Madrid, Spain

We´re back in Madrid, and it feels good to be ¨home¨! Our trip from Sevilla via Cordoba and Puerto Lapice was a long day, but it was a beautiful ride. Spain is such a gorgeous country: rolling hills--some planted, some harvested--that look like quilt designs; blue skies, white-washed homes with terracotta roofs, stereotypical windmills that juxtapose nicely with the new ¨windtricity¨ windmills, olive groves, and on and on.

When we got to Cordoba, we had some free time before our tour of La Mezquita. Mother, Casey, Blair, Aedan, Kim and I wound our way through narrow, cobblestone streets to a place my ¨Let´s Go Spain and Portugal¨ guidebook recommended. (Casey said that he hoped someone was dropping breadcrumbs so we could find our way back.) The Casa Andalusi is a 12th-century Arabesque home and courtyard that has been beautifully restored. The flower-filled fountain alone was worth the price of admission, 2.5 Euros. Very soothing environment. Educational, too. The home features a mini museum of paper-making, which was big in Cordoba back in the day. The words written on the handmade paper helped to educate and inform the masses.

La Mezquita was as stunning as I remembered from my trip in the spring of 1982. Like La Alhambra, it´s a blessing that the Catholic kings didn´t raze the building after Cordoba was conquered, because the Moors had razed a Visigoth basilica on that very site when they took over Cordoba. La Mezquita is now a Gothic cathedral built around the original mosque, which was the largest mosque in the Islamic world at that time (eighth century). The 850 columns made out of granite and marble feature red- and white-striped arches. It´s a wonder to walk through them. A home in San Antonio´s King William neighborhood sports these same arches, and I´m always reminded of La Mezquita when I see it.

From Cordoba, we watched the end of ¨El Cid¨ with Charlton Heston and Sofia Loren. (We´d watched the first half on our way to Sevilla.) Long, but good. I´d like to watch it again. The tiny screen on the bus didn´t do the film justice. We then stopped in Puerto Lapice, one of Don Quixote´s hangouts. It´s a pretty sleepy little town filled with tourist traps. I stopped to ask some local men who were hanging out in the town square where the molinos del aire (windmills) were, and they told Mother, Blair, Aedan and I to keep walking through the town and turn left. When we got there, we found Steve. Richard wasn´t far behind us. We all posed for pictures, our only souvenir from P.L.

The ride from P.L. to Madrid wasn´t long. As we entered Madrid, we traveled via an underground tunnel that was recently completed. It was extremely long. I asked Ricardo, our bus driver, how long he thought it was, and he said eight or more kilometers. When we exited the tunnel, we were very close to our hotel, Celuisma Florida Norte, which is in a super location, just across from the old North Train Station (Estacion del Norte) that is now a mall. The view of the Cathedral is stunning from the hotel. We dropped our bags in our rooms, ran back downstairs to take a picture with Ricardo, and give him his much-deserved tip (propina). We found out on the last day that he´s got two children, a male, 16, and a female, 11. I don´t know how they cope with him being on the road for so long, but he said they´re going to the Canary Islands for a vacation as soon as he returns.

We had dinner near La Puerta del Sol in a restaurant called, Taberna Marciano (the martian tavern). The food was excellent: paella, tortilla española, sangria and neopolitan ice cream. What´s not to like about that? After dinner, Kim, Casey, Mother, Miles (an Alaskan friend), Aedan and I walked over to Chocolateria San Gines for some chocolate con churros. The link I posted calls the chocolate there mythical, and they are not mistaken. It was Kim´s first visit to San Gines, and I told her that this chocolate will be something she dreams about when she´s back in San Antonio.

We walked over to La Plaza Mayor, a stone´s throw away from San Gines, after we were fortified with chocolate. The weather is absolutely lovely right now in Madrid. Coolish and no mosquitoes. Mariana, the transnochera (trans equals across or through and nochera equals night) stayed behind, but the rest of us walked back to our hotel via La Calle Mayor, past the Cathedral, down through a park until we hit the river. We then took a right to Principe Pio, the hotel´s location. Aedan talked non-stop to Miles the whole way back to the hotel. Maybe a heaping serving of dark chocolate at 9 p.m. wasn´t the best idea? She was wound up. Miles was charming, though, and listened to every one of her stories. (BTW, Miles is a trick skier. When we walked up endless steps---and I do mean endless---to the top of our metro stop, he ran up. I was nearly dead when I got to the top, and he hadn´t even broken a sweat.)

Today´s been a lazy day. No early wake-up call. We just took it easy. Aedan has been enjoying Japanese anime (cartoons) on television that are voiced over in Spanish. Blair´s learning how to play castanets. The Centro Comercial Principe Pio across from the hotel is beautiful. Lots of interesting shops and a big food court. We had lunch and then strolled through the mall. We bought some colorful socks that were made in Turkey for Aedan at H&M, a cool department store that I wish we had in the U.S. It carries stylish things that are reasonably priced. Aedan and Blair went back to the hotel so that I could blog at this Internet center down the street from our hotel. It´s a very clean place of business, and it only costs 1 Euro an hour to get online, the least expensive price I´ve been charged so far on this adventure. The name of the business is Al Noor Locutorio, and it´s on Vallodolid, 9. The guy at the desk is Muslim, and he´s playing Arabic music that at times sounds like prayers. Maybe they are? The only creepy thing is that there´s a videocamera pointed at me as I write this blog, and every once in awhile it flashes, like it´s taking a picture of me. After a couple of flashes, I turned the camera to the back wall. Too Big Brothery for me.

Tomorrow, Mariana and I are going to meet with our friends at Suffolk University´s Madrid campus at 1:30 p.m. (We hosted Palo Alto´s Spain Study Abroad program there in 2003, 2004 and 2005. It will be great to see everyone.) After today, we only have five days left in Spain, and we have LOTS of ground to cover. Stay with us!