had tried to book a place from back home.

 

I called to check and they reconfirmed but the phone cut off before I could answer their questions about the menu.  We headed there first on our walk and I was able to preorder the tasting menu for three and one for a vegetarian.  We debated which “beach” to go to after that.  Overcast, a bit on the cold side for August no one wanted to get wet, just connect with lands end.  We headed down to the “Praia Area das Pipas” beach and had a walk along the rocks.  And while I never would have done this in the past the most marvelous thing about this walk for me was identifying new plants. I must have noticed thirty new plants and identified them all on this walk alone. 

 

My Seek app tells me they were: Fennel, Bristly Oxtongue, Japanese Camellia, Jimsonweed, Chinese Gooseberry, Apple Ming, Common Passionfruit, Jointed Charlock, Tomato, Wild Leek, Common Lamb’s-quarters, Common Bracken, Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Common Lantana, Angel’s Trumpet, Wand Mullein, Common Vervain, Oregon Oak, Sea Holly, Dead Man’s Fingers, Common Golden Thistle, Sand Stock, Common Andryala, Purple Viper’s-bugloss, Gorse, Pampas Grass, Pink Knotweed, Red Valerian, Sea Kale, American Pumpkin, Slender Wild Oat, Sweet Chestnut, Cape Honeysuckle, Common Lavender, Miniature Umbrella Tree, Purple Shamrock and Purple Allamanda.  Not that you were asking. 

 

A late lunch at Gastrobar Pensión Casa O Chasco, which we’d stumbled on, returning home.  My call with a client was cancelled as the poor gent notified me that he’d come down with Covid.  I repositioned my mask and came home more time with Giles Tremlett and then a long siesta, more reading before realizing that it was coming up on 9:00PM much sooner than I’d expected.  Walk?  No, my younger daughter insisted her legs were still chafed after that last walk. And she was correct in remembering that Culler de Pau had a parking lot in the back where I was surprised to find a northern red oak, just like back home.

 

Ah, they took good care of us there, last night.  My older daughter had been close to tears the night before when, yet another restaurant suggested they could accommodate her vegetarianism with a ‘grandma salad.’  We had the tasting menu with plenty of wonderful local seafood and for early each dish she had an alternative.  They started my wife and I on a sherry from down near Cordoba but every other grape was from nearby or indeed from northern Portugal which is nearby.  A small fortune, certainly when all was done but every single member of our quartet seemed happy and, after spending nearly three hours there we left in a buoyant mood, one and all. 

Thursday, 8/26/21

Then They Couldn't Hear

 

I got my laundry out on the drying rack first thing, this morning.  Tee-shirts mostly seem to get sweaty and smelly damn fast and I’ve gone through two shirts per day.  It’s misty outside.  Fitting, I suppose I’ve always imagined Galicia as something like Britany; rocky and cloudy.  There weren’t any of the basics like coffee here at the place when we got in last night, and nothing’s walkable, so I vowed to drive off early and get some stores before everyone else woke up.  I’ve cancelled most of my calls this week, but held on to one that’s starts at 10:00AM. The supermarket opens at 9:30AM. It’s a ten-minute drive away.  I reckoned I had plenty of time. 

 

Parking in O Grove at 9:30AM on a Wednesday was like trying to park in Noe Valley on a Friday night , only more complicated because in addition to their being no spaces the rules aren’t particularly clear.  I sailed past the supermarket and eventually found a place a five-minute walk away.  Parking up on the curb was the best I could do in this clumsy, oversized SUV.  When I left the house, I’d thought wearing flip flops was a crack idea.  It wasn’t and I was limping by the time I reached the market.  Grabbed a bunch of things quickly.  Asked the same nice lady in a bonnet to show me the coffee and then the bread.  Returned to her when the check-out gal reminded me I’d need to weigh these bananas and peaches.  And limping back down to the waterfront where I’d left my car, I realized I’d need to take this call, sitting in the vehicle.

Call went alright, at first.  Then they couldn’t hear me.  Called back, and then muted as the GPS directed me out of the city and by the time I got back home, one of my other team members reporting in, I decided to take a left and head up into the woods I hadn’t otherwise seen here. They were lovely but then the road got thin and thinner. Ferocious stone walls closed in on tight turns and, coming upon one egress, discussing a deal, I really wondered if I could make it through without scratching this vehicle mercilessly. 

Later that day I heard something I haven’t heard in a while:  both my daughters call me to come splash around in the pool.  Cloudy, cold, I put down my work and mounted the requisite bravery to descend into the cold pisquina.  It only took that one dive in, my head underwater to give me swimmers ear, like I knew it would.  Too much wax up there. Later we all went down in the basement and played a few rounds of the Chinese national sport: ping pong.  Like chopsticks, any true Chinese person has the proper way to hold a ping pong paddle, that ain’t a bit like the way I grabbed it, and I teased my daughters that this was a qualifier as to their avowed Chinese-ness.  “Look at the way your mom holds the paddle.”  I managed to defeat my wife, but only just and only because I can serve OK, but can’t hit much back when challenged. Chill day.  And more of it for tomorrow.

 

 

 

Wednesday 8/25/21

Razors Were a Form

 

The university, first with its frog on the skull façade and then it's unfathomably tall nave that breathes alive with its jeweled pattern, is the oldest in the world.  (The Confucian exam hall in Dongcheng might have been older, were it not boarded up in 1905 and sacked during the Cultural Revolution.  One feels dwarfed, as intended, head cocked back trying to contemplate the height of the spires and it makes me anticipate the intimacy of the adjoining Catedral Viejo, which is more of a Romanesque construction with an interesting alter of narrative paintings presumably from before Spain had gold to lavish with impunity.  The girls and I enjoyed laughing at some of the facial expressions of the faithful within the Renaissance paintings in the cloister and we continued to riff on how inspid one or another facial expression was, until we were back out in the sun.

Later in the Plaza Mayor we found a place for lunch and ordered things quickly. Later when I went inside to see about charging my phone, I saw some remarkable tapas dishes laid out under the counter and went to find the waiter to order these one of these and one of these and one of these, as well.  We stayed until not long after 2:30PM and then I got ready for the second time during the trip to drive out of town and conduct a conference call.  Somehow the exit from the medieval garage was easier than the descent down into it. 

 

With the day before us we went north and the west riding over and around Portugal and on towards the mysterious territory of the Gallegos.  Something in the soil, certainly.  Both Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro hail from Galicia. Site of Europe’s largest fishing fleet and the point from which most drugs are smuggled into the continent.  And after many hours and many days considering the dry, savannah of Castile and La Mancha and Leon it is remarkable to drive over the mountains and down into the verdant, hilly territory that suddenly feels like Ireland.   Something about Rias Baixias I immediately felt attracted to.

Carlos, our Airbnb host made a valiant effort to find us one or another or another reservation.  How about one at 10:15PM?  My older daughter sighed.  I asked if we could figure out the internet first as it seemed not to be working and this would be like a house without oxygen for my family.  By the time we called back to the retaurant to confirm the table was gone.  Eventually we found a spot at the Castro hotel and though they didn’t recognize us at first as we walked in through the kitchen they eventually acknowledged that we had a proper reservation and could join the others on the porch over the sea and we got a lovely seat there, out back overlooking the boats in the bay.  My wife wanted seafood.  The food of her youth.  And when she asked, I said that ‘razors’ were a form of clam.  She ordered them, while I got the seabass.  She was thrilled when they came. Chengzi, these were a popular dish from her childhood on the Bohai Sea which she hadn’t had for years.  The local wine was really good too.

 

 

 

Tuesday, 8/24/21

Place Beneath the Chinaberry

 

The Uber needed twelve more minutes, for the last five minutes.  I looked at toy car icon as it spun about aimlessly.  The girls wanted breakfast at the little bodega across the street.  Bought them some juice and a slice of torta and ducked over into the neighboring shop.  I saw coffee cups with tasteful patterns of Al Andalus from the walls of the Al Ambraha.  I imagined myself sipping coffee back in New Paltz from one of those mugs and picked two out to procure.  I have a mug with an Isis pattern on it that I’d bought two years ago in the Cairo airport and the design has completely faded so that only a residue of her form remains.  I want fresh, morning mnemonics.  The Uber arrived suddenly, and I nearly left my Android phone on a pile of shirts before my obligatory self-pat-down spun me around. I dashed out with my cups.  Rafael the driver took up us up and over the Albacin through streets I hadn’t seen before.

We got back in our car and headed out of Granada through the Sierra Nevada on our way to Salamanca, a five-hours drive away.  Forever intrigued by the next place, I noticed we’d be passing awfully close to Ubeda: with “inspired architecture and cuisine.” Getting there with Waze took us through a mountain road off the A316 that turned a country lane through a dense grove of olive trees with old, gnarled trunks. In every direction, rising off into the Sierra Nevada mountains are olive groves.  And after one or two mid-stops during hairpin turns to allowing tractors the chance to pass we were glad to finally get back on the main road and arrive at Ubeda, where we discovered that two recommended restaurants were closed and settled upon a place beneath the chinaberry and cherry plum trees in the Plaza Mayor beside the Church of St. Pablo.  The waiter worked hard.  I used their bathroom twice. 

 

In Salamanca we arrived later than expected.  The sun seemed to resist the horizon for hours and then finally, dramatically with the spires of the iconic Salamanca cathedral in the distance, day gave way to black. In town I navigated to the Airbnb at the Luxor Torre del Clavero and the tower I’d stared at a dozen times considering this on line as a place to stay, materialized before my eyes. Eva was very helpful and walked before my car as I crawled it down the two stories to the garage below. I still do not know how I made it through the second tight-as-f@ck turn without griding the paint off the door of my rental. 

The place was cool.  There was aircon and actionable and the WiFi was potenent.  They'd both been in short supply at the last place.  Eva had a 10:00PM reservation for us over at VinoDiario which was only a few minute’s walk away.   I heard my name propositioned to two German men when we arrived and I piped up to indicate that I was indeed “John from Luxor.”  The food was, once again, remarkable, delicious, and the gent took such pleasure in helping to find me a range of remarkable wines for my wife and I to try. As I recall we let the girls walk home ahead of time though by midnight I was, as Iggy suggests, ‘running low on memory.’ 

 

 

 

Monday, 8/23/21

Built to Be Calming

 

I’d bought my Alhambra tickets weeks ahead of time at the recommendation of my Airbnb host, Pradip.  Another day or two and I’d have missed it.  This morning we walked down along the Albaicín estuary, into town and took an Uber up the hill to the entrance of the hilltop palace.  Right on time, for the tickets I’d bought were for an assigned slot.  We made steady progress to the head of the line when the lady there insisted that I not only had to show my tickets but our passports as well.  My wife and I had our physical docs but the girls did not.  “No, photos of the passports would not suffice.”  Not here at least.  She imperiously sent me off to the “ticket office” with a “somewhere over yonder” flick of her hand.  I did my best not to lose my patience.  My Spanish had been performing fine until it wasn’t.  Go to the ticket office . . . where?  And do what? 

I asked another attendant.  Then another.  “You proceed ahead straight.”  The road ominously lead back down the hill.  I stomped off in that direction that we’d came with no idea of how far I was going or what I was do when I got there.  Let’s just say it took a lot of time, there were a few major wrong turns and finally I had a chance to plead and speak with someone who verified my daughters’ identity and gave me tickets to get them in.  And by now the Mrs. had just about had enough of me and my rushing everyone here and there.  “Let’s just not go.”  It’s times like these when it is a very good thing that I meditate or have been known to.  Slow your heart down.  Don’t scream. 

 

Back at the head of the line the same annoying lady with curly blond hair remained.  I presented my info anew and she mentioned that we were now later than the time on the tickets.  I didn’t have: “no shit, dingbat” in my Spanish word-hoard but I have her a look which said as much and then I realized that she was serious and was seriously considering not letting us in now because it was no longer 10:30AM.  Now I was truly infuriated.  Now I really needed self-control.  It would not do me to yell in English at a Spanish lady in front of a line of one hundred people, but I was a hair’s breadth away from it.  She talked to someone, they pulled up someone who spoke English and after some exasperated pleading, they let us in. 

 

Breathe.  Breathe again.  This place was built to be calming.  I tried to let the majesty of the sanctum knead its knuckles into my knotted shoulders.  In the Patio de los Arrayanes I considered the simple fountain at the center of a rounded key structure that dropped gently into one side of the marvelous pool.  The same key poured a complementary stream over on the other side.  Light shone through the Salon de los Embadjadores with its mesmerizing roof carvings.  Frustrated but not really at anyone.  Just a dull reaction of feeling deadened for having fought against something systemic and unforgiving.  By the time we’d reached the view from the Mriador de Daraxa to yet another fountain below,  I’d shaken it off and was genuinely smiling in the photos.

 

I noticed that there was a vegan place, the Hicuri Art Restaurant, which apparently sported the work of the city’s premier graffiti artist.  My older daughter would appreciate that.  But it was closed and we wound up at the El Bar de Fede where we were treated regally by a young waiter who hailed from Argentina and wondered about the origins of some of the customers who gradually filled the place. 

 

 

 

Sunday, 8/22/21

And Canary Islands Ivy

 

Our host here at Mijas didn’t need the place the next day so we agreed we’d check out a bit later at 2:00PM. Everyone else asleep, I sat on the porch outside our two-bedroom flat of this stately beach community on the Coaste del Sol and sipped a cup of espresso.   This would be my one chance to walk along the Mediterranean on this trip, and on queue it was the first cloudy day we’d had since we’d arrived.  I didn’t really want to swim or sunbathe anyway.  Rather just consider the Mediterranean once again, and all that it means. 

 

Before heading out I sat and finished “Duende” this morning.  It had grown on me.  I’d become invested in Jason Webster's tale and more intrigued by the art form.  At the back of the book there his helpful list of his favorite Flamenco albums which, I dutifully downloaded, one after the other, so we could play aloud on our drive up to Granada.  Vincente Amigo, Carmin Linares, Juan Alfonso, La Nina de los Pienes, now I had something beyond Paco de Lucia to listen to.

The beach was densely developed.  Our compound, I later learned, was early and one of the only ones that had retained land between it and the beach.  All the neighboring developments came straight to the sea.  It felt tight.  I dipped my bread in my espresso as I walked along the boardwalk.  Down on the sand I considered for the first time what it might mean to use my Seek app at the ocean.  Plants in the main, of course:  Saltwort, Devil’s Thorn and Canary Islands Ivy, but there were Pacific Purple Sea Urchin’s that were a long way from the Pacific and someone had caught a pair of sea breams that were lying on the dock, though my app couldn’t identify them definitively beyond the genus. 

Later we sped along the water and could consider just how much development there was here on this southern coast.  I got tired and turned the driving over the Mrs. and when I awoke we’d left the shore far behind and rose up into the Sierra Nevada’s on the outskirts of Granada.  We parked at a recommended public lot and I got my first Uber of this trip over into the Albacin, there directly below the Alhambra.  We arrived at siesta-time and nobody seemed to want to serve us food, only drinks but I was able to get some simple fare and we considered how to kill our late afternoon there beneath the towers.  Later we walked down towards the Cathedral and got our dinner at a restaurant named after the architect who built the place:  Siloe.  A nice enough spot though the woman at the next table kept listening to loud Tik Tok like clips that were dreadful to endure.  

 

 

 

Saturday, 8/21/21

 

Considering Bugs and Elmer

 

Surely there are a lifetime’s worth of more things to still feast on here in Seville.   But there is also enough time for randomness built into this trip to allow for some spontaneity. Page 689 of the Lonely Planet Spain suggested a rather unique way of getting from where we were in Seville to where we were heading in Ronda: “Driving Tour White Towns.”  A straight-line heads out from Arcos de Frontera on their map and squiggles about after you get into the green coloring of the sierra and the Parque National Los Alcornocales, and though the whole trip would be longer than we’d have time for we could jump off the path half way at Grazalema and make our way straight down to Ronda and Mijas where we were to spend the night. 

 

Before we left Seville our Airbnb host had left instructions for us to make sure we took out the garbage with instructions on how to do so.  I told the kids they had an hour before we needed to leave and schlepped down the four flights of stairs when the elevator wouldn’t come and found a trash bin immediately outside which I decided would do just fine.  Up the street, towards the Cathedral, I’d noticed a wine shop and bought myself a bottle of my new favorite Tio Pepe and some whites from Galicia from a nice lady who ran the place.  

 

The elevator wouldn’t come when I returned either and as I plodded painfully up the steps, I stuck my head in the third floor apartment where it appeared they had commandeered the elevator, explaining that I’d be needing it soon to lug bags down. “Ahh but you see its broken” he explained.   They guy’d be here to fix it in an hour.  My kids and the one fifty-pound bag they have between them were ready and I commenced the lug.  The workman below gallantly offered to help but I could manage.  On the drive out of town I felt obliged to play “The Barber of Seville” and considered that I would alas, never be able to listen to this without considering Bugs and Elmer. 

 

El Bosque and Ubrique were both beautiful, but though I tried I couldn’t find anywhere to park and made them both drive by’s.  The ride up and hour of Brique was lovely, with hard granite rock cliffs, sparse greenery and traffic signs that warned we should be careful in snow.   In Grazalemus I vowed to park somewhere found a public lot just above the idyllic town square.  All along the walk down to the outdoor café I identified one after another new plants, some of which, like the Marvel of Peru and the Peruvian Peppertree spoke to the seeds that must have been brought back home from elsewhere in the former empire.   

The descent to the sea was dramatic.  Coste Del Sol was all rather built up , looking like an aspirational Shenzhen.  We were late when we arrived in Mijas but were fortunate to have a rather gracious, if loquacious host who booked us a reservation for dinner at a place down, not far on the beach. Later, when we were seated he and his family walked by, to make sure we were all set.  

Friday, 8/20/21

Grateful That She Hadn't

Late, again.  Stressed, unnecessarily, again.  I tried to let them ladies all sleep late.  I took a call with Tokyo and Tel Aviv and procured tickets for the Cathedral for 11:40AM.  We strolled up shortly after noon time and walked inside without a problem.  I must have missed the papal bull on this one but aren’t Cathedrals supposed to be free?  You don’t pay to go in Notre Dame or York Minster.  In Seville, like Toledo, you pay.  We climbed the tower to the thirty-fourth floor, first thing while the girls were still fresh and considered the city, the bull ring, the orange grove and what we reckoned must have been our apartment among the rooftops below.  Above us, only bells.  Checking the time I was glad to see it 12:33 when presumably nothing would be ringing any time soon. 

A towering altar of gold, what must have been a twenty-foot tall monstrance of pure silver.  How much of this was all taken from the Aztecs and the Incas, and Potosi and shipped across the Atlantic to here?   I reminded my gals that their grand mom had visited this place when she was their age and was considering whether or not she should become a nun.  Three of our group certainly grateful that she hadn’t.  Similar thoughts of gratitude for the work of Christopher Columbus to whom all the New Worlders owed something of our complicated existence.  Chris has a strange tomb that seemed to be held aloft to the side of the nave but it was, we ultimately surmised, an ornament, rather then he himself riding to-be-buried along above the faux pall bearers.  Still, the overall effect of the enormous cathedral was mesmerizing. 

The Alcazar, like the Mezquita is light and contemplative after the weight of the Catholic iconography.  Patterns of tiles on the wall. Patterns in the ceiling and each combination of shapes and colors slightly different.  Shapes of rooms that lead you on, mysteriously, rather than the obvious cross of must churches.  My wife and I took some photos in one room and another and eventually wondered just where it was our kids were by the time we came to the entrance of the Dame’s Garden.  We tried them on the phone.  Tried them on wechat.  I second guessed whether or not I’d actually seen them enter the building.  I had.  They came out of the garden, terrified at the thought that we hadn’t yet enter and still needed time for it.  We made it quick and, with the little one now complaining of a raging headache, I resisted the urge to identify all the plants I was seeing and we made our way out and over towards a nearby place for lunch. 

 

That evening we found that many of the recommended restaurants were closed for August but we found a notable one up in the Macarena that welcomed us in.  We took a cab up to the Macarena neighborhood and passed the lovely façade of that church.  After so much tapas, it was good to sample distinct meals of food which we ordered way too much of, as usual.  Our waiter was from Argentina and after realizing I could ask not only for “dry” white but “mineral-amente” and he served us something from Galicia which was perfect.  The walk home was quicker than we figured and I was off to bed not long after heading up the steps. 

 

 

 

Thursday 8/19/21