The Other Side of the Ocean

once upon a time

2012-02-01T23:53:00.001-06:00

I liked poetry. I went through a phase. Not too long ago. Clare Cavanagh, a frequent translator of the Polish writer, Wislawa Szymborska, came once to speak at Borders and I was, at the time, enthralled.

A poem for you today, by Szymborska (this one is translated by Joanna Trzeciak):

Some like poetry

Some--
that means not all.
Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting the schools, where one must,
and the poets themselves, there will be perhaps two in a thousand.
Like--
but one also likes chicken noodle soup,
one likes compliments and the color blue, one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.
Poetry--
but what sort of thing is poetry?
More than one shaky answer
has been given to this question.
But I do not know and do not know and clutch on to it,
as to a saving bannister.

As I read today about the death of Szymborska (in Krakow, where she lived virtually her entire long life) I spin back to the time when poems (of others) were scattered across my table and if asked, I would have told you that they would be part of my life forever.

They weren’t. These days, I prefer essays.

In that same period of time (the time of poetry), I was being a mom to two young girls. Each had her own set of fleeting passions, but today I remember the one belonging to my older girl. At the age of twelve, maybe thirteen, she developed a love of musicals and especially as belted by the unstoppable Patti LuPone.

Patti was with us on long car trips – on tapes played on the boring highways between Madison and Pittsburgh (where the paternal grandparents once lived) and she was with us at home, played loudly, or maybe it’s just that Patti always sang so loudly!

Fifteen, or was it seventeen years ago, my older girl learned that, after a bit of a hiatus, Patti LuPone would be again appearing in public, singing through her beloved Broadway repertoire in a theater in New York. It was not our habit to take weekend trips those days. Funds were tight, college was looming. But, I badly wanted this one: a mother daughter week-end in New York. Since then, I have traveled frequently with my younger girl, but that New York weekend remains the only trip that I ever took alone with my older daughter.

It was a fantastic set of days! At the end of the performance, we stood and watched as the show’s entourage left through the theater back door. Patti was there, real, alive, Patti LuPone – my daughter and I, the oddest demographic in the theater, to be sure, watching as fans like to watch. Satisfied, satiated.

Patti LuPone is in Madison tonight. My older girl and I meet for dinner downtown…

…and then proceed to the theater.

When you are a star, a diva, a performing musician, when you write award winning poetry, or more humbly, an obscure little blog called Ocean, oftentimes you don’t know who your audience is. Or if maybe someone is reading, listening, someone who is living a flight of momentary fancy, only then to disappear, until maybe fifteen years down the road, something happens and a memory comes back and he (or she) is with you again. Hey, I remember when I once read your poems and they made me smile, ever so broadly.

Patti LuPone sang well -- that's a given. But, time reshuffles cards for us, so that what is today is just a shade different than what was once upon a time. After the show, my girl and I went to the backstage door. For old time's sake. A small crowd -- maybe a dozen or two dozen people -- hovered, waiting for the grande dame to step out into her limo.We were told to form a line, to put away cameras. Patti came, scribbled a half formed letter (L? P? something altogether different?) on people's outstretched programs and left.

Wieslawa Szymborska shied away from big crowds. She once said that any more than a dozen in one room made her uneasy.

I think how when you aim for big audiences and you get them, it changes you.

I hope that I never aim for big audiences. I hope that I remain shy with crowds of more than twelve.

a reversal of fortune

2012-01-31T21:03:00.001-06:00

I learned a lesson today. Several, in fact, but one stands out: January 31st is, in the final run, January 31st. You can’t leap out of bed and think: spring! – even if outside it’s 35 degrees (that’s a Wisconsin spring morning reading) and there’s talk of record breaking highs in the afternoon (a sweltering 49).

Still, following a grueling Monday, I’m thinking how exhilarating it would be to bike to work! I haven’t biked since the end of November and hadn’t expected to until April. But 49!

My ever helpful shaggy haired landlord kindly steps outside (in a state of at least partial undress... it makes me smile to see him so oblivious to...the ways of the world) and brings out my bike for air pumping and light battery checking. By 8:30, I am on the road!

The best ride for me makes heavy use of the bike path. But it’s not the fastest route to campus. I’m nervous about the time -- my first class is at 9:30. I opt for a faster (45 minute) route. Combination bike path and road.

What’s this? Patches of snow? A little bit of ice maybe? A surface of frozen mist?

Well now. A challenge.

Okay, getting close to campus. Familiar vistas!

And here’s where I should have understood that where there is snow and where there is warm air, eventually, very eventually, there will be puddles. And sand, and salt, and all of this will make its way up, up and in a sweeping arch, hit me right on the back, my head, too, covering me with all the debris we throw on the roads to keep them ice-free.

Not that I immediately realize what is happening. I’m pedaling madly to get to school on time. Oh, I notice some specks of mud on my pants, but I shrug it off. A bit of mud? Eh --the price of any bike ride.

Minutes before class, I walk into my office, take off my jacket and see the damage. I take off the helmet. Salt in my hair. Indeed, mud, salt and sand everywhere.

So I learned something. And I suffer the indignity of teaching with a wet pants seat and salty pony tail. (The mud-splatterd jacket I can, thankfully, leave behind.)

Work day's done. The ride back is much nicer. Even as I just cannot believe that there are ice fishers on the lake. As if suspended on water.

Onwards. Past Lake Monona, which looks as if it's heading into April.

Done. Finally, splatterdly done. A stop at Paul’s (where are you Ed??? Late? Do you understand what it means to panic at someone’s absence??) and then the last lap home. Just as the sun sets.

Home.

Mmmm, farmhouse home.

Monday

2012-01-30T21:27:00.000-06:00

I step outside, consider biking to work, laugh off the idea and walk over to the red hot lover. It’s nice there, in that parking spot.

That’s the last time I can apply the word “nice” to the landscape around me this day. The rest? Well, here’s a reality for you: from morning, til 5:30 I never shut up. Between student meetings and class hours, I was engaged in the art of talk. By the time I dragged in to the farmhouse, I was so disinclined to speak that I had no ability to voice preference for anything, including dinner foods.

Frozen lasagna. Good enough. Now please. Shhh. I have nothing more to say about anything.

we'll take it!

2012-01-29T21:20:00.000-06:00

A half an inch of fresh snow – light, fluffy, you know the kind: it doesn’t quite settle in, but instead, hovers loosely, prettily over whatever was there before. In this case, it covers a layer of ice along our dirt driveway and, more importantly, it covers (ever so lightly) ski trails in the area.

But it wont last. Put a handful of skiers on it and it will be back to the new normal this year: bare patches along our forest trails.

We should be out there before all others, I tell Ed. The side of me that wants to seize the moment before it shatters and disappears is especially prodding us out of the house early. The week ahead will have a warm spell. What little snow there is will surely disappear soon.

The sun plays with the few puffy clouds. One minute we're dazzled in light, the next -- we're a somber blue.

By 9 we’re in our local county park. I can’t say that it’s blissfully quiet. A helicopter is running electrical components in the nearby Yahara wetlands and in fact, part of the park is closed for safety reasons.

That’s okay. We have a good loop that takes us away from it all.

Back toward Lake Waubesa, where the ice fishermen hang out.

It’s cold and blustery outside and I’m thinking maybe it would have been better to eat the breakfast oatmeal before the ski run. But, the sun is out and the sky has that early morning tint to it and it puts us both in such pleasant moods that I forget about the work and the cleaning and the tedious stuff that’ll frame the rest of the day.

Nice work, Ed. Only, could it be that you’re slowing down? I shout back at him.
I’m having a contemplative moment. I don't rush things, like you.
Good job staying upright on the hills! I retort.
Good job not breaking your camera! He answers.

And so we continue in this way until our loop is done and our gear is thrown in the back of the car again, with the hope that there’ll be another chance to use it this season.

In other news: may I give a piece of market advice for The Great Investors out there? My bet is that Apple is puffed itself out to be way out there, even as it is not altogether way out there. It's merely a company that sells machines and it isn't magic, nor intuitive, nor easy, because machines aren't magic or intuitive or easy and if you want to ride the cloud of hyper-nonsense about Apple's capabilities to do everything perfectly, feel free, but I'm not going to be there with you.

I wont spend much space on explaining how both Ed and I spent the better part of the afternoon working on getting on iCloud and upgrading my OS on my current MacBrookPro. That's boring. But I will complain about how many things in this whole procedure were odd and in fact downright nervewrackingly convoluted. I don't blame Apple for that. Technology IS complicated. I just wish it would fess up and not pretend differently.

Otherwise: yes, there's an otherwise. Otherwise, it was such a beautiful day. Isis was at the farmhouse with us. He decided we're worth the trek up the lightly snow-covered path.

fire

2012-01-28T21:37:00.000-06:00

How are my eyebrows? -- I ask Ed. Completely gone?
No, just a little singed.
Casualties of the morning. Also undone – a pair of outdoor gloves. They were old, but still...

But let me say right away – and perhaps this will surprise you – it was an excellent morning.

My idea this winter to ski daily faltered rather quickly: the trails around Madison don’t have enough snow to make it fun. The temperature heaving has given them a brittle, icy coating. With twigs and pebbles poking through. I talked of doing a trip up north, but the older Ed gets, the less he likes spontaneous ling distance journeys. And so this morning, as I see again a nice strip of bright light at the horizon just before sunrise, I say to Ed merely this – outdoors... we have to get outdoors today.

It’s windy and in the low twenties. Eh, so what. The Ice Age Trail folks (such apt description) are organizing a work day out on one of the segments of the trail just west of Madison.

At 9 a.m., we’re there with them at the trailhead, waiting for instructions.

Clear the hill, burn the brush.

It’s great work! Within minutes the cold ceases to be a problem.

And as the stacks of chopped and snipped wood grow, the fires flair and the air takes on a gusty smell of campfires.

Managing the fires when the wind is this strong is a challenge. My brows are the price to pay for it.

But it’s terrific work and for three hours, we chop, snip and haul until the leaders call for a lunch break. We leave then. We’re known for that – we come, we work, we leave. Unfriendly types who scorn bonding over dead flesh between slabs of bread. I wont deny it -- it's an apt characterization.

Ed drives the now fixed, but so very rusted Geo home. These hills west of Madison are especially pretty now, in January. Here, you can't tell that the snow cover is actually quite thin.

It is a beautiful landscape.

And now we’re at Paul’s café. Ed’s sleeping, I’m thinking about how to trim eyebrows around the missing parts. The smell of wood is still with us. The chill of the wind is long gone.

morning light

2012-01-27T22:57:00.000-06:00

It’s late now. We’re watching a show on snakes. It’s fair to say that I dislike it immensely. Sometimes I am fascinated in simply watching Ed become engrossed in a story. It makes up for the unusually gross nature of the subject matter. But this is not one of those times. I’m just a tad wiped from the day and though I can think of any number of better alternatives to tracking snakes – with all their disgusting hunting/eating habits -- I'm too tired to push for any of them.

It was, in fact, a delightfully (partly) sunny day. When the sun first peeked through, I was up and ready for it.

Ed was up as well, making repairs to his unbelievable tattered 93 Geo.

And Isis was up. He’d made his way up to the farmhouse this morning. Very early. In search of TLC.

Lovely blushed with sunshine minutes!

But that's it for the outdoors. We - all three of us - retreat and resume the indoor life. Isis by choice, Ed and I -- because it's Friday and that's just the way it is.

In the evening, I play to the memories of a gentler set of weeks. Somewhere in the background k.d. lang and Tony Bennett are crooning.
Here, Ed, I’ve made shrimp salad for supper. Andalucian style.

To the bliss of sunny days. Here or elsewhere. A whole string of uninterrupted sunny days. Mmmm...

scattered

2012-01-26T22:03:00.000-06:00

One little key on my laptop was wobbly. It seemed loose and ready to fly – elsewhere. And so I made this evening the time to visit the Apple store.

What a time suck! It’s not that the blue-shirted wiz kids weren’t helpful. It’s just that they, as always, made me understand how utterly incompetent I am in the use of Apple stuff. So long as I was there, they untangled some muddles I had gotten myself into. But it took time.

(I promised to sign up for all kinds of classes to boost my skills. Someday.)

After, I pulled the red hot lover onto the Beltline (highway) and within seconds came to a near standstill. A traffic jam. It’s rare that a Madisonian has to endure an utterly clogged highway. I'm surely happy that this is not part of my everyday.

So long as I am in a tired and only mildly chipper mood, might I lodge a complaint about the weather?

I’ll just say this: may we please have some nice bright wintry stuff? It’s too warm, too gray, too wet, too dark..

No? Darn.

trapped

2012-01-25T20:42:00.001-06:00

...in days of tense work schedules, I remain, much of the time, behind closed doors. No breakthrough or break time moments today. No time, no time...

That’s okay. Little tidbits remind me that life toddles forward in interesting ways, regardless of pressures and work priorities. For example: I come home late, but with the idea that we still have time for a Paul’s coffee. I pull up to the farmhouse. Ed comes out of the sheep shed, greeting me with a mousetrap in hand.
I got one. We can let it out in the fields on the way to Paul’s.
He waves the little plastic box with a mouse in it in my face.
He was tricky. Ate the peanut butter the first time, the second time. This time I got him with pepper jack cheese.

And where was Isis in all this?

Don’t know. Not really paying attention to the mouse.

The cat has grown useless. Sort of like me, I imagine, once I reach the age of retirement. Or maybe before.

Ed releases the mouse into the field...

....the little guy runs like crazy across the snow crusted landscape. We wave good bye.

Will you now place the trap in the farmhouse? I ask. There haven’t been signs of mice since we came back, but I like the security of the trap, just in case one gray fellow passes through...
Soon, soon.

I think of Isis, the farmette cat. He hasn’t come to the farmhouse since it turned cold. His paws don’t appear to like anything below 42 degrees. So he stays at the shed and watches mice dart this way and that. Fine cat. He’s lost his belligerence.

There's so much snappish anger out there. It's good that Isis has moved beyond that.

thanks

2012-01-24T22:23:00.001-06:00

...for the sunshine! It helps to set out in the morning to this.

When the bright light shines down on Bascom Hill, even the snowman there looks good.

In the last semester, after my last class, Ed and I would meet at Paul’s café where I would re-energize myself for the remaining working hours of the day. We’re trying something different this winter: before the daylight fades, we’ll do a quick spin on the trails just to the east of the farmhouse. That’s the re-energizing moment. After, we’ll end the day at Paul’s, even if that means grabbing the final coffee when the light is long gone.

It’s a tough schedule to follow, but we’re trying. And today, we pulled it off.

True, the ski break was awkwardly icy. There’s not enough snow out there. And, there were places, adventurous places, where the trail spun downhill toward Lake Waubesa and I wondered whether Ed, or indeed either one of us, would be able to steer clear of the not quite fully frozen waters. You can’t quite stop on a downhill stretch, when that stretch is completely iced over.

In the end though, we were happy to be moving again. And we made it to Paul’s, just before he closed. Hi Paul. Back in Jerez, there was this artisan, making a little clay flute called the ocarina...

spring semester

2012-01-23T21:38:00.000-06:00

I look outside my office window and I see a giant snowman on Bascom Mall (the expanse of hill just outside my office window). It's not a very attractive snowman -- not very photogenic in any event, but it's there, commemorating the beginning of the Spring Semester. He doesn't taunt, he just stands there, erect, steady, in your face big.

So the classes begin. A wet, sloppy beginning (not unpretty out here, at the farmette, though).

I suppose it's good that it isn't the typical soul-shattering cold spell that gets us into the swing of the new semester. But here's a hint: can we please have a bit of that good old Midwestern brilliant winter sunshine in the days ahead?

Thank you.

parks and (winter) recreation

2012-01-22T22:22:00.000-06:00

Ed tells me – we should get our Dane County skiing permits. As we navigate the ins and outs of doing this online, we note that not all parks have groomed trails yet. It’s that kind of a winter – cold, but not (yet?) oozing with snow.

We want to get into the habit of skiing – as close to daily as possible. On this Sunday morning though, the weather is iffy. Freezing fog, I read to Ed. Meaning, bits of icy rain. Or something. The temps are in the twenties.

And it does feel that way – misty and icy.

We could go to our park just up the road, but Madison’s Elver Park is bigger and since it is a week-end, we can be more adventurous.

At Elver, it’s heartening to see so many skiers out today. Just like us. Early, despite the weather. And every now and then, there is the young skier. I was on wooden boards first when I was six. Old, compared to, say, this moderately enthusiastic cross country little one.

It’s not easy to be skiing on a day like today. Ed forgot his cap and very quickly, his hair develops a nice frozen mist of ice. White on white.

So there are the skiers. But not only.

Elver is Madison's great sledding destination. We pass by its large hill and I say to Ed that sledding has to be one of the most good and honest winter sports out there: so little equipment, so much joy. A man zips by in front of us on a rubber tube. His is possibly the longest of the downhill runs. He gets up grinning broadly. The best $30 I ever spent! – he shouts to us as he drags his beloved rubber tube up again.

Obviously not everyone loves the snow.
She gets cold – the dog owner tells me as I ask about the many layers of sweater and jacket on this park visitor:

But she’s the exception. On the trails you're likely to see only enthusiasm -- great gobs of it. And it's a fast enthusiasm. Ed and I are trail skiers. Most, these days, prefer skate skiing. It’s faster, for one thing. We get passed an awful lot. I mind less than Ed does.

Oh, but it’s a good way to spend a Sunday morning! Freezing fog notwithstanding.

that countryside

2012-01-21T22:20:00.001-06:00

To live in the country, to travel freely and not infrequently to the city. That’s my idea of a good life.

We drive up to the farmhouse after our flights back from Spain. I enter it and note right away that the overhead kitchen lamp isn’t working. I say to Ed – I thought those light bulbs last years.
He tests them. They’re fine. Can’t imagine what the problem is.

It’s pleasantly warm in the house. I unpack, I find my Polish wooly slippers, put them on. Oops. Pebbles in one. I take it off. Not pebbles. Mice droppings. Out comes the trap. No other sign on the floors of mice, and no mouse is tempted by the copious amounts of peanut butter in the trap for the day I’m there. So, it was a quick visit and exit. You get used to it.

In Chicago, the snow falls steadily, at times heavily. I walk to my daughter’s place with my face to it, thinking how not unpleasant it is to be battered by snow in this way.

In the evening, we try to catch the bus up to another part of the city. No, their iphone tells them that the bus delays are tremendous. City life. Even in winter-ready Chicago, the snow disturbs daily life.

We do manage to arrive at the restaurant fairly on time, the celebration proceeds...

And, at the end of the day, the carpet, picked up back in Tanger (this is a photo from that day of purchase), is finally home. Her home.

In the morning, I’m on the phone with Ed.
I figured out what happened with the lamp, he tells me. A mouse chewed through the wires.
My slipper had been right under that light fixture. A mouse party.

I look outside – a sunrise in Chicago.

It’s 21 degrees F in the city. I check the temp back at the farmette: minus 6 F.

Last chance to enjoy a meal “out.” At the farmhouse, breakfast moves only in one direction – out to the porch on sunny days. In the city, the range is broader.

My girl is busy with work and so I walk over and pick up foods for us at the City Provisions. Cool name. A nice selection of specialty foods, baked goods, sandwiches. There are shelves, too, of foods that come from “the country.” Raw honey, for example. Probably from Wisconsin.

I say goodbye to my city kid and her guy. We are not well programmed for goodbyes with our offspring, even as, in life, there are so many.

Ed picks me up at the bus stop in Madison. He has our skis in the back and we go to the park that's just three minutes from the farmhouse. It is our first time this year on skis. We hope it's the first of very many such times.

After, during the short ride home, we wave to the deer...

And now we are truly home. The farmhouse home. There, beneath the setting sun.

for the daughters in life

2012-01-20T17:55:00.002-06:00

I toss about this for a good part of the night: snowstorm Friday. I need to be in Chicago in the evening. What if traffic comes to a grinding halt? I can’t be late. Should I take the 11:30 bus (It’s a three hour trip)? Just in case? No, not good enough. Maybe the 10 a.m. Or, should I go even earlier, like on the 8:30?

In the end, I decide I need the time in my office before heading out. Ed drops me there just as the light of the morning takes hold. It’s not snowing yet, but I tell Ed to be careful, knowing damn well that he tunes out every such warning. We’re down to one car (the red hot lover) and a truck – his old Geo went up in smoke yesterday and he may or may not be able to fix it. And it’s not as if the red hot lover projects reliability, on snow or otherwise.

The bus ride today is longer, of course it is. It’s snowing fiendishly by the time we get on the interstate. I settle in to work, feeling rather sorry for those who are anticipating flight delays (it’s the airport bus).

Chicago.

Ahh, plenty of time. But I am loaded down. Birthday gifts – yes and normally this would not be awkward and clumsy but I am also carrying a sack full of work papers and, assuming that my little one isn’t going to read Ocean before tonight’s celebrations (she is at work), I am also lugging the carpet I picked up for her in Tanger.

Ah yes – this was the great deliberation, resulting in a too low price and a happy, for me, purchase. And perhaps now you understand how truly kind Ed was to strap the thing onto his backpack and carry it through our hikes thereafter – including on the beaches of Tarifa and to and from our hotel in Córdoba. Sometimes he asks me, teasingly -- you don't think I'm too nice to you? (For instance, when he buys me a cup of coffee.) For this, I would have had to answer (knowing how much he hates to be burdened with things) -- yes, I do.

And, too, perhaps you’ll sympathize more with the mod hotel owner in Córdoba who took one look at Ed’s pack with a carpet in an old ugly plastic wrap, strapped to one side and a huge tube containing the broken down painting and frame, strapped to the other and dismissed us thereafter as quaintly odd.

It is a testament to how little we otherwise take with us to say that Delta examined our various parcels and concluded they fit within the “carry-on” restrictions.

So now here I am, in Chicago, lugging the darn thing and then all the rest, looking for the café I was told could accommodate me for the three or four hours I have to wait until we meet up and head for a family (and various sundry boyfriends, though not my own – I need not remind you how Ed feels about birthdays) dinner.

Ah, there’s the café. Ipsento. Almost missed it -- the coffee cup logo is blending with the white snow.

And here’s my drink of choice. I wont bother showing you my five bundles. Bundles are not cool.

And I wont worry just yet about walking the ten blocks from here to her place in the blowing snow. For the daughters. One does stuff for them, with such joy! That’s just the way it is.

the same, but different

2012-01-19T21:11:00.000-06:00

Today my youngest one turns 27. Happy birthday, sweet little thing. A child of warmth, born on a cold day. But don’t fret – there are flowers to be had now and you don’t have to travel to Andalucía to see them. At the farmhouse, these are blooming for you now, in the coldest moments of the coldest month.

Me, I work all day long, from the predawn hours when it is so cold that I regret stepping out to catch the early light...

...through the generously sunny afternoon (with a high of 7 degrees F)...

...and the trip into town, for groceries, and a peek at the now officially frozen lake.

(I pass on the opportunity to go go with Ed to salvage his wreck of a car – one of the handful of items that lost faith in this world in the course of our absence and now needs extra coaxing to get back into the swing of things.)

I shovel the walkway to the farmhouse and we almost make it to Paul’s café, but not quite. I have to finish my work before tomorrow (I’m off to Chicago then for a quick celebration of 27 good years – not mine, hers).

So it’s as if Andalucía is forgotten, done with, right? You jump into your everyday and nothing remains of your travels but the dirty laundry and the light suntan on your nose. Is that it?

No. As we move through grocery aisles and I try to get into the mindset of planning meals for the whole week, Ed says – maybe you could make that seafood salad that we always had as a tapas or a starter...

And though the seafood isn’t like that from the market in Jerez, I do my best...

We eat already closer to our Midwest eating hour. That’s okay. The moon shines bright over our farmhouse. And that’s surely a good thing.

Córdoba considered

2012-01-18T16:34:00.000-06:00

Wednesday: predawn

A moon shines over Córdoba... It isn’t a night moon. It’s the one that stays high on an otherwise dark morning. Barely visible, between Córdoba’s elegant buildings, it still makes me pause, in appreciation.

Tuesday: afternoon

Elegant Córdoba. That is my first thought as we step off the train from Jerez and look around. I had scribbled notes on how to get to our hotel (in the old quarter, not too far from the cathedral). We want to walk. Google says forty minutes from the train station? That’s good. We like the opportunity to look around as we trudge forward.

And so we walk. And I’m thinking: this is a hellishly complicated route and, too, I’m thinking – Córdoba is not Seville or even Granada. Make of that what you will.

Size-wise – they’re all quite the same: just upwards of a quarter million people. Like Madison, only I think back home we must fudge the data because all three cities here feel like cities, whereas Madison feels like – well, a nice place to live in, but not really a city.

But Seville felt Sevillian and Granada felt Granadian and Córdoba? I can’t quite make up a personality for this place.

In the newer part, as you follow the boulevards from the station, it’s snazzy. Elegant. Glossy. The men don’t much wear the woolen caps or felt hats that Sevillians or Granadians favor. Up in the new town, they wear pressed shirts and ties. And yes, I know in Ronda women paraded in heels, but here, they’re beyond that. Heels are so... yesterday.

And then we go down into the old town – because that’s where our hotel is. This is a confusing part of town and everyone on the Internet complains how confusing it is and they’re right. One minute you see Roman columns...

...the next minute you’re lost and if you ask any local where such and such street is, they’ll stare at you with pity. They don’t know. They only live here. They don’t need to figure it out like us, poor souls, with heavy packs (made heavier by acquisitions in Morocco and Jerez, – there’s a lesson in there, I know, I know), wondering where such and such lane is and why it’s right there on the google map but in reality not there at all.

Eventually, we find the hotel.

So the hotel. The Viento 10. I picked this one entirely based on Tripadvisor. No guidebook would have it – it’s only three months old. But since its opening, the reviews have been strong. All top scores from everyone. And the price – 70 Euros – quite attractive for Córdoba.

It’s modern. Let me rephrase that: it’s post post modern. Much care has gone into the project and if you want to be dazzled, you can look at their website.

I wont knock it. I suppose it’s beautiful. For me, two things stand out – we look clunky and ill-fitting in this slick place, so there's that. And, the room has only one window and it is to the side, in the ceiling – well hidden from anyone wanting to find out, say, if it is a cloudy day.

(The ‘we look ill-fitting’ comment is, I know, subjective. It could be said that Ed and I are a poor choice of customer in any place that strives for a cool aesthetic. We travel with packs and Ed’s pack is especially old and neither of us looks as if we are clued into fashion. I understand that. We don’t add glamour. But my feeling is that if you offer rates that are low, you’re going to get all sorts of guests, including unglamorous ones and you should put a good face forward and not mind. Here, I feel the hotel owner minds. He cannot understand why we walked from the station when a taxi would have been so much more comfortable. As for the packs – I’m not even going to explore his thought process there.)

So we throw down our stuff in the beautiful room with the most incredible massage shower system you could imagine, but without a credible window, and we set out.

Tuesday: just before sunset

In Córdoba, sightseeing is easy. Even as the city is seeking to be recognized as the cultural capital of Europe for the year 2016 (I don’t quite understand the competition, but I do see signs announcing that it is a contender!) there is really one reason why 95% of the tourists come here. It is for the Mezquita Catedral.

We walk through the attractive old blocks...

...toward what some regard as the most incredible structure in all of Europe (again, I’m quoting literature on this).

It must be intensely crowded around the Mezquita in the summer, because as we get nearer, the number of souvenir shops grows. Sort of like on the final stretch up to the Alhambra only more.

And then we come to the fortified walls. Impressive!

And we enter through one of the great doors – to a lovely courtyard with orange trees and palms and a fountain that makes beautiful tinkling noises and because it is now close to 5, the light is golden and quite splendid.

It’s beautiful, it really is. To the river side, there is the mosque/cathedral, to the town side there is the bell tower...

Magnificent.

I find the ticket office and Ed pauses now. You go. I’ll sit in the courtyard.
Why? I ask.
Too much sight viewing. It’s pretty here, I’ll sit and admire that. You go.
I understand that. He’s had his fill of cities, fortresses, churches, too much gawking, clamoring. The courtyard is quiet and peaceful. He’ll be happier just lingering there.

I go inside.

Oh my!

This place began as one place of worship more than a thousand years ago. Since that time, it has been built, rebuilt, added to and you can see the Moorish arches and the Byzantine tiles and the Christian nave and it is all rather incredible!

At the Alhambra, I was prepared, but the Mezquita catches me by surprise.

I spend a while inside – how could it be otherwise and when I’m done, I tell Ed – don’t miss this one. And since I don’t often nudge him to do something he’s inclined not to do, he knows that it must be so and he loses himself inside while I now linger in the courtyard, watching the sun grow more golden, at least as reflected against these yellow walls.

We are probably the last ones out (the Mezquita closes at 6 in the off season). I can’t really tell because it seems empty even before closing. Maybe a person here, a couple there. Not much action in Córdoba in January, not even at the mosque/cathedral.

We walk out on the bridge behind the Mezquita – to look at it from across the water, but really to let it all sink in – the Mezquita, the town itself.

I watch a bird take a river bath and I think how this river is less lazy and calm than the Wisconsin River back home.

We walk some more through the old quarter, including the old Jewish enclave, where there are still, today, old synagogues, even as they’re closed now.

Inevitably, you'll see people opening up folded maps, trying to place themselves in the complicated network of alleys.

It’s been a long time since we ate our boiled egg and cheese sandwich at the Jerez Casagrande. I’m hungry and so we find a tapas place and have their special – a house tapas of potato salad and a glass of wine (or beer), for 1.5 Euro.

Still needing more food, I order the friend eggplant with honey and sesame seed – I’ve been meaning to try it as it’s a very common regional tapas. It’s good: like a tempura sweetened by honey.

We walk back to the hotel and we’re growing used to it now – who cares if it’s night or day, it’s dark now and it’ll be dark when we leave here the next day, early in the morning.

Tuesday, quite late

Later, when it’s proper dinner time in Andalucía, we set out to the Bodega Campos Tavern, where we have roasted peppers with tuna, followed by one portion of artichokes with Iberian ham and one portion of asparagus with egg and Iberian ham and it’s good, really it is...

...even though we kind of miss the seafood of Jerez and the other places we visited – all had been screaming seafood at us, except not here, not now. Córdoba is a city of meats.

Wednesday, quite early

The next morning, we leave the new and glossy hotel before anyone is up and around. We walk, even though it’s dark (Ed has his flashlight, but we don’t need it – there are street lamps, enough to give us a place to study the maps), up, up, to the new town with the lovely square, scrubbed clean for the new day...

...and we are at the station in plenty of time for the 7:22 to Madrid.

It’s a crowded bullet train, with a zippy top speed of 165 mph but everyone has a wonderfully comfy seat and I wont say anything more about how I feel about trains because every Ocean reader must surely know that I think they are a superb way to see the world and your own back yard too, should you be so lucky as to live close by to a train route which, in Madison, unfortunately, we are not.

(Here’s Rorschach like shot from the ride: focus on the inside, focus on the outside...)

It’s a tight connection for us – from train to airport bus to flight, but we’re sure that the train will come in on time – RENFE – Spanish Rail – has a guarantee: if the bullet train is more than five minutes late, you get a refund on your ticket. They don’t give many refunds.

Wednesday: a confusion of hours and places

Our flight to Atlanta is a Delta flight and for the first time in years we’re in a transatlantic flight that’s half empty. It feels very strange.

I rarely fly this path. Madrid to Atlanta is a long flight – nearly 10 hours and it takes us, of course, a tad south. But here’s a stunning gift: the flight path has us come in over Cape Cod, then straight down the Atlantic coast so we can see a sunny Providence, Newport, an even sunnier Long Island, and a stunning view of New York and Manhattan – one that I’ve rarely, if ever, seen from this high up.

We have several segments of flights still before us (I'm posting from Atlanta). Deliberately. I collect segments like others collect coins and swords and automobiles. There wont be a sun shining over Madison when we finally arrive. But the moon should be there. Over snow-covered fields, frozen solid. Last I heard it’ll be some thirty degrees below freezing outside the farmhouse when we get in.

Jerez de la Frontera in the morning

2012-01-18T00:05:00.003-06:00

We are the tourists Tuesday morning, doing what tourists do best -- gawk, walk and take photos of what the people of Jerez would surely consider normal life. Surely they wonder why anyone would want to take pictures of market foods. And odder still – of fish, ubiquitous that they are. Surely they're thinking -- don't you have any of this back home?

Well no, not really. Back home, we're far from ocean waters. Back home our fish come mostly frozen. Back home fresh cuts and exotic crustaceans are for people with time and money on their hands. In other words, not for the overworked over stressed people that we are, you know -- with the long commutes, and ballet lessons and soccer practice for the kids, and lawns to mow and snow to shovel. Yes, back home, I hear there's snow.

Today, in Jerez de la Frontera, it is the first fish market of the week and I can hardly believe that this town has a population of only 210,000, because there is enough seafood at the market to feed ten times that many. And the variety!

I feel that we hadn’t eaten enough of it – that it would be great to do this all over again, only now with these images of shellfish, fish fish, squid fish, who knows what fish, all of it to help guide us through the menus.

The market has a wealth of produce too and that’s no surprise. Southern countries have better winter markets. It’s not fair, but what can you do.

(biggest mushroom guy)

It would be wrong not to recognize the meat vendors as well, even though dead flesh (as Ed calls it) is a little less photogenic than dead fish. Odd but true. We'll stick with the sausages -- of which there are many.

There is a nice social vibe around the market – it’s always that way. People grabbing a coffee with someone they've run into, intentionally or otherwise.

But, here's the thing -- it is also quite nippy outside (in the forties). The sun’s out, but the wind’s picked up. I’m told it never gets below freezing here, but I would guess that this day must surely count as one of the colder ones.

Our train’s at 12:08. We’ve deliberately set aside time to see the Alcazar before we leave, now, finally, in the glow of a sunny day.

Such a contrast with the Alcazar in Seville (I wont even mention Granada)! We are the only ones there, walking the walls and small gardens, poking into relics of old baths, climbing towers...

The palace itself has seen sad years. It’s been restored, but in its more modern incarnation, it offers little for tourists who want to be amazed.

Okay. We did our tourist run. Time to leave this sherry town of Tio Pepe.

We pick up our bags from the hotel that was such an affront with its massive locked doors on the first day and grew to be probably the most splendid place of our entire trip.

A long train ride to Cordoba. We’re on the local train. Nearly three hours. Time to readjust one’s sensibilities. Time to do some work too – there’s another sensibility for you: next week classes start.

And Cordoba? That’s tomorrow’s post. A late one at that. We need to make our way back to Madison.

where things get a little complicated

2012-01-17T02:35:00.000-06:00

A morning of rain, an afternoon of sunshine. A last full day of Andalucía then, suddenly, not that at all. A day that plays tricks on us. A day where I say to Ed – so now we know... the way to get to make fewer mistakes when traveling is to travel more.

It’s Monday evening. The train is just pulling into Jerez. There’s a rush hour buzz as people, likely tired after a day at work, are edging toward the doors. We’re coming back after a day in Cadiz. Ed says to me – it’s a shame that we have to leave tomorrow and spend the last night in Madrid. Do you think it’s possible to change that? And leave Jerez Wednesday, straight for Madrid airport?

I do a quick calculation. I don’t think so. Our flight out is in the morning, I know that. There would have to be a pretty early train out of here.
He doesn’t give up on the idea. Could we check?

At the train station, the clerk confirms what I said. First train out of here is at 8:30.

At the hotel, I check our flights. 11:30. Not even close to possible. But I offer another idea – we could go tomorrow halfway. Not to Madrid but to Córdoba. Spend the night there and get an early train out to Madrid the next day. Surely there’ll be one from there.

Córdoba is the city in Andalucía that I would have put on the itinerary for us, but I felt we were already city-heavy. A night there – though hardly a proper way to see it, would, nonetheless, be hugely satisfying.

Ed does the web search of train connections, I do the hotel search. We can do it!

We go back to the train station and thank goodness it is such a lovely station (and it is that)...

...because we surely are spending an inordinate amount of time there today. The agent takes our tickets, sighs at the complicated nature of the transaction, does some fast typing and tells us in Spanish that it will cost us more to change now.

How much more?

Click, scribble, click some more. The line of patiently waiting people is getting longer.
30 Euros. Uff. That’s a lot. Still, the hotel in Cordoba is at least that much cheaper than Madrid. We’ll do it.
The line is now so long that we are both sweating with guilt. The station manager comes out, looks at the line, looks at the clock. They’re okay, he says. No train out of here for another twenty minutes.

Our agent groans, clicks and begins to issue new tickets. And at the end of it all, he comes up with a difference that is even more than 30 Euros. The discounts we had gained by purchasing earlier disappear now with the change. Ed and I are too cheap to let go of discounts readily and we may have said – forget it, just gives us back the originals, but, on the other hand, we already feel like the most dreadful, agent-hogging tourists of Jerez as the line grows and multiplies and so, for the sake of world peace and good international relations, we put down the cash and take the new tickets.

And we sit down on a bench to think through what just happened.

A very lovely Jerez resident – a woman who was next in line at the ticket office, comes up to us.
You look so confused and puzzled – she says in English. Can I try to explain what the agent said? I was listening... She talks about this discount and that discount and tries to make sense herself of the complicated discount system they have on Spanish trains.
We thank her for her sweet kindness. I comment – you speak such good English!
She smiles. My boyfriend is American. From Philladelphia.

But you live here?

Yes. He travels a lot. Right now he is in Malaysia. He’s coming back soon though.

Ah, a young man, smitten by the Andalusian smile.

She hurries off.

I say to Ed – at least these aren’t penalties. We just have ourselves normal fares – like what we purchased the first day, for travel to Seville.

I recount this story now in great detail, too much detail, I’m sure, because it is one of many such stories you gather up as you ramble from one country to the next. In Poland, prepaying for tickets on the Internet was costly. A same day purchase at the station was cheap. In France, changes to reservations are easy and free, unless there’s a reserved seat and even then, the cost to change that is insignificant. Spain requires a different, more committed travel strategy. Who knew.

At dinner – yes, yes, same place! Of course! If you love a meal, why would you not repeat it one last time? So, at dinner at La Cruz Blanca, the place with the mirror on the wall that advertises sherry and reflect the funky artwork on the wall...

I ask Ed – did you like Cadiz?
Yes, I did.

We had decided to go in to Cadiz because the morning was such a rainy one that there was no point to remaining in Jerez. There are the white stallions of Jerez – we could have gone to watch them rehearse. (It’s like the Viennese stallions only in Spain. Or, more accurately, the stallions in Vienna have their origins here.), but I’ve seen this stuff several times after being enchanted as a girl with the movie “the Miracle of the White Stallions.” And Ed is not one to get excited by horse ballet.

In Cadiz, on the other hand, we can walk – rain or shine.

Equipped with a hotel umbrella, we set out on the noon train. And as we get off in Cadiz the clouds part.

It becomes a glorious day of puffy clouds and strong sunshine. The wet sidewalks and puddles glisten in the bright light, the people roll up their umbrellas.

The old town of Cadiz is a pentagon of land, surrounded on four sides by ocean waters. And so no matter which way you head, you’ll eventually come to the sea. Lovely and turquoise, against a now blue sky.

We have a map from the tourist office and it offers four different walks around town and we do them all. So as not to miss anything.

Toward the end, Ed suggests we let go of the map. Getting lost, following your nose has its appeal. We come to the park at the edge of the sea and sit down on a bench, still wet from the morning downpours, and look at the world around us. Ed dozes, the sun warms my face – it is a good moment.

One more look out at the sea, at low tide now...

...and we turn inland, always looking up at the lovely balconied windows of the homes here.

On our return to the station we pause at a madre y padre tapas place. Their seafood salad taps is excellent (2.5 Euros each). In this oceanic city, it is so fitting to end with chunks of octopus and pink shrimp.

It’s Tuesday morning now and we are about to go out for a final and important walk in Jerez. After, we have a dizzying amount of travel, sightseeing and dashing to make our flight connection. Will we make it?

The moon shines brightly over Jerez. It will shine brightly over Córdoba and, too, all places thereafter.

art and rain

2012-01-16T04:58:00.001-06:00

They’ve been wanting rain and so I am happy for the people of Andalucía, because today, for the first time since we’ve come here (riding in on the tail end of 2011), it rained.

We have such a beautiful hotel room that truly, if we had to stay indoors all day and do our various works and tasks, we’d be happy. But, the desire to see and explore (so universal and so strong) pushes us out the door despite the threat of wetness.

(After a lovely breakfast in the protected courtyard of our hotel. We are, in this off off time, the only guests here.)

And in fact, it’s not raining. Yet. We walk, enchanted by the frequent pastry and sweets shops...

...over to the Alcazar, but before entering, we get terribly distracted by an art fair in its little courtyard.

Had Ed been Ed, there would have been a yawn and a tug on his part and we would have moved on. But, on this day Ed lets loose an otherwise well concealed Mediterranean undercurrent. He wants, for one thing, to look at art. (Later, he also wants to look inside a cathedral. And, as you’ll soon see, he nudges me to acquire something. Ed, today, is not fully himself.)

And so we admire some small pieces (a still life of figs) and some somewhat larger pieces (a landscape) and one larger piece is done by an extraordinarily charming woman (Marisol Martin Galisteo) who notices our interest and says emphatically – it’s very very cheap. Ed laughs like a true Andalucían - very uproariously.

Marisol is so contagiously charming that I truly believe that if I hang her painting back at the farmhouse it will be like throwing her personality on our walls. Still, her art, though cheap, is the price of dinner. Besides, I don’t acquire things anymore.

With a sigh, we leave.

At the other side of the Alcazar entrance, we notice that there is a Sunday flea market and now we’re really captivated...

Here, Ed is as I know him to be: interested in seeing other people make use of old stuff.

Except that this flea market also has a few artisans displaying their handcraft, including a gentleman from Cadiz (Ale Galdou) selling little handmade clay flutes (called the 'ocarina').

These tiny things look like not much of anything. Three holes on each side and one in the middle. But listen to him toot that little thing!

The woman at his side (his mother?) smiles proudly and even more so when she learns we are from across the ocean. Her son the clay ocarina maker married a Canadian but now here he is in Andalucía again, trying to make a go of it with his little clay pieces. (We purchase one as a little gift for Paul, our coffee guy back home.)

We leave the market now because really, we’re here to see the Alcazar. We circle the block in search of the entrance...

But just then the rain comes down. Ed asks – so are you getting the painting(s)?

We’re back at the art fair. Artists are scrambling to pack up and cart away paintings. The disappointment here is palpable. I’m standing in the rain, undecided. As she packs her work, Marisol tells us there is not much support for the artist in this town. Her husband is there, helping her...

– it’s been a bleak day even as she grins her lovely grin and throws out a friendly good bye.

She is so charming! Ed says. Ah, he’s been won over by the radiant Andalucían smile!
I call her back. We’ll buy it!

That grin again! She and her husband promise to wrap it up and bring it over to our hotel the next day.

As we leave the little square, Ed tells me – too bad you couldn’t get the one with the figs, too.
The man has been struck by a Mediterranean virus! Or Spanish virus, because he really does quite love being here.

And just as we finish arranging the final details of delivery and the rain drops are becoming quite pronounced, frequent and wet, a friendly greeting catches us from behind and we turn to see the 'fig man,' scurring with his paintings, including his lovely little fig still life, back to his car. That’s fate for you.

As he places his sweet little painting into a bag for us, I ask him if he supports himself from his art. He laughs. I work for an insurance company! He writes his name on the back of his company card – Domingo Diaz Barbera. Zurich Agencia de Seguros. The life of an artist. The flutist with the proud mother, Marisol with a husband who most likely pays the bills, Domingo who sells insurance.

We walk back to the hotel. The Alcazar is better seen on a sunny day.

Initially, people hide from the rain under awnings and cafe umbrellas.

But soon, the streets of Jerez de la Frontera become completely empty. People here do not like being wet or cold.

We pause at the hotel in the hope that the rain will cease, but it doesn’t and so with the aid of two borrowed umbrellas, we set out for the great walk of Jerez – as determined by some tourist agent who had the fun task of figuring out which blocks should be seen by any visitor who would choose to pass through Jerez.

If Jerez isn’t really a tourist destination, we say that that's a shame. The town is lovely!

So who, if not tourists, comes to Jerez anyway? Is there a draw? Most definitely: people come here to do business with the sherry producers. Jerez de la Frontera is the capital of sherry making. If your sherry isn’t from Jerez, then it’s not the real deal.

We wont be visiting any of the bodegas that display and sell the fine sherries of Jerez. Even with the addition of the paintings, we have so little luggage that we’ll be carrying our bags on-board and so taking back bottles is out of the question. The city is, for us, the destination onto itself. And both Ed and I are liking it quite a bit. So much so, that the original idea of going back to Cadiz for the day has been pushed by the wayside.

At times it drizzles and at other times it pours and I can have no real complaints about either – we’d had such a good spell of fine weather, after all – except it really is awfully difficult to take photos and carry an umbrella all at the same time. Still, here’s a bit of our walk, through puddles and all.

At the cathedral, Ed surprises me again by urging us to go inside, to explore the architectural detail. We’re a tad late for that – the guard is locking the door just as we show up. But he reconsiders and allows us a peak and it is both unusual and splendid.

Outside again, we watch the water pour out of the jaws of the gargoyles.

Around us, the squares and streets remain empty. You can listen to the rain hit the sidewalk. The city is otherwise quiet.

Tapas time? I ask. Ed says he’s not hungry, but at the Bar Juanito they have an artichoke hearts that won the best tapas award at some national tapas competition...

...and as long as we order one thing, we may as well add to it (each tapas is 2 Euros) and so we order a shrimp and wild mushroom dish that, too, is quite delicious.

Okay, I get it. The people of Jerez are alive and well, eating, drinking, warming their insides with all the good stuff that this region has to offer.

The light isn’t fading just yet, but a good snack and a glass of wine are enough to push us back home, yes, home, today’s home, where we can lie down, doze off for a bit and watch the rain come down behind any of the five windows in our seven-sided room.

In the evening, there’s not even the pretense of weighing dinner options. We go back to last night’s restaurant because it is so good, so rickety chair casual that there’s no reason to go elsewhere.

The waiter tries to talk me into some of the heartier meat options, but I stay with the mushrooms with bits of Iberian ham. It is a completely satisfying meal, finished by a delicious dessert of cheese and something or other.

We walk back along wet streets in the golden glow of street lamps and oranges.

memory

2012-01-15T04:32:00.001-06:00

Saturday. A day of travel. Walk to the ferry. Take the ferry back to Tarifa. From there, a bus to Cadiz and finally a train to Jerez de la Frontera.

A time to allow for memories to take shape. For instance, in leaving Tanger, as we walk through the very quiet morning streets and alleys, I take note of the cats of Tanger. Alley cats. They get lost in the crowds that fill the streets later in the day. But now, they’re prominent.

I have to think, too, that the image of men in cafés will remain a fixed one.

Perhaps women would find no pleasure in sitting in smoke filled places and yet their absence there is, to me, memorable.

Tanger images. Of turquoise taxis. Of a medina sitting on a hill, but really on several hills, as the alleys go up and down and then up again.

The ferry ride. This is the smoothest set of waters I’m ever likely to see here, on the Straits that separate Europe from Africa, the Atlantic from the Mediterranean.

So, is there no wind in Tarifa? As we pull into the old familiar port, everything appears very calm. Here's the lighthouse at the tip of the causeway. Atlantic there, Mediterranean here.

And now we are almost at the ferry port...

...okay, we're docked. We step out. The fishing boats, the fortified walls, the cluster of shore-front houses...

Ah, but there is wind. A little lighter than before, but it requires that I pull back my hair unless I want to work out the tangles later.

But, the people of Tarifa are used to it. They go about their business, despite the gusts and breezes.

We walk along the beach, but not for long. An hour maybe. We have our packs and they seem a tad heavier. Or maybe that it's carrying them on our backs on sandy shores of the Atlantic that makes them appear more of a burden. One should be free to romp on a beach. Like this guy.

Still, even for us slow pokes with the packs and bags, it's just so beautiful here! The colors -- unforgettable colors!

Will I remember that looking toward Africa, I saw the rain cloud pass by and what with the gusts of wind and cloud, a mini tornado formed?

The rain never touched Tarifa.

We return to sit at our favorite café and I order a salad and I remember the very first such salad that I had in Granada (and many since then). They’re all the same. And they’re all delicious.

People watching here. A handful of girls sit at a table, practicing the art of café life. I take note. It's hard not to make comparisons.

And now it’s time to leave – we have a 14:45 bus to catch. So, a final glance at the entrance to the old quarter...

... and we return to the bus station, where a trio is also waiting. I note the heels again and I note that these women all have long hair and none of it is tied back against the wind.

The bus ride is 80 minutes. Time to think. About how as I get older, my memory is more fickle. For instance, somewhere in Granada, I lost 100 Euros. I have no idea how it happened. I zip up all purses and guard against theft in any number of ways. It must have dropped out as I was pulling out coins. But I just do not remember. Perhaps it's not a matter of memory, but rather carelessness. But here’s a true memory issue: in Ronda, I left behind, at the hotel, my cosmetics case. Amazing how little one needs one’s 'cosmetics' – I’ve managed fine without them. Still, I now know that I cannot rush to post something and scoot out the door at the last minute. In decades of travel, this is the first time that I left behind something that large and that obvious.

We pull into Cadiz. Pronounced variously. It’s beautiful enough (this, gleaned from our walk through part of the old town, but again, encumbered with packs, so it hadn’t the value of a real stroll) that we’re likely to return. So just one photo for now.

Okay, maybe a second. We were there for an hour after all.

It’s close to Jerez de la Frontera – our final Andalusian destination. You hop on a commuter train there (and back). We’re now heading to Jerez, the two passengers here are on a train heading back to Cadiz.

I’ll well remember the train rides – they were all 100% wonderful.

In Jerez, we arrive at our hotel, the beautiful Casagrande, only to find it locked. We ring the bell -- nothing. We walk to a local café, ask about it, but no one knows. Shrugs. We go back, ring again. I’ll probably forget that it took a half hour’s effort to finally get someone to answer the door. (They’d been on the rooftop, repotting plants and they didn’t hear the door.)

But I’ll remember the grand room with windows on thee sides.

(And maybe even the price – 85 Euros with a full, cooked breakfast included.)

We ask for dinner recommendations – not touristy please. Something local, simple. The hotel person laughs. There’s nothing touristy about any of the places. Jerez is not a tourist destination!

We eat at La Cruz Blanca – a terrific place with the best wild mushroom salad ever. Will I remember it? Maybe, maybe not. But I’ll remember that when we ordered shrimp with garlic, we got these, the ever familiar pel pels.

And I'll probably remember that in every place on this trip we've gone into a bakery for a small handful of cookies. Often with nuts or pine nuts, like these.

Funny how some things stay in your head. And others do not.

a bevy of interesting observations (not necessarily my own)

2012-01-14T02:10:00.002-06:00

(Morning)

An unexpectedly bright and sunny sky, as seen from the roof top of Dar 23 in the medina of Tanger.

(Later)

We look out at the Strait of Gibraltar. The seemingly endless hazy mist over these waters is less pronounced. Spain is quite visible from where we stand.
Ed shakes his head in wonderment: in one place there are parts of a pig in every store, then you cross a thin strip of water and now there’s no pig anywhere. Amazing.

(Earlier)

After a pleasant breakfast of yogurt, flatbreads and fried pancakes, Ed and I take a walk through Tanger. Peter suggests stopping off at the Phoenician tombs – nearly three thousand years old (Tanger was probably discovered by the Phoenicians) – easily discernable on a cliffside overlooking the ocean.
You wont miss them. They’re carved into the stone, probably filled with rain water or garbage or both.

(Around the noon hour)

Our walk starts just before the big Friday call to prayer. Initially, the shops are open, the city noises blending with the noise of the taxi engines and motorscooters. Streets are crowded, benches are occupied, the men are at their cafés.

But at twelve, the men turn to the mosques. Or most men. On the cliffs, we find a few who, like us, come to gaze out at the sea (and unlike me, have no fear of being near cliff edges).

(Ed)

As we continue to walk away from the medina and city center, the coastal streets become quieter. Some of the side streets have driveways leading to moderately prosperous homes. We come across a man washing a car.
Ed mumbles: he’s sporting a gun in a holster. I respond -- a guard maybe? We move on, out of the range of fire.

Eventually the road dead-ends. We give a glance to the cliffs before us and turn back, away from the coast, toward the complicated set of streets, boulevards and alleyways of Tanger.

We’re by a large cemetery and the road leads right to one of the side entrances. We hesitate about going in. There are a number of people there today, some praying, some merely tidying the tomb site – putting in branches of myrtle and other greenery.
I say to Ed – let’s pass through it. I wont take photos.
You better not!
He is so emphatic that I’m surprised. Ed’s usually my biggest nudger to take risks with photos. Not here, not now.
I offer this -- it’s interesting – in the west, taking respectful photos of old tombstones is quite common.
We have no idea what the customs are here, Ed responds, but it’s not as if I need the reminder. And I have yet to see a single Tanger resident with a camera, a phone camera or any other recording device.

(After the noon hour)

At 12:30, school’s out. (For the afternoon? For the day? Is there a weekend?)

I have before me a parade of children and mothers and grandmothers. In Tanger (unlike in, say, Marrakech), all women over a certain age (what age?) are in long robes and veils. Men’s attire, on the other hand varies, though there, too, long robes are more common than not.

The children sometimes shout Hola and bonjour at us. Every once in a while one will ask for a Euro. We look like we're more likely to have Euros than the Moroccan Dirham.

As we navigate the streets, passing small clusters of men or groups of kids, it seems clear that in Tanger, we can expect to be stared at. If I see a group of people on a park bench at some distance in Europe, I can easily take a photo. They’ll be so engrossed in conversation that they wont even notice. But here, we are noticed, even from afar. There is friendly vibe to the stares, or at least a non threatening vibe to them, but they are unabashed and constant.

As Ed takes my hand I say – I wonder if it is common for men to touch women in public. Last night, in the restaurant, at the end of dinner, a couple – maybe Moroccan, maybe not, engaged in an obvious make-out session, right there, by the table. It’s as if they were flaunting a certain openness of feeling. But it was the exception.

We continue to meander, now through a mostly shuttered and less vibrant medina.

And then we take a pause at Dar 23.

(Late afternoon)

The chant can be heard again, signifying the end of prayer. It’s still light outside and I have a small errand to run.

It takes a strong man (and a stronger woman) to resist shopping in Morocco. (The typical temptations would include slippers – every man and most women wear these at some point, out on the street, inside a home, no matter – they’re the standard. And for foreign visitors, carpets, typically made by the Berber people in the Atlas Mountains fill the stores. My sights are for something much much smaller, but I like to admire these colorful handmade crafts anyway.)

Ed is a man who can resist any shopping anywhere. I can too these days, especially when I travel with him. It creates a sense of well being to move freely and lightly with half empty backpacks, especially when you use trains and buses and prefer hiking great distances to taking cabs.

But (and there is a but), it’s my little girl’s birthday the day after we get back to the Midwest and I know she would like some small gift from Morocco. She is the one who dragged me here in the first place a few years ago and her memories of that trip are as good as are mine.

So I ask Ed if he’s up for a shopper’s stroll through the medina. I know what I want. It’s a question of finding a good version of it and getting a good bargain. (The small item shall remain nameless as she reads Ocean and it would be inopportune to mention it here now, before her birthday.)

Ed agrees to go along. We enter one store. No, won't do. Another – wow, this is a big store, with a maze of rooms and an upstairs and then another upstairs. A handful of men work here. They’re not busy. They’re drinking mint tea by the doorway. There are no tourists now, no shoppers at all. I get too much attention, even as I want just the smallest of items.

Ed waits on a stool as I go inside. Immediately, I like the vibe of the place. Ed tells me that a good shopkeeper will have worked out splendidly every detail of pleasing the customer. Well, this shopkeeper knows his stuff. His praise for my French, my taste, my height weight and color of hair (I exaggerate here) is fluent and believable. And he leads me away from the small item that I could fit in a change purse to something slightly bigger. I protest, he’s understanding, working around the problem that I don’t want anything that wont glide into the side pocket of my backpack.

In the end, he wins. And, because he’s good at his job, he makes me feel great for going along.

I tell Ed – they don’t have any business, no tourists at all, no one is buying, so I got a real bargain.
Yes, I’m sure. He used all the right words.
But it’s true! I don’t quite have that amount (I only carry a few Euros with me, which work here if you want to be stupid and overpay for everything), but he’s willing to escort us to an ATM machine.
Ed’s laugh could be heard throughout the medina. I bet he is!

At the ATM, I encounter a guy who sells Moroccan sweets.

He gives me a sample, I like it and ask for a small packet to take home (I have come a long way with street food; there would have been a time when I would have refused to eat anything from someone who uses the same hand to cut his sweets as he does to handle money. Ed tells me that transmitting disease through money is far less common than through poor sanitation and I choose to believe him on that one).

But the entire one minute episode – there at the ATM, with the shop worker looking on (I have just bargained down ferociously something at his store and then spent effortlessly and frivolously a handful of coins on candy), the candy seller handing over the packet of sweets, and with the memory of the store owner, telling me to please give a small tip to the worker – maybe the equivalent of a couple of dollars, so that he could buy ice cream for his kids -- leaves me with the gloom that always comes when I ‘do business’ with someone who is much much poorer than I am.

Of course, the truth is that I wouldn’t have made the purchase at the asking price. Not because I couldn’t have, but because I wouldn’t choose to spend money in this way. (We’re talking very small dollars here). For a person who works at a Tanger shop, it’s a different sort of equation. The shopkeeper tells me – we need to pay our workers. We have too much stock and not enough cash. Offer us any price—chances are we’ll take it.

That’s a terrible bargaining position to be in. But that is the reality in Tanger.

We walk through the medina one last time without purpose, without destination. There was supposed to be a midday meal in there somewhere, but neither Ed nor I are hungry for it. He’s pensive and so am I. We retreat to Dar 23 and lose ourselves in our computers for a good period of time.

(Late evening)

We eat dinner at Agadir. A small place about a fifteen minute walk up and out of the medina. We had asked Peter for a very informal, low key place and he sends us here. A few tables, loosely scattered. Some oil cloth on top, a string of balloons, a very crookedly hung insignificant painting of a camel-riding Arab.

The way we are sitting, we can look straight into the kitchen. Not the stove and oven – the exciting part, but the chopping table and the kitchen sink. A cat comes in and waits. The cook, who is also the waiter and pretty much everything else, must like the cat because neither minds the other’s presence.

We order a zesty Moroccan salad to start with and our cook, waiter, restauranteur goes to the kitchen to chop veggies for it. None of this take-out-a-plate-with-a ready-salad-from-the-fridge stuff. The restaurant also serves Moroccan wine and I order a half bottle of rosé. Delicious.

Now comes the main course. It’s a perfect chicken tagine. All the good flavors of prunes, almonds, dried fruits and spices.

The whole dinner tab for us, wine included, hovers at around $20.

I have absolutely no complaints.

We walk back just as the last vendors are packing up. Tanger at night is a place of shadows. Lights are dim, long robes hide details, colors are lost, movement is hushed, hurried.

The medina is almost shut up for the night. We wont ever quite see it in its robust form. Tomorrow, immediately after breakfast, we’ll be taking the ferry back to Spain.

come to the Kazbah

2012-01-13T03:20:00.004-06:00

Mohamed is waiting for us at the port. He smiles and waves and I am very glad to see him. It’s not easy to find the place where we’ll be spending the next two nights. Dar 23. Up an indifferent alley of the old medina, behind a formidable black door. A b&b? More like a private home with rooms. Exquisite, beautifully decorated rooms. The owner, Peter (a former fashion designer who hails from Hong Kong, but is French, with a mother living in Long Island), rents them at a fantastic winter rate of 70 Euros, with breakfast, all inclusive.

Mohamed, Peter’s assistant, speaks Arabic and French. As we walk from the ferry to Dar 23, he talks about the city of Tanger.
Close to two million, he says. But most of them come in for the work, from the south. When we have a holiday, the city empties. They go back to their families. Of the two million, maybe five thousand stay behind.

That’s a typical Nina/Ed exaggeration, but I get the point. People are here to earn cash as best as they can.

Both Ed and I wanted to come to Tanger, even as we have very different memories of Morocco. I was here with my daughter (though not in Tanger) some three years ago and it was an exciting and wonderful trip. Ed was here some forty years ago (in Tanger) on a quick half day jaunt from Spain and felt that this was plenty. Still, he agrees now to come back. Curious to compare it to his youthful impressions.

To me, the most troubling thing about the trip is the ferry crossing. I hate being on a boat in rough waters and the Straits of Gibraltar look choppy all the time. I cannot fathom now how it could be that I crossed the Atlantic three times as a kid on a ship. These days even a half hour out on wavy seas makes my stomach heave.

The ferry from Tarifa to Tanger is big. It’s a catamaran, with the word “jet” emblazoned on it, which to me signifies speed. That’s good. The faster the better.

The ticket agent does warn of winds (I know, I feel them – Tarifa winds) and she admits that the advertised amount of time for the crossing (35 minutes) is plain wrong (it’s closer to an hour), but it’s the ferry or skip Morocco, so after a bracing breakfast/lunch at our favorite café in Tarifa...

...we board. With a small number of Moroccans returning and a large group of Koreans with many very large suitcases visiting.

You know the saying – quit worrying because what’ll get you in the end is not the thing that triggers you worries – well, the crossing is just fine. I even enjoy it (the same cannot be said for a handful of Koreans, who, despite their counter motion sickness exercises, look utterly defeated by the end of the hour).

And as we alight in Tanger, there is Mohamed.

Tanger. I’ve read dismissive comments on the Internet from those who come for the day from Spain and by dusk are glad to be done with it. They say that it lacks tourist attractions, that it makes Morocco look bad. I am in our room at Peter’s and I listen to the chanted calls for prayer sounding over the city, I think about the mint tea we drank earlier and the Moroccan cakes we ate on the rooftop of some place in the Kasbah and I think -- Tanger is fascinating.

Dar 23 – the place Mohamed leads us to – hasn't a sign or any indication of what's inside. Just the street number of the house. Our stunning white room and tiled bathroom (there are only three in all) are up several flights of steps. Its windows open up onto a view of a ledge with potted plants.

On a lower level there is a small living room and Peter invites us there for a glass of mint tea with nuts and dates and Moroccan biscuits to munch on.

He gives us pointers on how to navigate the city (unlike in Marrakech, where shop keepers are after you to sell their stuff, here, it’s the people out on the street who try to ‘assist you’ in any way they can. Often for a coin. It is, in fact very hard to tell when someone is being friendly because they are pleased to see a foreign visitor or because they want something in return).

We lose our way very early on in our first walk through the old town. The map isn’t accurate, the streets are without any understandable to me logic.

Even though we start in the old medina, very quickly we find ourselves outside of it. That’s okay. We need to check dinner places. And get some Moroccan cash. Here, in the 'newer' Tanger, the streets are wider and the houses bear an uncanny resemblance to Andalusia. With a Moroccan twist and a Tanger entryway.

...and so long as we have the cash now, we need some more Moroccan cookies, because they are so extraordinarily excellent, what with the almonds and the walnuts and the pistachios...

Back in the medina (the oldest Arab quarter of a North African city), we try again to locate the Kasbah. You’d think this fortified navel of the old medina would be easy to get to. You’d think. We pass through dark alleys and shop filled alleys. On wider lanes there are cafés. Men only cafés. The men watch soccer, play cards, drink sweet mint tea. They’re places where I know a camera would not be welcome. Women are out on the streets, mostly in the company of one another, with their children. Or, they're home, attending to things there.

Finally, we reach a square with an added fortification protecting it from the rest of the city. The Kasbah. The walls are crumbling now, tilting toward the sea.

The views from here are to the sea and toward the eastern coast of Morocco.

We find a little place (at Peter's suggestion) – all in blue and white, waiters included)...

...that serves wonderful snacks – tomatoes, olives and cheese with the flatbreads that we see everywhere, cookies and strawberries...

From the terrace (or is it rooftop?), you can see the medina spill down to the water.

We sit at a table facing the square, so that we can watch people cut through, heading into the medina.Men in pointed hoods and Fez, women in colorful robes.

It’s not crowded here and I can tell that for Ed, for this reason alone it’s a good place to be. We linger until it becomes too cold for me to linger anymore. We rejoin the river of people in the old quarter.

As we walk again through the medina, I am taken in by the fast pace, the colors, by the enormous amount of “stuff” for sale here. Tanger may not draw crowds of tourists like Marrakech does, but it certainly does not lack the small shops of woven stuff, metal stuff, ceramic and leather stuff. And just stuff.

Shops with embroidered robes and caftans sell things locally made. We pass shops where men weave and sew...

...and then, finally, a food market where women make cheese discs with palm leaves, others sell the ubiquitous flat breads, and olive vendors seem mildly bored with their assortments of olives, even as I can’t get enough of them.

The piled produce is tightly packed. Overflowing. How much will be sold before the closing hour?

It’s evening now. Dinner time. We step out of Peter's Dar 23 into the alley. Everything appears darker now.

And still, in and out of the medina, Tanger continues to be preoccupied with buying and selling.

We go to a place that serves a set menu. A friendly place, where the waiter moves from table to table, on good terms with everyone.

It’s not cheap by Tanger standards: about $20 per person for all five set courses and a bottomless glass of a home made drink of fruit juices. At 8:30 the place is nearly full. Initially, about half are from elsewhere. Not Morocco. But after 9 the balance shifts. Women, cloaked in long robes, escorted by men in more western clothing come in, sit down and begin to eat.

We munch on the dips and olives and then proceed to the fish soup. And the shrimp and squid with spinach. And the grilled fish. And the strawberries with raw honey and nuts and barley with honey as well. With glass after the glass of their delicious pulpy fruit (grape, strawberry and who knows what else) juice. Too much food we keep saying, but it comes nonetheless, dish after dish, fresh, honest, delicious.

Night at the medina. I can see a star or two, but it’s hard. The alleys are narrow. The old, often crumbling buildings block much of the sky. No moon for me tonight. Shops are closed or closing, but the noise level along the wider passages remains high. Male voices. Greeting, selling. Food stands are still drawing crowds. Snails? Some egg dish? Sesame bars? These are guesses. Much of Tanger is a muddle of guesses for me. The city is like a tightly wrapped box that uses too much packing tape. You need special tools to get it off. A common language would help. French will get you places, but you need Moroccan Arabic, or for some -- Tarifit (a Berber language from the nearby Rif mountains) to start ripping at the layers.

In the meantime, we walk with our 'non, merci, non' as men and boys offer to lead us here, there, to the Kasbah. Up there, Go there, to the Kasbah.

whose homeland is this anyway?

2012-01-12T03:19:00.002-06:00

Hey, are you awake?

Now I am. Why?

It’s 5:45.

Okay... The bus leaves at 9.

Do you want to take the earlier one?

Well there’s a temptation. The Internet died overnight. Can’t work, can’t post. Can’t sleep now either.

Okay, I’m up.

Quick showers and we’re out, walking in total darkness toward the bus station for the 6:30 to Algeciras.

We ride with morning workers. Mostly men, scarved and buttoned tightly against the cool winds of the night hours.

In Algeciras we switch buses and now we’re on the 7 a.m. out to La Linea.

If you look out from the Mediterranean Sea toward the land, the cities of Algeciras, then San Roque, then La Linea sort of blend into one large port. But La Linea’s identity is somewhat singular. It was born in the years (early 18th century) following the British control over its immediate neighbor to the southeast. Cross an airport runway from La Linea and you’re in Gibraltar. La Linea – the line that separates Spain from the British territory that is so often colloquially called The Rock.

These days, things are less tense here. But go back a few decades, to the Franco years in Spain and you have a different story. Then, movement between Spain and Gibraltar was cut off. And still, Gibraltar stayed firmly British. When put to a vote, the people of Gibraltar resolutely and overwhelmingly voted to remain with Great Britain.

Who are the people of Gibraltar? Many who work here, especially at service jobs, are Spaniards from La Linea and San Roque. In fact, our morning bus is full of them. And so are the people of Gibraltar all of British descent? They say that they are a mix of everything, to the point that they speak actually three languages – Spanish, English and their own dialect. We heard it in a heated argument over work duties up in the Nature Reserve. Words flew in all languages, mixed into one hardly comprehensible whole.

But are these Gibraltarians really native to this area? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the locals were nearly all chased out. The saying in San Roque remains today -- "Donde reside la de Gibraltar" ("where Gibraltar's population lives").

It’s complicated.

We are going to La Linea to see Gibraltar. Ed’s done this once, alone, as a high school kid spending time in the south on an exchange program. He thought it might be interesting to come again, this time with me. He’s right. This is one mighty fascinating piece of land. [My association with Gibraltar has been the American life insurance company that uses the Rock as its logo. You know the image – a sheer cliff. Solid rock. It’s good to get beyond these images.]

So now here we are, in predawn darkness, out of the bus, heading with others across the airport runway (they shut down this one road into Gibraltar when a plane flies in or out) into the still shuttered for the night territory of Gibraltar.

But I can see the faint contours already. Here, my first image of the Rock of Gibraltar, from the airport runway.

The stream of people coming in to work here moves without a fuss. But the police stop the two of us. Clearly we stand out. Twice, we have to show passports.

And now it’s 8 in the morning, still dark. Everything’s closed at least until 9.

We find a British café (which simply means that the coffee is going to be weak and it is) and I ask for an order of eggs on toast (which means that it’s going to be without much flavor and it is). Ed dozes. I listen to the telly give the figures of the New Hampshire primary.

It takes us a while to find the tourist office, but finally, equipped with maps and having transnavigated most of this town three times and back again already...

... we’re anxious to start the climb.

The top of the Rock is, in fact, a Nature Reserve and let me tell you, on this day in early January, with the exception of the moments passing by the café that’s halfway up, we have the place 100% to ourselves.

Visitors don’t really climb the Rock. There is a funicular and there are cabs happy to take you there and back again. But we like the hike. The peaks (there are really two) are each just short of 1500 feet, so even though it’s steep, it’s not terribly so.

And of course, as you go up, through lush green vegetation...

...up steps, along stretches of empty road, you get the views.

Most are to Algeciras and San Roque – this is where the paths are. The other side – facing the southeast (the Spanish Mediterranean coast and Africa) has the sheer drop. No paths there.

In the summer, I understand that Gibraltar is a tourist draw. You can see why. There are the views, yes, I mentioned those already (and please note that after weeks of sunshine, we step on British territory and immediately we get the clouds and the threat of rain). And, too, there are the monkeys. Gibraltar is home to the Barbary Macaque – it is the only place in Europe where you’ll still find monkeys in the wild.

And we find them now. They are not shy – used to the presence of the human hand that butters their bread (they may forage for food, but the park also throws them oranges and cabbage; they earn their keep by not running away when a strange visitors stops by with the hope that she can get a photo...)

..or two

or more...

As we get closer to one of the peaks here, I get my usual bout of vertigo. Ed gets to hear a lot of “I can’t go any further” type statements, usually just short of a wail and with emphatic insistence. And usually he can coax me to continue.

Once past the sheer exposed drop stretch, I’m okay and we sit on top of the Rock, alone, looking this way and that...

...commemorating the moment. Me victorious...

Ed, amused.

And then we walk down – a five hour hike total, with plenty of pauses for monkeys and views.

Gibraltar, the town doesn’t have great appeal to either of us. Oh, it’s very British and therefore quaint here on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

And, too, it has lovely Botanical Gardens.

Beyond this, we don’t linger. We walk across the airport field once again...

...and catch the 3 pm out of La Linea, connecting in Algeciras to Tarifa. Quiet, gentle Tarifa, where the winds blow and the sun is still trying to shine its way to a warm-ish afternoon.

Dinner – back at our first night seafood place. This time our paella has large shrimp and wild mushrooms. A warm wonderful memory of Tarifa.

Thursday at noon we’ll be leaving. We’ll take the boat and cross the Straits to Gibraltar to Africa.

moving sands

2012-01-11T09:16:00.000-06:00

It must be blowing some 70 mph, son’t you think? I say this as we finally turn away from the beach. I wouldn’t open my mouth before that. I’d get the grit of sand if I did.
More like 28 or 30, Ed responds.

Ed and I are prone to exaggerations. In opposite directions.

I remember encountering strong winds before, ones that caused me to cling to a tree, thinking that I’d otherwise fly off the mountain. This isn’t like that, but it’s poweful nonetheless.

The woman at the tourist office tells us that the birds are waiting for the wind to die down before they resume to their great migrations. Well okay, go ahead and wait. To me, it seems that the wind has no intention of stopping. Or even taking a pause.

Chicago should relinquish its claim to being the windy one. Tarifa, you win.

In the morning, we go to the market. Actually, we first stop at this little gem of a store just around the corner.

Ed buys five oranges – assorted types – and I speculate why, back home, we tend to favor only one variety (navel) in our stores. When I do spot something different, it most often will be imported. From Spain.

As Ed tells me about the advantages of marketing just one type, he peels the oranges, one by one. We finish every last piece. He loves oranges possibly as much as I love...hmmm, a good cup of espresso? A summer breakfast on the farmhouse porch?

The market proper in Tarifa is especially busy around the fish vendors.

This guy weighs his fish by the fistful. Elsewhere, street vendors are selling snails and urchins. People pause in the marketplace entrance to talk. Always talking. Animated.

Okay, noses filled with fish aromas, we proceed to a café – a con leche for me and a toast with goat cheese off the tapas menu to share (we’re eating breakfast so late that they’re brining out the lunch menu).

And now comes the complicated part of the day. We want a hike that would include some time near the ocean. The tourist agent assures us that we can walk the distance from Tarifa to Bolonia along the shore.

How far?

Oh, maybe twenty kilometers.

And is there a bus back?

No buses from there. Maybe you should take the bus halfway, then walk the beach to Bolonia. It’s a pretty little place with Roman ruins.

And will there be dry sand all the way there?

Yes, yes, of course, but if the tide is too high, just scramble up a bit – it’s not hard. And you can return by bus from the same place where you’re dropped off.

One statement, three mistakes in it. Ed later says – it’s not their fault... They live here. They don’t do these walks. That’s for visitors like you and me. When I lived in New York, I never went up the Empire State Building.

We’re okay on taking the bus to the drop off point. The driver obligingly pulls over and drops us off just before turning inland.

On the return, can we pick up the bus on the other side of the road?

The driver shrugs. Maybe. Sometimes they stop, sometimes they don’t.
Well now. I look at Ed: what if today they feel like a “don’t”? There are only two late return buses and one of them is very very late.
Then we thumb our way back.

Really?

Really.

I like confidence, even if, in this case, I don’t share it.

We meander over to the beach. Ah, my, but it’s windy. In our backs. So that’s a good thing. It’s like biking downhill. Even if part of you remembers that what goes down must, on the return, go up.

It’s a pretty stretch of beach and to the right, at the curve of the land, there are large dunes, accumulating more and more sand by the second.

We’re supposed to go around the cliffs at the tip there and there will be other cliffs too, but the agent was reassuring. There’ll be sand at the base! We continue. Behind us, Tarifa is a speck of white, nothing more.

And the wind blows and blows, even as the sun is quite warm. Very quickly I shed my jacket. It’s in the low sixties, but walking makes it feel significantly more toasty.

Initially we’re able to find sandy spots that separate the cliffs from the ocean waters. But soon the water is hitting the rocks in a way that makes it impossible to pass. We scramble up the sandy hills, then down again...

...but eventually the strips of sand disappear. Waves crash against the now rocky coast. No more beach.

On the bluffs, we look for a dirt road that we know from the map will eventually turn into a hiking trail. We have no choice but to stay on it now.

It’s pretty up here. Warmer, too. Flowers appear now and again...

And when the road ends, there's a sandy trail, through Spanish pine and coastal shrubs that are hard for me to identify. The going is a bit tougher. Soft sand slows us down.

We see monarch butterflies and it all feels so spring-like – as if we were allowed to skip winter this one time.

In this idyllic walk, I look at my watch and notice that we’ve been at it for nearly two hours.

We need to turn around and head back soon or we’ll be missing the (next to the last) bus.

We haven’t reached Bolonia! We could take the last bus!

It’ll be dark then! No.

It’s nice to have veto power.

Just as the path leaves the forest and shows us the coast ahead, I say to Ed – that’s it for us. .

We turn around and start the walk back. Because of the wind, we stay off the beach almost the whole way. Sand in your face for several hours seems a tad unpleasant.

We have a very lovely path, then road, and it’s all rather delightful (forgive me for another shot of these -- the light is different now!)...

...until we come to the back of the dunes. The piling of sand has clearly taken its toll – on the road, on the trees on both sides.

Many of the firs are already buried. It seems nothing can arrest the moving sands here.

So what becomes of the small community just up the road? How long before this road is completely smothered in sand?

After a while, we’re forced to resume the beach walk (the road veers in the wrong direction). It’s brutal out there and I hate to take out my camera. One photo. Just one.

And now we finally emerge at the bus drop off point where, conveniently, we find a café and bake shop. I indulge myself.

Ed asks the woman behind the counter if the bus will stop if we flag it down. It’s scheduled to pass in five or ten minutes.
Same answer: Maybe. Or maybe not. It depends.

We should try to get a ride then. Ed’s out with his thumb up. I hover to the side, lending credibility, I suppose.
We’re lucky. The second car pulls up with a double honk. Two boisterous local men. Get in, get in and give us some coins for a coffee!

The driver is chatty and looks back at us when he has something especially funny to recount (I’m guessing here – we don’t understand most of what he says). It takes a lot to get Ed thinking about road safety, but he’s thinking of it now as he motions to our guy to keep the car on the road!

Grabbing a ride is always a good adventure – Ed tells me as we get out of the car in Tarifa. Now that we’re safely in Tarifa I’ll agree.

Late in the evening, very late in the evening, we go out in search of dinner. We’re in for a night of tapas at the bar. It just sort of happens this way. One place (recommended by our landlords) serves us a plate of fantastic wild cactus and eggs and because I know they specialize in pork dishes (they go to some trouble describing where and how their pigs live), I order their jamon as well...

Finally, in the bar next to our little apartment, this one -- we can see it out our little balcony:

...we share a dish of shrimp pel pel. It could not be better.

We watch the TV screen as we mop up the garlicy oil with slices of bread. It’s about sports and weather though for us, the content hardly matters. We guess at various possible interpretations of what it all could mean. It’s what you’re away from home. You guess as to what’s going on and what it could all mean. You may be off, but if you’re generous, probably you can come pretty close.

who has seen the wind...

2012-01-10T05:59:00.000-06:00

Do you want to experience wind? Stand facing it, run against it, let your scarf blow, watch sprays of water dance on the crest of waves for hours on end? Tarifa. Go to Tarifa. The wind from the African Sahara never stops blowing in this southernmost town in Spain (in all of continental Europe, actually --Tarifa: 36° 00′ 15″ N).

It’s easy to understand why. If you walk out to sea on the stone causeway (and now you really are as south as it gets), and turn around and face land, on your left you’ll have the Atlantic, on the right you’ll have the Mediterranean. This is where it all meets.

They say it is the only spot on earth where you can stand and look out at two separate continents and two wide-open seas, all at once.

The Mediterranean here is not yet the calm sea we know and love. Here, it is just at the edge of becoming a sea. These are the Straits of Gibraltar and yes, just a dozen miles from Tarifa, there is that rock, British, jutting out, but more on that later.

And across these Straits there is Africa.

(At dusk, the twinkly lights across the water make it seem so close... And it is close: just a short twenty miles across the waters.)

You would think that Tarifa, with its incredible stretch of fine white sands and pristine azure waters of the sea (on the Atlantic side) would be a mega tourist destination. You would be wrong. The coastline here is dotted with very plain, lowrise apartment houses. The hotel scene is low key, to put it kindly.

So why is Tarifa so... lonely?

Well, it’s hard to get to. Take our trip from Ronda. We leave early, before the sun breaks the horizon over the hills, over the gorge.

We catch the train (on the Granada line) heading at a slant to the coast (and there are lovely misty valleys to admire along the way)...

...and in about two hours we arrive at its final stop – Algeciras. So now we’re in Algeciras. That’s no tourist hub either. It’s one of the leading ports of the world – the hub for traffic from Morocco and ports beyond. We spent a scant hour there, poking around the near to the station market -- an interesting market, or at least the artsy statues are interesting. This, right in the midst of butcher stalls:

The market feels like a daily market in a small industrial town would feel – busy and no nonsense.

So now we have to take a bus to Tarifa. There are several that make the connection and they climb the rocky hills that separate Tarifa from the rest of the world, offering us some mighty nice views across the straights, toward the mist shrouded coast of Africa.

...then briskly down again, into this old town of Tarifa. And it is old. (I read that the word tariff comes from this once important trade center.)

There are Roman ruins nearby, and it has, too, a Moorish past, and a brief (hostile) encounter with France, many spotty (and violent) encounters with African invaders – poor Tarifa may be scorned by tourists, but it surely was a desirable point for invaders from the north, east and south.

Ah, there's Africa again. So close.

So why hasn’t Tarifa blossomed now, especially for the sun worshiping northerners? It remains a tiny little town. Half the size of Ronda (so – population around 17,000), somewhat cut off from the mainland and here’s the real truth: it is just so windy here!

When I first mentioned to someone I was heading for Tarifa, she asked – oh, are you and Ed going for the wind surfing? Tarifa is the choice European destination for wind surfers. What a surprise.

Insofar as there is tourism here, it is there to serve the needs of these people.

We are, of course, in the off off season, so there are only a handful now, riding the winds of the Atlantic, but it is clear that Tarifa is their dream.

Ed and I are not windsurfers. We’re here because it’s quiet and the beaches are vast and the hills invite hiking and there are migratory birds that pass through Tarifa (they hover and wait here for the winds to settle just a little, allowing them to complete the crossing south) and so you can admire them as well – oh, there’s plenty to do for people who love nature and open spaces and views onto the ocean.

We’re staying at a place that is sort of a small hotel, though not exactly that. It’s a cluster of tiny apartments, or at least they offer kitchenettes with the rooms, and lovely balconies too (for us to hang our laundry!). At this time of the year, the going rate is 60 Euros per night. Escanaba, step aside! Ed says we’re getting cheaper and better by the hour!

The apartment is in some ways quiet – the winds don’t penetrate the old town in the same hostile manner – they prefer to frolic along the coast. No street noises either. But the tile floors and metal circular stairs in the units send off echoes of noises inside so that if anyone dares walk in spiky heels across the floors the whole place trembles. Still, it is a large and tremendously lovely unit, looking out onto a whitewashed square and we happily settle in for a three night stay.

Our first afternoon in Tarifa is devoted to taking it all in: the town, the beaches, the great bodies of water to the south, to the west, the fishing boats that bring in an incredible array of seafoods.

As usual, we hadn’t eaten much for breakfast or lunch and so by late afternoon we are ready for tapas. Well now, that may work in Seville, Granada or even Ronda, but in little Tarifa, most eateries shut down for the afternoon. We settled for some creamy mushrooms and seafood slaw at a café. The people watching at lest is terrific. And the cookies from a bakery across the street -- sublime.

We take a walk to the grocery store outside the old town and then along the beach, for the (windy) sunset...

The rays peak through the clouds in tiny slivers, giving just a glimmer of light, but enough to make it a memorable event.

And late in the evening we go for dinner. We dine well. Very well. The best seafood place in town (and there are many places preparing seafood here) has a special going: a set dinner of a green salad and a seafood paella for 9 Euros, tip and taxes included. I can't think when I last had a sit down dinner for that price, on any side of the ocean.

And, oh, is the paella superb! Served in a huge pot..

...with chunks of fish, tiny shrimp, mussels and squid, it is a huge meal, leaving, unfortunately, no room for dessert.

So we’re in Tarifa for a few days. The moon is there, above us, grand as ever (just three days shy of being full, but you wouldn’t know it)...

We’re here to walk, rest, work a little too.

And the sun keeps shining (though from behind a few clouds now) and the wind keeps blowing and gusting and blowing...

where Ed saves the life of a goat and other fence related matters

2012-01-09T01:26:00.000-06:00

Well now, another brilliant and sunny day. We leave the little Hotel Ronda with the smiling sisters and head for the hills again.

I should say a word about these sisters – there were four who once lived in this house with their mom and dad. And now two have taken on the project of converting it into a tiny hotel. Here’s one of them, showing me the gallery of family photos from years gone by.

It’s exciting for me to see these later in life projects take shape and develop into something quite excellent. Investing in an old home and turning it into a guest house has to be an enormous headache, at least at the inception of the project. You can see how proud these families are when things finally take shape and guests walk away with smiles and praise.

Alright. We’re out of the hotel. Like yesterday, we don’t bother with breakfast or lunch. The sisters serve coffee, cookies and fruit, so it’s not really true that we’ve had nothing to eat, but we’ve been rather lax at attending to meals in the first half of the day.

Today as well, we pick up a trail – this time one that starts from the very lovely part of the old town – the San Francisco area.

The official well described circuit for this hike isn’t long – maybe three hours at most. But we want to extend it. We’ve read that the tiny village of Cartajima is just beyond a summit to the southwest and that there are trails to it. So why not keep on going west, scale the mountain and extend our hike?

So long as we’re on the official circuit, we’re fine. It’s a different kind of walk – the vast spaces of yesterday are replaced by, at first, the many many olive groves, followed by craggy hills, covered with wild bush and Spanish pine.

The silver sage makes an appearance again and there are added clumps of wild iris.

It’s all very pretty, but eventually the path narrows and it’s hard to stray from it as the olive groves and forested lands are enclosed. Wire fencing is common here and there’s lots of it.

And then the path we felt sure would lead us to the summit dead ends at a remote farmstead, where one older man is working the fields and a younger one is setting out on a hunt. With a Yorkie.

Ed asks for directions and we get some suggestions from the farmer and even a very helpful set of directions from the young hunter: go back down to the fountain, turn right over the little stream and you’re on your way!

Ed thinks we should turn right ahead of the fountain. I’m doubtful, but I follow along. We go through thickets, past olive groves, up rocky inclines and we are about to give up – surely this isn’t a path at all, just someone’s land... But as I look up the hill, I see a goat thrashing every which way, looking as if she’s butting her head against a fence. As we get closer we see what has happened.

She managed to not once, but twice put her head through the fence and now she is terribly entangled in it. It’s not clear how long she’s been there, head woven through the links, wire choking her at her throat.

Ed says – okay, time to get her out. To calm her is a challenge, but he does it and then, with the utmost patience, pushes her head, horns and all, out one link then the other, being oh so careful, because when she gives the final thrash to free herself, his hand stands to get slashed, right there along with her throat.

One last gentle push of her nose and she’s out! She doesn’t wait to say good bye but saunters madly back into the forest, free, so very free and it just warms your heart to see her unharmed.

And yes, it was a wrong turn. But the goat is off and running thanks to this wrong turn and if that isn’t enough of a reward, we look up and around us and Ed points to this across the hill:

A beautiful ancient aqueduct, almost hidden in the thicket. A breathtaking sight.

But the climb is otherwise a failed effort and so we continue down to the fountain and follow a road to the right from it. And we come to a dead end once more. And we back track again and this time we run into a young woman who appears to live in a house on these hills. Just keep going up, you’re on the right road!

Are we? We go back up. Dead end. There’s a fence, we can go no further.

Ed’s puzzled. She lives here. She must know. He pokes around some and finds a very secondary path. Up we climb, on slippery terrain with rocks jutting out on both sides of what may or may not be a path.

And then another fence stops us short. Ed tries to find a way around it but the thicket is dense. We're stopped short again.

We go down once more to rejoin the main path. Two men and a dog are walking up towards us and they look like they know the land. But we’ve made four attempts to find a way to scale the mountain and by now the afternoon light is getting quite low. Still, we have to ask. Do you know how to cross the mountain to Cartajima?

They do. One tells us – you could do it once. You could find paths up the mountain, but so much of it has been fenced off now that you’re not going to be able to get across. There are trails, but not from anywhere near here.

It’s nearly 4 pm and am happy to give up. Ed refills his water bottle at an ancient artesian spring and encourages me to do the same before the hike back.
How do you know it's safe? I hesitate.
People have been drinking from here a thousand years back.
Yes and they're all dead. Still, I drink it and it is cold and deliciously refreshing

We retrace our steps back to Ronda. There is a Tapas bar in the San Francisco area of town that the sisters highly recommend and I suggest we stop there for a breakfast-lunch meal. The sun is warm and the tables are packed with a lively crowd.I'm in love with the warm sun on my neck.

We order scrambled eggs with asparagus (and shrimp seem always to be added to this), shrimp on a stick and cheese and smoked salmon. A superb meal for a few coins.

Since the light is still with us, I suggest we explore the bridges of Ronda. There are three: the oldest -- sometimes called the Roman Bridge, sometimes the Arab Bridge -- is at the lowest end of the ravine.

Next and somewhat higher up is the so called “old bridge.”

Climbing to the old bridge, you can see the ravine up close and in your face. And, too, as you cross to the other side, you have before you the highest, mightiest, most impossibly steep “new bridge” (from the 18th century).

Hemingway referred to this bridge it in For Whom the Bell Tolls. People lost their lives in building it and in being thrown from it. And truthfully, it is sort of frightening to be on it, looking down toward the ravine. (Ed would not agree with this at all. Oh and by the way, here, by the bridge, he finally finds a cat that does not run away from him.)

And now we’ve paid our respects to the gorge and the bridges. We’re satiated with the wonderful Ronda foods, we’ve hiked the hills to the west and to the east. The sisters took good care of us at their little hotel in the old town. Down to the treats left in our room at the end of the day. A fine set of days indeed.

So, just one more meal – a small pizza to share, nothing more complicated than that. A wonderful pizza from a brick oven, with a local Vino Blanco.

The moon shines over Ronda, beautifully, dreamily.

Early Monday morning we leave, on a train, continuing on the same line that started in Granada, following it to its end on the coast. And from there, we’ll take the bus to Tarifa.

take to the hills

2012-01-08T04:29:00.001-06:00

Idle times bring forth idle questions – how is it that Spain is such a social nation, such a familial place? Oh, maybe not in Madrid – who knows what takes place there, behind the formidable walls of tightly packed buildings. But elsewhere?

It’s Saturday and again the streets are packed – initially along the pedestrian shopping street, then flooding the cafés and restaurants, outdoors until the sun sets, then indoors for another round.

I smile as we pass this young man – holding hands with his girlfriend, but, too, with an arm around his mom’s shoulder.

This grandmother is waiting for her children and grandchildren to arrive. I know this because a second later they do arrive and the kisses come and the loud banter begins. [They are not quiet here, in the south. Animated and boisterous, their voices carry in a friendly, outgoing way. I am alive! – as if to say. I am here with you, bursting with things to say!]

Sounds carry. Ed and I do a trail hike – not too long, some five hours of walking and just one hour of it uphill. This is what I knew about Ronda: it offers fantastic walks in the hills that surround it and you don’t need a car to get to a good path.

[Though I have neglected here showing off the real reason visitors come to this town. It's to stare down at the gorge and admire the incredible old bridge that spans it.]

Why was it built? How was it built?

But we're walking away from it all. Among greening fields and olive groves at first...

...the sun is dazzling, the cool air is perfect for hiking. I’m down to a tshirt early on, regretting the jacket and scarf.

As we get higher, the olives give way to oak trees – not used for cork here. Not yet anyway,

Goats. Now we come across the goats, with their funny beards and curved horns.

They run away as we get closer. They like their own company. They move in packs.

We go off trail to follow a path that climbs a mountain – a hill really – and it offers lovely views, some vines, too. Wines and sherrys are made in the terrain between Ronda and Jerez.

But the road ends before we reach the summit. There is a farmstead...

...and the farmers and their daughter watch us walk the road as their dog barks and barks. They pose for a photo too, grinning in their doorway.

We ask if we can climb the hill to the top, even as there is no road or path here.

Yes, yes, go there, it is a bonito view! Down to Ronda!

So we climb further still, carefully finding solid stepping places between rocks and clumps of wild sage and at the top, the view is indeed so splendid and the air so breezy and warm that we spend a good half hour perched on a rock, me in the sun, Ed in the shade of an oak tree.

And the sound carries so well that we hear the roosters and the baby goats from the valley below. It is oddly soothing, even though it sounds like there are wailing babies somewhere there, in the distance.

We go down the mountain and resume the looped trail. There are the occasional joggers and mountain bikers here. Fitness is on people’s minds. I saw that in the Lorca park in Granada where every few steps we’d come across signs telling you how you might stretch or exercise. True, a vast majority is sitting around tables eating, drinking, but there are those who, like us, take to the hills.

And in the evening, late late evening, as we look around again for a place to eat dinner, this other question comes to mind – how can a restaurant survive with prices like these? We choose a very nice little place with a set menu – 11 Euros per person, including three courses (we pick huge raw vegetable salads, but it could have been soup or paella, then for the second course a fish baked in lemon juice and olive oil, then a flan for dessert) and including a glass of wine and all taxes and service charges? Where in there is there room for profit?

Ah, the mysteries behind the Spanish way of life, in the land where oranges are plentiful and the sun keeps shining down on us day after day.

from Granada to Ronda

2012-01-07T03:45:00.000-06:00

I had been meaning to get up for a sunrise this entire trip and I think I forever would have felt the regret of not doing it here, in Granada. Especially since we are a five minute walk from perhaps the best vantage point in town toward the east and toward the Alhambra. And, too, in this part of the world, the January sun rises at a hefty 8 o’clock.

And yet it’s not easy to get out of bed. Our guest house, among its other stellar qualities, has the best pillows I’ve ever slept on (by contrast, at home we have the oldest, lumpiest things in the Midwest and possibly the whole continent). Still, it is our last morning here and I note a thin band of clouds at the horizon – always a good thing at sunrise. So I’m up.

I walk up to the small square by San Nicolas. A handful of our old hippie friends are there, drinking coffee, talking amicably.

We wait and watch.

Perhaps my memory is not serving me well, but truly, I can’t think when I have ever seen such blazing color in the sky. (The photos here are exactly right – I compared each one to the scene before me.)

It’s a trilogy of stunning vistas that grabs your attention – the fire in the sky, the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada, not so white now in the light of the rising sun, and of course, the Alhambra, taking the back seat at first, emerging ever so slowly from the shadows of the night.

I can’t get enough of it (and therefore, you’re likely to get too much of it).

Slowly, the color fades and the sky becomes lighter. I leave, but the image is now set in my head: Alhambra, dramatically emerging, under a blazing sky.

The morning is quiet for us. Because it’s a holiday, the breakfast helper is off and the matriarch is there, tending to the morning buffet and I chat with her (no, I do not speak Spanish, but I understand it because it is so very close to Italian and in any case, she speaks fluent French) about this great project of the hotel.

It’s a family business. Mom and dad, both doctors, two daughters and a son – all lawyers. Six years ago, the house of their dreams, of her dreams really (an old Arab sultan’s home, predating at the foundation even the Alhambra, she tells me), is finally for sale. They give up their professions and together plunge their efforts into the running of the guest house.

To say they do a fantastic job is the understatement of the year.

But she wont part with the recipe for the orange liquor.
Too complicated, she tells me. Besides, you can’t get the base liquor anywhere but here, in Granada. It’s her mother’s secret recipe. Darn.

For the remaining morning hours, Ed and I work, each in our favorite place (I’m downstairs in the living area, he’s upstairs, propped by the puffy pillows).

And then it’s early afternoon: time for our hike to the train station. We pass the café where we had lunched twice during our stay here. The owner waves and wishes us a good day. I have a tiny regret about leaving. We could idle away another day, another week perhaps? No, not this time.

Down we go, past the morning scenes of a southern city in Spain, where oranges are as common as potatoes are in Poland and where people wear thick coats and wooly scarves when the temperature dips to a cool... fifty-five.

The train is there, waiting. A last wave to Granada and we board the local for the 2.5 hour ride to Ronda.

Say what? Where’s Ronda? Well, if you went toward the Mediterranean coast on a diagonal, two thirds of the way there, you’d pass Ronda.

Traveling in the off off season is interesting because much of the world of inns and guest houses closes down for the ‘cold months.’ Since we avoid big hotels like the plague and our budget is deliberately quite small, but my taste for clean and honest quite high, this poses limits on where we can go. I spend many lonely hours on the Internet in early fall tracking down places and writing emails to see who would be open for business. Ronda, a hill town quite known for its very unusual location, has one such place.

So we’re speeding along to Ronda, past....

...right: olive groves... and I think how easy it is to get attached to places. I missed Seville when we left it and now I’m thinking how terrific it would be to sit on a sunny bench in Granada.

Never get too comfortable, never get too comfortable...

We get off the train in Ronda and my immediate reaction is quite negative. The town is too big for us! It’s fine to be in Seville, in Granada – you expect cities there. But here, in Ronda, I was hoping we’d find quiet.

We walk from the train station to our even tinier hotel (Ed is delighted – it’s a one star place, meaning, the bottom of the heap) and along the way, we bump against the festive crowds. So many people! For a town of 30,000, Ronda seems to have gathered all of them here for one last hurrah.

So I’m a tad disheartened by this. Ronda was to be our escape. Instead, it feels a bit like a smaller version of... a bigger town. Pretty, yes, definitely that. But it takes a good while for the street to clear of the rush of cars so that I can take a photo.

Except, as my senses adjust to the new reality (it’s not Granada and it’s not a quiet), a good, kind face begins to emerge.

Start with the hotel – called the Ronda. A family home, recently converted to a guest house, with spirit. Similar story as in Granada, but the Ronda is humbler, much much humbler. The owners live on one part of the house still. There are five rooms that they rent out and each has a splash of color and a contemporary art piece. It’s very very simple, but truly delightful.

On my Escanaba scale, it’s half the price of an Econolodge (coming in at 66 Euros per night, with great WiFi!).

The owner is intrigued by my name and background. Poland... ah, Poland. Nice country. But you seem more American... she says. Do I? I suppose I’m no longer surprised.

Then, too, you have to know this about Ronda: it’s location is crazy fantastic. It’s perched at the edge of a deep gorge.

Who would build a city here is beyond me, but there you have it – Ronda is actually one of the oldest towns in Spain, having, too, a Moorish past, greatly influencing the present character of the town. It brags at being also the town that made bullfighting fashionable, but we'll pass on exploring this further. There is, however, an old arena here and bulls are... prominently featured all over town.

We get our bearings in the late afternoon and note that Ronda has more eateries concentrated in the center of town than possibly all of Madison. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but not a huge one. And they are very well priced. Set menus (3 courses) for 10 or 11 Euros, tax and service included. No wonder the whole town is engaged in a continuous moving feast.

Yes, it’s a holiday (Three Kings) and people are out and about, buying up the cakes...

...pausing at cafés, shifting then to tapas bars, and finally to the bodega for a full evening meal. And I see that fashion runs high here. At least in the shoe department. Women like their heels, even when pushing a baby carriage over cobbles.

And children are dressed up. Girls wear ribbons in their hair.

This is the way of the old world. Put on your fine apparel and spend your day in the company of others. No wonder we appear so... American, me with my comfy walking shoes that do well in cities and mountains alike, Ed -- well, he’s looking a lot spiffier since a friend took pity on him and gave him some dollar barrel t-shirts. So far, no tears.

Ronda's looking lovely. And the same moon shines over her as the one over Granada.

We go out again, after nine, in search of dinner. This small bodega wins...

...for its menu -- with paella and shrimp pal pal. We’ve become great fans of both.

The bodega is, predictably, family run – a five table place that fills quickly with people who probably prefer to have someone do the cooking for them on this day, on most any day.

It’s a delicious feast for us and we leave happy, bantering about what place to eat on the next day and the day after.

Ronda. What a splendid little town!

The Alhambra

2012-01-06T05:59:00.001-06:00

The moon comes to the forge,
in her creamy-white petticoat.
The child stares, stares.
The child is staring at her...
~ Federico García Lorca

The moon climbs over the summer Palace of the Generalife. It isn’t a full moon and it isn’t dark yet, but we had just walked through those very palatial arches and taken such delight in the delicate carvings and the sweeping views to the hills of Granada that it seems an added bonus to watch the moon now begin its sweeping arch just there, at the northern most tip of the Alhambra.

It is our day to visit this grand palatial fortress.

But not immediately. I’d reserved a late afternoon hour (3:30) to enter the Nasrid Palace of the Alhambra. That means that we can pick up our tickets anytime after 2 p.m. and spend the time before and the time after the Nasrid walking through the Alhambra grounds, poking into old baths and climbing ancient towers, idling our way through the enormous complex however we please – until 6 p.m., when the Alhambra closes its gates to visitors for the day.

[My apologies for a terribly long post; it could not be otherwise.]

Part I

And so we have a morning to still give over to Granada. After, we can refresh ourselves, rest a little maybe and proceed to the Alhambra.

That is the plan. And initially, the pieces fall into place: we walk down the now familiar alleys of the Arab Quarter, down to the interesting Calle de Elvira, pretty now in the morning light...

elvira

...and I do go to the Cathedral, though not for long (Ed waits outside). And it is dazzling, in an empty sort of way. Without many visitors, the vast ornate space seems remote and, to me, rather cold. Or maybe it's that the January air is not very forgiving here, in this cavernous interior.

I want us to walk then to Granada’s park and perhaps poke into the summer residence of Grenada’s celebrated poet, Federico García Lorca, but here I take a wrong turn. A completely 180 degree wrong turn. We walk through the commercial heart of Granada...

...and the streets became more and more crowded, as it is the day before the great Feast of the Three Kings – another holiday gift giving situation for children, I hear, and it seems that everyone is doing last minute errands because in the course of the hour, the streets fill with crowds of shoppers.

We poke into several bakeries, for the fun of it, settling finally on a few tidbits for later...

pastry

...and we have an errand too – a comb for me since I managed to break one earlier. Only after an hour or so of rambling around town does it strike me that we are not where we should be.

Eventually we do find the park – not hard, it’s Granada’s dominant green space after all – but by then the summer house of Lorca is closing...

Lorca summer house

... and indeed, the guard there tells us it wont be open again for several days as we are in the middle of the great Fete.

No matter. Ed takes to a bench...

Ed on bench

...and I stroll. The park has a grand rose garden, but the blooms are mostly faded and in fact, the maintenance crew is just now clipping back the spent roses. But they haven’t gotten to this patch yet, where an occasional flower still proudly displays her petals.

winter rose

There are the usual strollers and wanderers and children playing and parents hovering over their little guys...

family

...and it’s all very pleasant, except that it’s now getting late and here we are in the park of Lorca rather than in our guest house preparing for the afternoon at the Alhambra.

We pause at a bakery for a quick pick-me-up espresso and pastry (and my oh my, is the bakery part crowded now with a holiday cake buying public!)...

quick espresso

...though I notice that others prefer wine over coffee...

wine

And now it is time to hike up the hill to the Alhambra.

Part II

As if there wasn't enough of a build-up, the walk up to the palatial compound is uphill, ceremonial almost. A slow approach, as if you should brace yourself for what's before you.

As we go through the first gates, I see that I got the images all wrong. From across the hills, the Alhambra looks stark and fortified. What you don't see is the vast natural setting -- the park outside the walls, the great gardens within.

We pass through a monstrous gate -- and it's the wrong gate for us. (Better prepared visitors know to head right up to the top where there is an efficient retrieval of prepaid tickets.) Up we climb even further... and now we are there.

You get a tremor when you enter the fortification, you really do. (Ed would dispute this.) It's only 2:15 and we have time to visit the Palace of the Generalife first (no lines here and very few visitors -- it's a tad to the side and requires more of an uphill climb, so I suspect most pass on it, which is very pleasant for those who do take the detour).

I think you get the idea of how vast the Alhambra is as you look down toward the buildings at the lower end of the fortress, from the gardens of the Generalife.

For me, the delight here is the courtyard.

In these winter months, the Alhambra gardens look winter bare. Yes, there's stark beauty in them and many never shed their green leaves so that you can't really think of it as desolate. But at the summer palace, the garden explodes still with flowers that refuse to give in to the season. The entire effect is absolutely lovely.

We are where the sultans found their delights and recreation and here you get the first twinge of realization how much human toil and effort was expanded for the pleasure of just a few.

And just as from the hills of the Arab Quarter you can gaze at the Alhambra, so, too, from the Alhambra, you can gaze at the Albaicín.

We leave the summer palace and walk down toward the Palace of the Nasrids (without question the most famous Spanish Islamic edifice in the world). It's a very well planned circuit: your map tells you where you are and where you should go next and there are agents who electronically check your ticket at entry points -- you may enter any of the listed sights only once. The crowd control here is exquisite. This just astonishes me: you never feel that there are many visitors here. Indeed, we pause more than once to sit on a bench and in the space of minutes, we see very few people. I read that in the summer months, some 6000 come up to the Alhambra each day. Now, there may be fewer, but still, most time slots for the Palace of the Nasrids were full. And yet, as you stroll through the Alhambra grounds, you never feel overwhelmed by the presence of others.

We come to the entrance of the great palace and this requires you to stay with your time slot. The line is forming already. Several hundred visitors, waiting for 3:30. We decide to take the tail end, to be the last ones in. The line is long enough that if you are last, you are just barely ahead of the next (4 pm) group. And still, it's a good plan. As we enter the palace, we feel unrushed. At times, we have a corner of it to ourselves.

Here's where I could overwhelm even the most patient Ocean reader with too much of everything. So let me hush down the words and let a few images give you a feeling of seeing it on your own. In the golden light of the late afternoon.

(can't resist)

It is so beautiful, all of it, that I find myself tearing up more than once. Ed's amused with me, but I can tell that it's all rubbing off a little. He's been here before, as a high school student. And he tells me it feels different now. The things that stand out change over time. And they change with the seasons, so that I have to believe that on a hot summer afternoon, our pleasure would be entirely of a different kind.

We have the one photo request, because it seems so important to document our presence (to me at least)...

And then we pass through the baths...

...and we leave the Palace of the Nasrids.

You need a moment to recover. But not just yet, take in one more brilliant reflection (this is of the Partal Palace)...

...give a nod to the pomegranate (Grananda can be translated to mean that)...

...then find a space to sit down. We do. An empty bench, facing the quickly descending sun. It's 5:30, but that means we still have a good half hour at the Alhambra. We go to the southern most tip -- the Watch Tower -- the oldest part of the Alhambra complex.

As the brick walls change from yellow to orange, we look out at the moon climbing higher still, and at the hills beyond, distantly, where the crumbling abbey stands...

...and of course, onto our beloved Arab Quarter...

We watch the sun set over Granada from the top of the Tower, as if we haven't been moved enough yet and so there is this additional emotional layer, because setting suns, in their beauty and grandness are always that for me...

To the back, the mountains of the Sierra Nevada take on the red glow of a dazzling light. Yes, that's the moon -- creeping up on the photo so as not to be forgotten.

And now it's time to go.

We leave with one last look at the mountains, there, peeking through, between the trees...

Time to pass through the gate. We all are made mellow by the visit. A child holds a father's hand, a lover puts his arm around his sweet one...

And of course, I get a bit weepy. Happy stuff. It's the way I am.

And hungry -- I'm that too. We've done a lot of rambling and walking and, on my part, emoting. So the appetite surges. It's after six and I know there is a celebratory gathering of children, Three Kings, all that, in downtown Granada, but our moods are elsewhere and so we climb up toward the Arab Quarter (it's more commercial at the base of the hill)...

...and we find a tiny place where the owner serves us plates of cheese and olives...

...and because I'm hungry still, a bowl of Andalusian gazpacho.

The walk up to our guest house is now in darkness. We pass a small church (there are so many here!) and we peek inside to find nuns cloaked in white, almost ghostly from the back, chanting in prayer...

We retreat quietly and climb some more. Every now and then, there'll be an open doorway, maybe with a table outside...

...but mostly, the city is now in the deep shadow of the night.

We have time to rest before dinner. Our last big meal in Granada is one with a view and it has good food, great food even, but the setting is just a tad too formal and so we limit ourselves to just one dish -- calamari for me -- and it is pleasant enough, but we both admit that we should have just stayed with a local bar, perhaps for a tapas or two. Still, food here is inexpensive (at least as compared with Madison) and we leave happy, especially since the owner, noting my camera, takes me upstairs to the rooftop, from where I see the twinkling lights of our neighborhood...

...and on the hill before us, the magnificent Alhambra.

in the presence of the Alhambra

2012-01-05T13:59:00.000-06:00

Alhambra. We are within a stone’s throw and everything around us reverberates its presence.

Alhambra, peeking through. Beyond the rooftops.

Alhambra souvenirs, Alhambra beer on nearly every menu in town.

People congregate in choice spots, where they can get a good view of it. Ah, yes, here to see the great Alhambra. You too? Yes...

We have a reservation to enter the Alhambra on Thursday, so today, we merely play the waiting game. It isn’t hard in Granada.

We start off with breakfast at the guest house...

– a lovely affair. Ed eats six oranges. He’s quite smitten with the ones that are like clementines only twice the size. Breakfast done with, we set out for a Granada ramble.

This means that we head downhill, toward the downtown and center of the city.

Down, all the way down from our Albaicín hill.

And now it feels like we’re in a city. No more narrow alleys with white houses. Granada bustles.

We turn toward the cathedral and it is supposed to be a magnificent cathedral – commissioned by the ever commissioning Queen Isabella of the fifteenth century and I know you’ll find this to be a bit odd on my part (I’m generally avoid taking a principled position on how things should be done) but I was taken aback by the not insignificant entrance fee. Shouldn’t cathedrals be free? On the other hand, I’m not here to pray. But what if I was? In any case, I hesitate. Ed is indifferent to cathedrals, regardless of their great artistic merit and so in the end, we postpone a visit until the next day.

We do go to the side chapel – the Royal Chapel, and there, too, you have to pay a separate fee and I think that this is understandable as it isn’t really a house of prayer – more like a house of burial. Both Queen Isabella and Ferdinand are encrypted here and, among other things, you get the pleasure of looking at their tombs.

It is an ornate and interesting place, made more so by the descriptive brochure that you can pick up with your ticket (10 cents extra; we splurged). We read that this chapel should be of special interest to (among others) Americans (us!) as it memorializes the king and queen who were so 'adept' at 'spreading Spanish culture to the Americas.' (No photos allowed. Too bad.)

Outside again, we walk through the Plaza de Bibarrambla, where, as in Madrid, you cannot really get a sense of the vast and pretty square, as the Christmas booths still have a presence. (No photos taken. Too commercially cluttered at the moment.)

More shops, including ones that are sort of pseudo Moroccan (in that they are like those in Morocco except not fully so)...

...more gazing this way and that until I think that we have our fill of downtown for now and so we turn around and head back up to the Arab Quarter. Our Arab Quarter.

It’s early afternoon. Like the mother that I am, I know what would be good for us: a hike. A climb. A walk without an obvious end. Motion, in the quiet of vast open spaces.

If you take the road that runs at the summit of the Albaicín and you follow it to the Sacromonte – where many of the homes are built right into the contours of the rocky hills – then you can have yourself a very pleasant hike.

And at all points, you can look over your shoulder and see the Alhambra.

Here, Granada is no longer a city. There are houses along the road, but if you stray from it, you find yourself in the dry and desolate hills that go on forever to the north, to the east and west.

This is the place where Flamenco is studied and practiced. We hear bits of music coming from one café and there are signs advertising night performances.

As we turn away from the main road and follow the more quiet alleys, we find that this is, too, the place for cats.

Skittish cats who will have none of Ed’s friendly advances.

We take the dirt road up a hill just outside of Granada – toward the somber and somewhat crumbling abbey (Abadia de Sacromonte), closed now, even as we see a boy ride his horse through the gates, then practice some sidesteps in the dusty garden of the Abadia.

We’re not done hiking yet. There is a path that goes up the next mountain and we take that, up, up all the way up for magnificent views of the snowcapped Sierra, the gentle mist (Ed tells me it's likely to be, at least in part, smoke from wood burning stoves) forming in the low lying areas...

...and, of course, the Alhambra, now regarded from above.

We sit on a rock, a bench of sorts I guess and I lean on Ed and let myself go limp in the warm sunshine. (And I think, this would make for a nice photo... so I perch the camera on a rock and set the timer...)

Granada is a good five degrees chillier than Seville (the afternoon highs have been around 55 degrees and at night it gets down to the mid thirties), but here, on the summit, I feel as warm as if I were there on a summer day.

The views are stunning and we spend some time there, enjoying the quiet, the solitude.

It’s a steep descent and we take our time with it, but eventually we are back on the road and then back in the Albaicín, on the square next to our hotel, where I’m ready for an early evening lunch of an asparagus and shrimp scrambled egg dish, delivered by the ever friendly café owner and his wife – who proudly converted an old house into what appears to be a successful business. Ah, location!

And now the sun is down. This is when I take out my computer at the guest house and sit by their fireplace and review the day behind us and the day in front of us (while Ed plays with his circuit board in the little room with the big fluffy pillows on the bed).

By 9:30 we’re ready for dinner. On our morning walk, we had passed a restaurant tucked into the thicket of the alleys of the Arab Quarter and subsequently, I read that the Basque food there is quite respectable and so we weave through the dark alleys now to find the place again and we’re greeted by a very friendly waiter who is, I guess, happy to see us as we are the only diners that night. (Sigh... location.)

We hesitate in ordering, but the waiter definitely has his favorites and so we end up with a warmed spinach salad and some cheese leek concoction and rice with clams and artichokes and it’s all very delicious and we linger, but only a short while since we know that once we’re gone, everyone gets to go home.

Home. Right now it’s Granada. A little room in the old Arab Quarter. If we scaled the roof, we’d be in the presence of the Alhambra.

Granada

2012-01-04T13:18:00.000-06:00

There’s a dispute taking place in Spain as we speak: which treasure gets more visitors per year – the Prado in Madrid, or the Alhambra in Granada? I think it’s a silly squabble since the Prado, as we well know, opens its doors to anyone and everyone five evenings out of the week, whereas you can’t even buy your way into the Alhambra if you haven’t prereserved your slot in advance. I knew it was hard to visit in the tourist filled summer months, but the other day, while idling on the computer, I decided to check out the reservation system for the Alhambra and found, to my horror, that on two of the three days we are to be in Granada, all tickets to this castle-palace-fortress are already sold out. In January. So, in my opinion, the Alhambra wins, at least the desirability pagent. And, too, I read some ten years back that the monument is so fragile right now, that future generations may not be able to see it in the way that we can admire it today. We are the tail end, the last bulldozers who know how to take a good thing and wear it down for our great-grandchildren. Sigh...

Granada is smaller than Seville. One third the size, but you couldn’t tell. It feels big. And here’s another statistic – it’s only 150 miles from Seville, but the train ride takes a full three hours. It’s a local train, a lovely little thing, with big windows and pleasant views onto...you guessed it, olive groves.

At the Granada train station, I push for getting tickets for our remaining train rides. We have a wonderfully helpful agent who gives Ed a senior discount and jovially walks us through our various connections. Okay, we’re done. And then I notice that my small satchel – where I carry my computer and a few papers and books is missing. Damn! What idiot these days leaves her bag at the side of the room (never mind that the room is empty) for anyone to grab? I fly out looking in all directions, but of course, anyone taking a bag is not going to linger so that I may catch up with them. Stupid, stupid me.

The commotion causes the police officer to emerge. He looks at me pityingly and thinks ‘dumb tourist’ thoughts I’m sure, especially since he had been in the room, noticed the abandoned bag and removed it promptly.

I am very happy to get my computer back. Ed refrains from commenting on the entire episode and my role in it, which is a good thing.

As we walk from the train station to the Albayzín – the old Arab quarter – I think how different the vibe is here, in Granada. Seville is orange. Or at least it seems that way, possibly because there are orange trees everywhere. Granada is white in the old quarter and not any one color elsewhere. And here’s the big difference. I notice it right away when we walk the grand boulevard cutting through the city:

Granada is at the edge of the Sierra Nevada range. Granada is hilly.

Anyone who has traveled here will tell you that really, there are two hills to take note of: the one of the Albayzín and the other of the great Alhambra.

So naturally we get lost. We move like the dazed travelers that we are, looking at street names, wondering why none of them are what they ought to be.

We are with our backpacks of course and I note another interesting small detail: Granada draws backpackers, ones who seem to be of another era – the sixties maybe? – much more so than Seville did. In a square several blocks from our tiny hotel (we do find it eventually, of course we do, getting lost in this world for long is not so easy anymore), they congregate and bring out guitars and drums and in my mind they are stuck here in Granada, probably to escape the dreary wetness of Amsterdam, or pausing for the one last breath of a familiar continent on the way to Marrakech. It feels almost nostalgic to see them here, with their matted hair and young smiles, wrapped in layers of wool, but with bare feet. Just because.

A word on our small guest house, the Santa Isabel la Real: it’s beautiful. It may well be the gem of our travels through Andalucía. On the outside – plain and white. On the inside – a terrific little open courtyard...

...and rooms filled with antiques and art, collected by the family who owns and operates the place.

The line I’ve used – it’s cheaper than the Econolodge in Escanaba – applies here as well, even though Granada is known to be pricey. We booked the most basic room and it’s 105 E, including full breakfast, WiFi, taxes, and swigs of a delicious homemade orange liquor, made by the matriarch behind the place.

We didn’t do much this first afternoon in Granada. Oh, well, I take that back. We idled on the square around the corner from the hotel.

And then we walked up toward the back, from where we saw the first real glimpse of the reason why we’re here. There, in the distance, the Alhambra.

Oh, and, too, we strolled (nostalgically) around the hippie square and watched the great hippie bust, as a van of police officers pulled up and made a sweep of the place – not really throwing anyone out, but, making sure that any musician ws properly registered to play outdoors (a new law in Granada requires this, to keep the free music down to a dull roar, especially in the summer) and that all cigarettes of dubious legality were snuffed out.

Finally, let me end this post as we ended the day – at the tiny eatery just a few paces from us – El Ají. We come late and leave even later (last ones out at midnight) and I think we’ve succumbed to the mysticism of this strangely romantic and eerily beautiful place where nothing is ordinary, nothing is quite like you had imagined it to be.

Alejandra of Seville and other treasures

2012-01-03T12:27:00.001-06:00

It’s Monday, nearly eleven and we are finally done with supper. That’s a tad late for us, but I’d been engrossed in deleting hundreds of old photos that I had sloppily left on the computer, leading to the unfortunate situation of a maxed out hard drive, so we got a late start.

We'd eaten pizza. A cheat, I know, because so far as I know, pizza is not Andalusian, not even Spanish, but it was a delicious neighborhood pizza, one you had to wait for, as the place was crowded even at that hour, or perhaps especially at that hour.

As always, at the eatery I take a good long look at those around us. I’m especially drawn to the two couples who come in shortly after us. One has a little girl and they put her at the end of the table, give her an iPhone (or some comparable) and then proceed to discuss with each other the state of the world and their lives in it. The girl happily plays with the iPhone and only every few minutes asks some question or other of her mother.

As in France, kids here know what is expected of them when they go out to eat with their families. The meal includes them (even at this late hour), but it isn't about them. Still, I’m impressed enough by this little one that I go up to say a few niceties to the parents. Of course, the mom’s pleased and proud and as she looks into the smiling eyes of her daughter, prodding her to answer for herself the question about her age, the girl tilts her head with a laugh and tells me that she is Alejandra and she is, in fact, three.

She then returns to the iPhone and continues her doodles. I’m amused. Obviously, in postwar Poland, my thumbs would not have known to skirt around a tiny screen, but it’s also true that my own kids never touched a tiny screen or even a big screen with thumbs, or with any other fingers. The whirlygig of time...

But what time does not seem to ever dismantle is the pleasure of eating out and especially outside, even on a January day in Seville, where you need your jacket and a scarf, but having that, you can find a table outdoors and you can stay there the whole afternoon long, talking, eating, eating, talking. As Ed and I walk back from our third and final sight for this day and for Seville in fact, as we’re leaving Tuesday, we pass square after square absolutely packed with people engaged in eating, drinking and talking, talking, so boisterously that the city almost rumbles with their collective voice.

Ed comments – they beat France in this (their devotion to the café-restaurant life) and that’s saying a lot.

If the economy is faltering, it’s surely not making a dent in this one passion that survives all others.

I noted that we are walking from our third sight. There should have been four on this day, but one of them – a local market – was a bust. Lonely Planet needs to do an update there.

The other three? The first was interesting but I cut out early in the tour. Ed sat out altogether. The second was probably in the top handful of sights I have seen in my life. The third was a gentle and tamer version, worth the hike, but my eyes were still glazed over by number two.

So, now let me go back to the beginning of the day, when we sit down to an orange juice and a sweet Bandas de Hoja with coffee (for me; Ed’s still groaning over being full of some past meal or other and so he sticks with juice) at a nearby café. I almost got it right, but not entirely. It took several breakfasts to figure out that if you want to do as they do, the Sevilians, or perhaps all Spaniards, you order a morning set and you’ll get juice, coffee with milk and a toasted roll. Take it with ham, tomato or jam. The price for all that will probably be less than if you order juice alone. It’s just the way it is.

We look for the market, don’t find it (because it’s not there) and backtrack to the Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza. This is where Seville’s great tradition of bullfighting takes place and I say great as in large as opposed to fantastically wonderful. Obviously I’m one of those who is squeamish about the whole concept (I don’t get boxing, hokey or football either – somehow violence as sport doesn’t excite me), but I know no bull has passed through the gates since October and I am not opposed to taking a tour of the beautiful old rink built for the purpose of slowly killing bulls. When Ed makes some comment indicating how terribly offputting the whole thing is, I remind him that back home, he has a cat who likes to torture mice to death in much the same slow way.

But I am not very good at listening to tour guides – especially ones who err on too much or too little detail (this one was the latter) and so after poking around a little, I cut out, feeling entirely satisfied that I have paid enough homage to the place of bull killing (call it what it is; I fail to see it as much of a fight. The deck is stacked against the poor animal no matter how many ambulances stand by at the periphery).

And now we finally approach the Alcazar – the palace built over a period of many centuries, but most notably containing the 14th century additions of Pedro I (who was on good terms with the Muslim emir of Granada and a great fan of the Alhambra palace there). I need add nothing else. Just walk quietly through it with me and make a note to someday take the trip to Seville, because truly, seeing this – and I recommend doing so in the cool relative quiet of a winter day – will be worth the hassle and expense of getting there.

We move seamlessly from room to courtyard to garden -- enchanting even now at this seasonally restful moment.

At one corner, we find a place (one of many) to sit down, in the favorite way of ours where I am in the sun and Ed is in the shade and I will be surprised if there will be a moment on this trip that will surpass the beautiful tranquility of the minutes we sit there, listening to flights of birds and a distant rumble of a city somewhere there, but not really there at all, not for us, not in this second.

Perhaps the best way to digest the hours spent at the Alcazar is over a late lunch. There are dozens of families out and about... (here are three kids in blue coats with the girls in green tights and with rose bows, and three girls in gray coats and pink tights with pink bows, plus some sundry other sibs)

...and even more families at outside tables...

...and there are plenty of tapas places to choose from except you can’t choose by popularity because they’re all crowded, all with tables spilling out onto the tight sidewalks. So we pick one that seems to have an understandable selection of small dishes, only to find out that they’re not doing small tapas but only half plates and full plates – all very confusing, but no matter, I order two halves – shrimp bubbling in garlic olive oil and spinach with chickpeas and though Ed says he is still not hungry, he changes his mind and helps me eat both.

And so we can dive now into the next and final for us Sevillian sight -- the smaller palace, the Casa de Pilatos. And it’s very pretty and very quiet – a bit out of the way (at the edge of the Jewish Ghetto, so it does make for a nice walk through these tight, confusing alleys)...

....it does not really draw lines or crowds and that certainly is pleasant enough. It can’t and shouldn’t be compared to the Alcazar and I’ll resist the temptation to do so, only to say the Casa is like having a perfect espresso after an exquisite meal.

And now it’s nearly evening and we walk through squares packed with cafés and people...

...lots and lots of people and if ever there was a use for the word merrymaking, I’ll throw it out now, because truly, in that great conversation over food and beverage (oftentimes with children playing at the side), there does seem to be a joyousness present that’s hard to imagine under other circumstances.

And the rest – well, you know the rest. Deleting photos and eating pizza in the distant company of the sweet three year old Alejandra.

The next morning, Tuesday morning, this morning, we finally do breakfast right – at this sweet little local place where the waiter has a brother in New York and is pleased that Ed can speak like a native (and understand like a foreigner). I munch on my toasted roll with marmalade and Ed proclaims it is the best orange juice he has tasted ever, or at least on this trip.

We walk to the station with our packs – an hour’s walk really, if you stop to admire Sevillian ceramics...

...and pause to pick up fruit at a local fruit stand where oranges right now are selling for 2 Euro for five kilo.

...and we take the train to Granada.

eight Oceans ago

2012-01-02T04:24:00.003-06:00

What’you doin’? I ask Ed. It’s 1:30 at night and I’m surprised to wake up to light coming from a room lamp. (Typically, if he is awake, he’ll read from his computer in darkness.)

Asking does produce an answer, but not one I can readily grasp.
I’m programming a micro processor and building circuits on a breadboard and using the microprocessor to control the circuits. And you?

Guess I’ll work on a post. My talents, if they are that, are so much more humble. Last I read, there were some 156 million blogs out there. You could build a road to Mars from words strung from my blog alone (I just made that up, but it seems probable). If you add photos, we could probably step our way all the way to Jupiter.

It wasn’t always such a popular “sport.” When Ocean was born – eight years ago today! – blogging was thought to be quaintly original. And weird. These days, on the other hand, it’s almost as if the bulk of a blogging public has tried it and moved on. Writing and especially writing daily takes stamina.

So Ed is traveling with a tiny little board and a whole bunch of wires cushioned in his clean underwear. Me, I need my laptop and my camera (padded in clothing too) and a plug adapter and I'm good to go.

To go... And just exactly where did we go today? Well, it turns out that most every sight is closed for the holiday. The books don’t tell you this, so I was surprised, but not entirely disappointed. We’ll do sights on Monday. On Sunday, we walk.

First the fortification: toasted croissants at the corner restaurant. Spanish people don’t do big breakfasts, so if you ask for something like eggs, you’ll get a shake of the head and possibly an eye roll. These foreigners... do they think it’s good to go from dinner at midnight to a breakfast of protein nine hours later? Coffee and a nibble. A Mediterranean idea of a morning meal.

And now the walk. We poke around the courtyard of the Alcazar (the old fort and palace)...

...but then leave the old center of Seville and pick up a path along the Guadalquivir River. It’s strange to think that Columbus brought his ship this far inland. Seville is Columbus territory. When he died, his bones were jostled around from Spain to Hispaniola to Cuba and then to Spain again. Most hold on to the idea that he is now buried in the Cathedral in Seville, just two short blocks from our hotel (A few holdouts claim that it’s not him at all, but rather his son, Diego, but that’s not the point – the point is that Seville could at one time lay claim to his remains, because it was, in the end, this city from which he sailed the ocean blue. Not my little Ocean, but the big Atlantic Ocean.)

It’s a lovely walk on this cool but sunny day in Seville.

True, there are those who still haven’t capitulated to the new day in the new year. Celebrating, for them, continues even past the noon hour.

But mostly, people are refreshed and quite sober and it just warms the heart to see them enjoying each other’s company on this New Year’s Day.

We break for lunch, or rather my lunch. At home, I hardly eat anything in mid-afternoon and Ed eats mountains then. Here, we’ve oddly flipped.

A salad with cheese. Predictably delicious.

But what I’ll especially remember from this first real meal of the year is the way the sun moved across the space of the ally, so that initially it was on the cool side...

...but then, quite suddenly, I was in the sun and the world around me seemed like such a good and happy place. (I finished my macchiato before the disappointment of its movement out of our range.)

We rest a little and then I urge us out again. That sun stays visible here until about five. Let’s not waste the hours of its Sunday brilliance. The park, let’s head for the park. With the gazebos, pavillions, a Baroque palace, fountains...

No longtime Ocean reader will be surprised by this. I love city parks and especially on a Sunday, when most anyone and their lover, friend or child hustles toward green communal spaces for the sheer pleasure of being outdoors in the company of others.

Seville’s park is glorious and the late afternoon sun – magical.

We walk the length of the park, me noting the children, of course, always dressed as if this was the most important outing of their young lives. And maybe it is. Chasing and feed birds. Does it get better than this?

Paddled carts and all sorts of moving things are there if you want a somewhat faster pace and as Ed looks around, he mumbles – why is it that everyone is having so much fun out here...

The colors are deep and golden now. It’s a lush park, in a city that experiences winter snow only once every half a century.

There are quiet corners too. Contemplative spaces.

But what I see is that mostly, it is a place for play. With good spirit.

Out now on the streets again and here, too, we encounter a chunk of humanity. Strollers without a goal. They lack that hurried gate. They pause and sip coffee and wine, and nibble cakes, and buy sacks of roasted chestnuts. And here, too, are the tourists -- cameras around necks, hands in pockets or holding maps -- we're there too, it is our Sunday as well after all.

A good way to ease into the New Year.

Evening. Yesterday, Ed and I had passed an open door where a person was handing out leaflets on Flamenco music and dancing at the cultural center located there, in a courtyard of an old building in the Jewish Quarter. The young artists are from Seville and they’ve picked up some awards for their performances. We bought tickets for this first evening of the New Year.

We arrive just in time for the show, which means that we take the very last seats of a packed courtyard. No matter. I’d say most of the seating here is suboptimal anyway. Rickety folding chairs that slope down so that you have to work your muscles to stay put. As we are in the third (and last) row, we can stand. I do, for the entire one hour performance.

You could only take photos in the last two minutes of the show but from where I am and in the darkness of the space, I cannot produce anything of worth. And even a good photo would not give a good story here because, in fact, the performance is so riveting, so dramatic and perfect that it leaves me nearly tearful. Ed would say that bad movies make me tearful as well so perhaps this isn’t a sign of much, but let me tell you, I rarely leave a live concert choked up.

We walk back to our neighborhood. Our set of blocks. Funny how quickly you identify something as more home than not home. I had made a reservation for a good meal across the river for this day, but we decided earlier to cancel it. A local place is offering a special: gazpacho, paella and sangria for 13 Euros. It’s a homey place with a crew of fast paced waitresses and waters. A place where families gather and friends linger.

And the food is exactly right: not complicated, but perfect in every way.

To the next year then. To Ocean years, to years of moving across the ocean, back and forth, remembering that I should never get too comfortable in life, or at home at the farmhouse, or at least never so comfortable so as to consider movement to be an imposition. Life moves this way and that. And so do I. And so does Ocean.

when 2011 becomes 2012

2012-01-01T08:26:00.001-06:00

At 11 p.m., just one hour short of the New Year, Ed and I are setting out in search of food. Typically this would be an easy hunt. Is there anyone in Spain who even thinks dinner thoughts before nine or ten? But it’s New Years Eve and so many eating establishments are either closed or they’re posting expensive five course menus. That’s not Ed and me, not today, not these years ever.

So we go from one place to the next and when we do come across causal tapas bars, they're packed, with many waiting at the side for the possibility of getting in before midnight, when, just on this day, the food scene in Seville will shut down (so that everyone can party).

But we get very lucky. Two unhappy lovers are just getting up from a table at one tapas place. The waiter points to the empty chairs. We're in.

Except that no one in the kitchen feels like cooking anymore. We order a pitcher of Sangria and food. Any food. What do you have? Fried croquettes. Fried potatoes. Empanadas.

We’ll take the empanadas.

And we’re happy with that. You set out late, you want to be adventurous, you make do with a dinner of empanadas at 11:40 p.m. on New Year’s Eve in Seville.

But as we munch and people-watch (imagine the people watching on this night, just imagine! Everyone’s out on the streets, inside, outside, it’s a palpably frenzied movement of people, hurrying who knows where, probably nowhere at all), the waiter comes over and shows us a plate with a large freshly baked fish. In garlic, over potatoes. Would you like this? It’s so good!

Where did it come from? Why was it made? Imponderables. We say yes, yes, indeed.

And so we eat the fish and drink the sangria and besides us the TV is showing a Sevillian pair of entertainers enthusiastically talking down the minutes, with the clock, moving closer and closer to midnight.

At a minute before twelve, the staff abandons all tasks. A few dressed up revelers come up to the TV with little tins of seeded grapes and they join the restaurant staff, themselves with plates of grapes, ready for the Spanish countdown. And the clock strikes twelve and they’re all popping grapes, one by one, twelve in all.

And at this particular tapas place, they give us the leftovers.

There is a lot of kissing and hugging and I remind Ed that this is what happens at midnight and he pretends it’s all news to him, but he’s grinning and searching his mind on how to say happy new year in Spanish. (¡Feliz Año Nuevo!).

We walk among revelers once more. The moon is bright and the pops of crackers are loud and I can’t think of a better way to welcome the new year.

In the hotel Ed pours a little more Cava and we bring out the chocolate and the cookies that somehow made their way back with us earlier in the day and when I say Happy New Year once more, he doesn’t protest all that much and indeed, as if on automatic now, whispers Happy New Year right back.

And in the morning, Ed is Ed again, the same old Ed, the Ed who'll show me the Dilbert cartoon in the paper:

Girl - Happy New Year!
Dilbert - Whoa! Settle Down. I don't celebrate the magical thinking that says one random point in the space-time continuum is somehow special.
Girl - It's just a hug. You'll enjoy it.
Dilbert - You're like some sort of oxytocin drug dealer.

Welcome, 2012.

from Seville: New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T17:22:00.003-06:00

Outside, the thank-goodness-it's-Friday-and-not-just-any-Friday joviality continued nearly all night long. We’re on the fourth floor of our Madrid hotel and so the sound does not keep us awake. And, in fact, I probably never jet lagged my way out of Europe time because the sleep cycle clicked in for me instantly here.

Still, Ed and I have a habit of being awake at some part of each night, often, as this time, watching a snippet of one thing or another – on this night of a woman teaching her cat to walk on a leash, gratis the New York Times.

One reason to love being away is that the day’s schedule shifts around so much for us then. Ed tends toward a whimsical pace even back home, but when we’re away, our time becomes a fantasy of hours. Eating, hiking, reading, playing, sleeping – they’re all interchangeable. Nothing has to be.

But this Saturday morning we did have to be somewhere – at the train station, by noon. Our backpacks are light – you learn to go lighter each trip, remembering awkward moments of lifting and heaving on previous ones. The day is gloriously bright. Madrid appears very forgiving now. Gentle and still. Like Manhattan on holiday.

Lacking chaos, it becomes very dignified. Almost staid.

And blissfully quiet.

We head back toward the Prado. I want to walk to the train station through the Botanical Gardens there, but we can’t. There’s only one entrance/exit. So I console myself with camera glimpses from the outside.

We’re at the station now. The trains – oh the trains of Europe!

335 miles in 2.25 hours. One stop along the way.

Lovely and comfortable and smooth. I watch the family across the aisle...

...but mostly, I watch the escape from the city (modern housing blocks in Spanish cities are so often like this: irregular rather than boxy, colorful)...

...into the vast, beautiful open spaces. If you had no knowledge of Spain’s agriculture, you would learn from the train ride that olives are a big deal here.

A very big deal.

But as we get closer to Andalucía, the slate green of olive trees gives way to the deep green of oranges leaves. We’re south alright. In less than two and a half hours, we’ve changed climates.

New Year’s Eve in Seville. It just worked out this way. We’ll be hopping around Andalucía – no more than three days in any one place. Seville is merely a good starting point. And, for us, it’s good to get the biggest cities out of the way first. We lose patience with them quickly. The longing for a slower paces overcomes us. And so we begin here, Seville, the capital of Andalucía.

Seville. Beautiful, colorful Seville.

Our tiny hotel is a gem (the Alminar) and it’s just two minutes from the Cathedral—the focal point of the old center. But no one can direct us to it. There, go there. We go there. Nothing. Maybe down that street. Not there either. We wander around like this for a while, never minding one bit, because the street scenes are so beguiling, so captivating, as here, too, life spills out onto the pavement. Usually around bars, cafes and restaurants.

And so we go, up one narrow alley, down the next.

Ah, the Alminar Hotel. Finally identified... here it is:

We leave our packs at the hotel and set out again. Around the cathedral, inside the cathedral, moving from one square to the next, reading a little on this place, forgetting to do so on another...

...and we continue in this way until I say stop! Lunch break. For me. Ed has eaten an excessive breakfast (don’t let him loose at buffets: he eats enough for the day and refuses meals thereafter). But I’m used to this odd pattern of meals and nonmeals. I have a wonderful salad and a glass of wine...

...and we both indulge ourselves in a protracted period of people watching. You could never tire of it. We never tire of it, Ed and I.

And then we walk again (and we're not the only ones)...

...through the old Jewish quarter, getting lost there – yes, of course, that’s what you’re supposed to do...

...emerging once again by the Cathedral.

It’s nearly 11 p.m. as I post this now and I’m breaking from my posting habits just to put this up before midnight. We haven’t eaten supper yet and I’m not quite sure where we'll be for that, or if we’ll be outdoors at midnight. The air turns a chilly 40 then. But this is the time to open the welcoming Cava from Madrid and drink a toast. Ed looks at me half indulgently, half scornfully, but always, always kindly. Here it is – my toast to Ocean readers – Happy New Year to all. May you have a good one.

from Madrid: getting started

2011-12-31T03:18:00.004-06:00

Have you noticed that trips, even well planned, too well planned trips often start off with a bit of a rock and tumble? It’s as if you needed a test: prove that you’re worthy. Prove that you can smile at the little annoyances!

We are in Madrid. I’m not a huge fan of the city, but it’s not really the fault of Madrid. I have a history of false starts here. Nearly all past visits have had a tinge of the unfortunate. Indeed, the very first time I took my daughters to Europe, we landed first in Madrid. My youngest, then five, ate a Spanish burger and got violently ill for the next 48 hours. Welcome to Europe. Thanks, Nebraska Cafeteria.

Ed says – you can’t be happy. You don’t like Madrid. I respond – I am super happy to be here. Happiness is complicated.

The flight into the city is beautiful. You don’t quite think of mountains when you think of Madrid and yet, they are not that far from the plain in Spain where, in fact, there is at present no rain.

The bus into the city is cheap (but crowded!), the walk from the stop is quite majestic and not too long...

...the hotel, the Regina, seems fine, too.

I booked a Christmas special rate. You receive welcoming treats as part of the package. A bottle of Cava, fruits, sweets. [Actually, a superb deal. In addition to Cava and goodies, you get a full breakfast buffet, free Internet, etc etc. All for 105 E. Pretty much what you expect to pay for Econolodge in Escanaba, except it’s Madrid and it’s not Econolodge.]

There aren’t treats in the room when we arrive and we feel obliged to wait for them. You don’t want to disappoint the gift giver and not be there when it’s delivered.

Stupid idea. The gift giver forgot and we waste an hour of sunshine waiting for a Cava that neither of us at the moment is even inclined to drink.

Next testy element: in my zealous over-prepared approach to travel, I become convinced that we should have in hand tickets for tomorrow’s train to Seville. The Internet ought to help with this, but I got burnt purchasing rail tickets for the Polish trains online, only to find them one third less at the ticket agent’s at the station. But in our one afternoon and evening in Madirid, do we really want to loop away from the sights, down toward the station? No. I say we go to the nearby department store, El Corte Ingles, where a friendly agent can and will sell us rail seats.

Off we go into a chilly forty degree sunshine, toward Plaza Mayor.

Oh my, where did all the people come from? The entire country of Spain has emptied her population onto the historic center of Madrid. Of course. It’s a holiday week-end and people are out and about in the way that they always will be, if given lovely and welcoming communal spaces where they can congregate.

There must have been a thousand street vendors and performers, pandering mostly to kids, but not only.

The pedestrian-only squares are cluttered with booths – left over holiday markets, but selling really just about anything. Very popular are these wigs. People appear to be wearing them to make a New Year’s statement.

We make (push?) our way through crowds of sales shoppers at the El Corte Ingles...

...then wait for a good while at the travel desk, only to be told at the last minute that there will be a 10% fee to purchase tickets there. Us? Pay and an extra 10 Euro? Forget it. Off we go to the train station, pausing briefly at the Mayor, just for a glance, up at the burnt orange, balconied buildings...

...and all around, where street theater and street sales dominate the vast rectangular space.

In the end, it’s good to get away from the central city crowds. We follow a commercial road toward the station and it isn’t an especially beautiful street, but if you look this way and that, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with vignettes of a quieter Madrid.

...all against a late afternoon brilliant blue sky.

I’ve been going on the transatlantic flight breakfast and I say to Ed that it’s time for me to pause at a counter for a shot and a bite.

Perfect. A macchiato and a cookie.

By the time we buy our tickets, it is nearly 6. The sun has disappeared, faded away. It’s still around forty, but I’m glad I have my jacket. A sunless forty can feel nippy. We walk up the wide, tree lined Paseo del Prado...

...not really intending to stop at the museum on this brief run through Madrid, but we see a line, a very long line and any Pole my age will get in line if she sees one, asking only after what it’s for. Except this one’s obvious. The Prado has free entry in the weekday evening hours (6 -8). How utterly lovely! Our fortunes have spun around and the rest of the evening is one foggy blissful dream.

It’s about a half hour wait as the line moves slowly, what with security check and crowd control measures, but oh, is it worth it! I’d just been reading the latest New Yorker on the plane – with a review of "Velazquez and the Surrender of Breda," and now here I am standing before that very painting and Las Maninas too (this was taken before I was told that photography was not permitted. Who knew. No signs.)...

Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Rubens, room after room of great masters.

And now we are really spent. Ed’s threatening to fall asleep on the spot and I have to admit, I’ve pushed us around just a tad too much on too little rest and protein. We make our way toward the center again and at the first crowded tapas bar/restaurant, we pause. Delicious mussels and a heavenly salad, dripping with this year's fruity olive oil...

...and now we’re feeling jovial indeed, but you can’t just stop at one tapas place. We pass another, raucous, crowded corner bar and eatery...

...with a big paella pot on the counter.
What kind? Ed asks
Chicken and seafood.

We eat this as well and now we are satiated, walking, tottering from tiredness and good eating, making our way back to the hotel, past holiday lights and holiday crowds, on a good roll now, happy indeed.

in transit

2011-12-30T04:52:00.000-06:00

Someone asked me recently if I travel alone frequently. The answer -- oh yes, very much so. True, these days I sometimes (often?) have a travel companion at my side, but let me qualify that: said person – Ed – is, in travel, a presence, but a quiet presence. Nose in book or paper or computer, mind set on preoccupation du jour, we are often compatible in silence, tracking each other, sometimes engaging, but oftentimes only at the margins.

We have been lucky on this trip. Air France is packed (as always), so much so that we both got the coveted business upgrade. I had a chance to stretch in a reclining position and it was sublime. I’m good now for the two dozen sardine trips I’m likely to make in years ahead – I had my fill of pleasure on this one flight.

In Paris now, but only at the airport.

...writing because we’re both on our computers and so it seems right. In a few minutes we’ll be in flight again, reading.

sky

2011-12-29T13:10:00.004-06:00

There isn’t a day here, at the farmette, when I am not paying attention to the weather. And the sky. It becomes a habit, much like evening blogging has become a habit and starting the day with a cup of espresso and ending it with a glass of wine are, too, very comfortable habits.

Of course, on days that I travel, weather is a necessary preoccupation. It creates expectations – of possible delays if it’s stormy, of smooth transitions if it’s not. So I’ve been tracking it. Good for Madison at the time of departure (this afternoon). Okay in Detroit – the point of connection. Drizzly but decent in Paris – another connection. And glorious in Madrid where we finally disembark and leave the world of airports and airplanes. And glorious, too, at points thereafter.

We’re heading for Andalucía – an autonomous region of southern Spain. The skies seem blue there right now and I want that – to take walks under deeply blue skies, but I’ll keep in my pocket that image of my Midwest corner, where one minute, as I step outside of the farmhouse, I see this...

...and a few minutes later, as I pull the garbage can to the road, in the same spot, I see this:

It makes you feel dizzy and happy just to see that sky.

Of course, leaving for a place that has a habit of enduring blue skies in disproportionately large doses adds to a giddiness today. Still, I raise my cup of frothy espresso to that Midwestern sky. And I look forward to our return to it some weeks from now.

a race you know you’re going to lose

2011-12-28T20:56:00.000-06:00

Unwarranted optimism. It really was not realistic to expect to finish grading 91 exams and 40 papers in five days, but I tried.

So, we’re leaving tomorrow and I’ll have to take work with me. Bummer.

Well no, really, not bummer at all. I’m delighted.

We’re traveling light, Ed and I. Computers, papers, yes, that. And little else. Backpacks, because there’ll be a lot of walking from one place to the next, from train station to b&b, from one end of town to another.

Where to? Oh, up up and away. Tomorrow we’re catching one flight, then the next and then still another. By Friday we’ll be there.

Today? The usual last minute nonsense. But the sky around us – ah, that was quite pretty.

In the evening, we emptied out the refrigerator and put it into a salad. With cheese puffs on the side. Which Isis decided were worth a crunch. Or two.

But no more. The cat likes novelty. Two nibbles and he’s done. It’s not new anymore.

Isis, you’re so predictably difficult.

He’s going to miss us... Ed says.

He’ll have the cat sitter!

Yes, but...

A parent’s remorse at leaving the kids. It never goes away.

Back to work.

I’ll try to write en route tomorrow.

scrambling

2011-12-27T22:40:00.000-06:00

...to attend to things. Meetings, lunches – all good, though all taking me away from where I need to be: grading exams.

Still, in all honesty, I welcome the interruptions. The run up State Street...

...through the Capitol, seeing for the first (and last) time the state Christmas tree...

...straight to Graze, where I can get the lunch of my dreams (salad, this one with warm beets and goat cheese)...

...then back to campus, more meetings, good meetings.

And finally, home again. I’m ready for a late afternoon coffee, but Paul’s café is keeping irregular hours these weeks and we arrive to locked doors.

No matter. We both now jump into the errand mode – cat litter for the cat sitters (we’re leaving the day after the next), a beard trim for Ed, the thises and thats which make lists long.

Then home once more.

...to reheated chili again. To exams and grading and somewhere in the background the noise of PBS, droning rhythmically, hour after hour while I read exams, until I can read no more.

return to normal?

2011-12-26T15:44:00.001-06:00

I hope not. Or, at least I hope to define "normal" as something other than what I had on this day. Up early, before sunrise, sit down with exams, grade without interruption.

I understand that America is shopping and exchanging gifts, but I haven’t the inclination or need to shop and any gifts that come this way are daughter or daughter-related people gifts. They know not to buy extensively, to limit gifting to things that are delightfully essential or essentially delightful.

So no, it’s not the mall gazing and grazing that I missed today. I missed, instead, being outdoors on what was a beautiful and mild December day. It’s fading rapidly now and I am taking a break, but it’s a sitting down break. Not too far from my stack of papers, because if I get up and move away from them, I may never come back.

As always, I prefer to get it done early, so that I can take a break up and away, with Ed, before the semester starts. That’s the goal. Get it done. This week. Early this week. I want to. I will.

In the meantime, my high points today have been, thus far, this post and a bowl of morning oatmeal. With a foamy espresso. At the kitchen table, which is only a few feet from my work.

Dinner tonight? Oh, why not merely run a photo of last night's supper? It's likely to be the same for us, only reheated. Chili. If I'm lucky -- with a glass of wine.

thin on plot

2011-12-25T23:14:00.002-06:00

It’s morning and I am downstairs arranging in my head the order of operations. Get started on the almond polenta orange cake, then proceed to the spinach and mushroom frittata. I hear Ed come down. He picks up a book my girl and I left last night on the coffee table – Lucy and Tom’s Christmas. A child’s book. British author. It it traces the life of these two kids in England on Christmas Day.

He reads it through and says – pretty thin on plot.

I love that he was expecting better. (Even as I think there is not a book out there that evokes the holidays as well as this one does.)

The past twenty four hours are already a blur, a memory. Late last night, our usual beef fondue around my daughter’s table...

...I throw together Grand Marnier soufflés for dessert because they’re fast and light. And no one ever complains if you put before them a small soufflé.

This morning, my kids are at the farmhouse for breakfast.

And then they’re off to Chicago and I am left with Ed, the person who can’t quite figure out why we all fuss about Christmas traditions.

We take a walk, crisscrossing fields that look washed out in the bright December light.

Sometimes we cut into forests until the brush is becomes too thick and there is no good way to proceed. We spook wild turkeys – a whole bunch of them. Have you ever had a wild turkey take flight just in front of you? They’re loud.

Yes, we’re not far from the city. The break from town to field is quite abrupt here. From a hilltop, you see Madison. But from most every other vantage point, you see farmland.

A herd of deer is spooked as well by our presence. But they’re fast. By the time I reach for my camera, the last one saunters into the bush and disappears.

We take the road home. I tell Ed about my phone call to my mother in California, about fragments of last night that I’d forgotten before. The sun is low by the time we turn into our long driveway, hardened by many hours of frost.

We toss around the idea of getting take-out Chinese for supper. But in the end I cook. Chili. In a rare move, I open a good bottle of wine. We watch a movie about a school with a challenging immigrant population in France.

And so the holiday ends. I hope it ends well for you. I hope it was a good series of days. I hope you were with people you care about and who care about you as well. I hope you had a chance to feel, even if for a brief moment, merry.

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T16:55:00.000-06:00

At this time of the year I only have to raise my head a little and look over to the east to see if the sun is rising yet. It’s moved to that corner of the house where the upstairs window is. Oh, it’s going to be a nice sunrise!

Happy Christmas Eve Day!

In an almost Gift of the Magi moment, there is a knock on the door. Oh dear, I’m about to leave the farmhouse. I’m in a hurry. I have to go to Fed Ex headquarters to claim a gift that was delivered in my absence. It’s not for me. It’s one daughter’s to the other. They need it for Eve. I open the door almost reluctantly. A person with a package is smiling at me. Hi, I have something for you. It's Fed Ex.

But, you don’t deliver on Saturdays!

We’re making an exception today. We figure these may be important presents people may want for Christmas.

One more minute and I would have been gone, chasing something (and therefore missing it) that in all earnestness was being delivered.

You get older, your circumstances change, traditions have to be adjusted. But here’s one that remains in place for us this year. The drive for breakfast at Hubbard Diner. Where they have great cakes and pies.

We’re not here for the pies though. Daughters and sundry others arrive. Not Ed. Ed’s better off at home on days like this. One has to adjust to what people can and cannot do.

Ah, here comes my younger girl.

The older one’s here too, with her guy.

We eat, we grocery shop for the last minute Eve details.

It’s funny how quickly evening comes on this day. One minute you’re shopping, planning, wrapping and then – no more. Now it’s time to unwrap and eat. The top, wound up, is let loose, spinning toward the splendid hours of family, of friends and lovers, of feasting and favors.

By the time I write tomorrow, your Christmas Day (if you celebrate Christmas) will be over and done with. So let me say it now: thank you all for being such kind, good Ocean friends and have a beautiful Christmas. With love.

and so

2011-12-23T21:11:00.000-06:00

Since when have our cafés become temples of silence, rather than places to talk and banter?

We’re at Paul’s café, our almost daily hangout toward the end of the day. There’s much to toss around and bicker about. For example, Ed is convinced that the best way to prepare fresh winter spinach is to microwave it. I beg to differ. I want to make sure Paul isn’t for a minute convinced that Ed knows the best way to prepare spinach. I get a frown from a patron who is trying to concentrate on her writing. I want to tell her that there is a beautiful library right across the street where silence is golden. But I say nothing. She has won. They all have won. Up and down State Street, Monroe Street, any street in any town, you have to stay quiet. Life demands it.

Me, I have work too now, finally. The exams are starting to trickle in. I go to campus to pick them up this afternoon (students were still writing this morning) so that I can start the mammoth task of grading, even as most people are thinking jingle thoughts and flooding the malls in search of... something.

They say it will snow tonight. It would be nice to see snow before Ed and I leave next week. Remind me in March that just a few months earlier, I was hoping for snow.

the short of it

2011-12-22T19:57:00.000-06:00

The longest day of the year leaves me a tiny bit wistful. Long and beautiful, then, imperceptibly at first, it grows less long. Bummer.

The shortest day of the year is, by contrast, quite wonderful. A turn around! A new trend!

It’s easy to get up at dawn when dawn is at 7:25 a.m. Besides, Isis had been ringing the doorbell of the farmhouse since 6:25, so it is only a question of forcing myself out of bed rather than waking. (Isis has a motion sensor telling us he’s there and waiting to be let in.)

I go outside with my camera. Shortest day of the year. Such a stellar beginning! A delicate snow covers every surface just ever so lightly. It will melt soon, I know that, but for now it’s enchanting!

There was a book I used to read to my kids called Happy Winter – it was a poem of appreciation for the quirky joys a child experiences this season. As if putting on mittens and snowshoes can be pleasurable rather than tediously bothersome. Strolling across the brittle and white dusted land of the farmette, I couldn’t help but think how cool it is to throw on flannels and a jacket and take an early morning spin.

Happy winter indeed.

And with it comes that short day. Though not a dark day: in an uncharacteristic move, Ed suggests a drive through a neighborhood where homes are likely to have lights out for the holidays. We drive slowly, appreciating the technical merits of some displays...

...and the gentle simplicity of others.

Never forget: I am in Wisconsin.

Shortest day... lovely day. Longer day tomorrow.

simply put

2011-12-21T23:36:00.001-06:00

I heard myself say today – I have no work that needs to be done. With exams still under way, I have the occasional email and of course, I’m free to worry already about the next semester, but in all honesty, I have this week a lull that is rather remarkable.

And so I awoke very early and tossed for a while, looking for things to worry about and failing in this, I got up to cook.

A leek and mushroom frittata, a buckwheat almond cake with apple compote.

My younger daughter is in town, passing through to see her boyfriend’s family up north and I had myself that wonderful table of young people and old Ed and predictably, it was great fun.

After, once the young people left, Ed and I took a walk. Even writing this seems strange. Ed and I never “take a walk” unless we’re at some distant place that warrants that kind of movement. But it is too cold to bike and too snowless to ski and I thought we’d benefit from the movement.

It had been, on and off, a cloudy day. But in the last hours before sunset, the skies opened up in the way that I always think is so magnificent, here, in the Midwest.

We walked the hour or so to Lake Waubesa, where geese honked and hustled away at the sight of us.

Ed wanted to stay and watch some more, but staying in place without movement can get rather chilly and so we headed home.

...to the setting sun.

These are the beautifully simple days. Tomorrow though, I need to break the habit of betting up a good two hours before the sun is even near rising.

home

2011-12-20T20:32:00.002-06:00

Flying into the Midwest. Pretty from above the cloud cover.

Below? Darn. It should have snowed. Christmas doesn’t always deliver the white stuff in Madison but last year it certainly did and it was pretty. At least what I saw of it. Living downtown (as I did then) – you see snow piled at the edge of parking lots and you lose track of what’s fresh and what’s been there for weeks.

No white stuff this December.

Ed waits at the airport, dutifully there in his beat up car. I appreciate the small gestures. Like his wet head, signaling that he thought to take a shower before picking me up.

We have a remotely controlled thermostat in the farmhouse and I had churned it up already in Paris thinking that heat needs to sink in or else the place will feel chilly after ten days of just high enough to keep the plants alive. As we enter, it’s pleasantly warm. I glance at the mouse trap. Empty. I comment on that, but Ed admits that he put it up just a day or so ago. Why? I didn’t want to keep checking for mice while you were gone.

For the first time ever, I am too tired to unpack. I take out the computer, check email, finish posting. It’s midnight by the time I haul myself up the steps of the farmhouse.

And of course, four hours later I wake up thinking it's midday. So much for rest. Return jet lag makes a morning person out of anyone.

I go outside, take stock. There is just the slightest dusting of snow. True, one must remember that winter doesn't officially present itself until Thursday.

For the next hour I confront the damage to the contents of my suitcase. A jar of pine bud syrup from Poland popped open in flight. Imagine sap, seeping into everything...

And still, I would rate the entire trip to Poland and then Paris as remarkably without hassle or shortcoming. And that’s a good thing.

Paris one more time

2011-12-20T00:05:00.005-06:00

Well now. Trip done. Flying home. Strike is on at Charles De Gaulle airport (security workers this time), winds are strong across the Atlantic (the wrong way), but I’m heading home. Detroit, then the farmhouse.

But, but, there was this last day in Paris. Sunday. A good, sunny (initially at least) day. One for which I have no agenda. Nothing.

Maybe I should go out of town? No, not the season for it. Stay in the city and walk.

Walk, walk, gently, briskly, walk some more. Where to? I don’t know. Don’t want to go anywhere, don’t want to take the metro, walk just wherever.

So.... to the gardens first? Luxembourg Gardens. Odd how there are long shadows at this time of the year. It’s noon and still there are shadows.

Kids sail boats. Mostly boys. Something about watching the ship set sale that makes boys wistful. Or maybe it’s that they like the act of pushing a boat out and watching it drift.

In the same way that they like kicking a ball around for no good reason.

I walk this way and that. Sunday in this park is enchanting. Special. Familial. All that. But here’s a curious thing about Paris: the central arrondissements (and this would include the Luxembourg Gardens) remain awfully white. It’s not an accident that you haven’t seen a child of a different skin color in my photos. Families of color, immigrant families are enjoying the parks elsewhere, closer to their homes. Which are still on the periphery. Were I to jump onto the metro, which crisscrosses the city every which way, I’d remember that Paris, unlike Warsaw or Krakow, is not homogeneous. But on these short trips to Paris, I just walk. I rarely ride the metro. And so I am reminded that liberte egalite fraternite... is still aspirational.

Walk, walk. It's so completely satisfying. I'm not alone out there either. Here's a whole family. Including a pooch in a pouch.

Walking, past stuff. Parisian stuff.

Quite obviously Parisian stuff (this in front of the Cafe Deux Magots):

Down to the river now. Where the last of the bouquinistes still hopes for someone who'll be there to buy rather than just photograph.

Okay, I'm crossing the river. I decided. Time for the other gardens – the Tuileries. So much (in my mind) the lesser gardens. Oh, they join famous spaces – the Louvre with the Concorde and eventually the Arc de Triomphe, but they’re walk-through gardens. Not a destination. Not in a neighborhood.

Past a dizzying array of things that go round.

...and round.

I wanted to stay on the right bank for a little bit, but I change my mind. When you have no destination, you can change your mind. Good bye, L'Etoile. Too much traffic to plow through.

I don’t care about where I am anymore. Left bank, right bank, on a bridge, off a bride.

One minute I’m on a quiet, nameless street and the next I’m on the Boulevard St Germain and it’s empty in some stretches and crowded in others and it’s all fine, no complaints, I’m just walking.

But maybe I should stop for lunch? Kind of a late lunch, but still, food would be good. I return to Rue du Bac. Weird how I nearly always manage to eat lunch here, just here. This time I go to Le Flores – on the other side of the same block. It’s where I took a mirror shot of Ed and me maybe a year ago. What’s interesting to me is that it remains the best photo of the two of us out there.

I take a photo of myself. For the hell of it.

And I eat a salad with chevre chaud (warm goat cheese, this time on a bed of green beans, endive, lettuce, tomato...) because to me, it’s still one of the more perfect lunches.

I have no interest in shopping this Sunday, but a small little store with little do dads and nick knacks draws me. Inside, I hear American holiday music. I’m not surprised. Most every hip store here has American holiday music. Jazz, pop – we’re good at singing our way to shopping pleasure. French, Polish holiday music is more austere. More about the religious aspects to this holiday. Americans, on the other hand, do Santa Baby well and Santa Baby puts people in the shopping mode much better than Silent Night or Little Town of Bethlehem.

Okay, I buy a small gift or two. And I continue. Up the block, down another. And now the sun is setting. Where to? Where to?

The Parc du Luxembourg. The last minutes before it closes.

In the end, maybe it’s this vast park that keeps me so hell bent on staying in this neighborhood. Sure, Lazineki in Warsaw is a finer park, but this one is just a touch gentler, simpler, more congested, but in a good way. And still, you can always find a quiet spot.

And that’s it for the day, no? I mean, I have to pack up stuff that will be sent through and tossed around by baggage handlers. Ceramics from Poland, an olive oil from Italy, some delicate confection from France. So I pack and that doesn’t take too long but still, we’re set for an early dinner, my friends and I are, so by the time I finish packing and padding things, it’s time to head out. In the rain. When did the clouds come in?

Where do you go for your last meal in Paris? Of a trip?

If you can’t think, don’t want to think, if you just want reliable food and great waiters to watch all evening long – then go to Le Procope. So often I have done just that and indeed, Diane and I have dined here many moons ago, before she even met Ernest. The place has history value (to the French as well -- it brags that it's one of the oldest dining establishments in the city).

A heavy set gentleman sits down at the table next to us. He smiles, I smile back. He’s in a chatty mood. From outside Paris. Never been to Procope, but wants to try it for its historic value. His partner comes in, consults, goes out again. He has parking issues. It’s all a trivial chit chat, but somehow it seems meaningful. As if we all may have been friends – something about the chemistry felt good, even as we know that in two minutes exactly we’ll get up and go and no one will remember this moment ever again.

How was the food? As I said, reliably good – terrine of duck, some fish I never heard of, a huge crème brulee. And the waiters are sublime and so the evening ends and the trip ends too, except I can’t quite let it go yet. I turn away from the hotel and head toward the 5th, the university arrondissement. It’s raining and I suppose I get wet even as I don’t much remember or care. I don’t have my umbrella, but it’s all good, all fine, Paris is Paris, wet or dry.

And then I’m done.

I’m alone the next morning. My friends took off for the airport early and above ground. I want to do things in my usual way – take the RER train, crowded at rush hour, walking the steep steps down, carrying too many bags, yes, that train. But first, a croissant, a look up at the Odeon Place that I pass every single time coming and going, a nod to the Gardens, and that’s it.

So long Paris. When work gets tough, I think of you.

Paris on hold

2011-12-19T00:05:00.001-06:00

As always, on crossing the ocean days, I can only do the shortest of posts. One to mark the passage of time, with a single photo from the day, chosen almost randomly, put up as a bookmark: here is a slice of a day. The rest of the pie will follow much later, when I finally return home.

Here it is – the holding photo. From a Sunday in the park (Jardin Luxembourg).

Paris right

2011-12-18T04:37:00.004-06:00

If I never spend another “last Saturday before Christmas” in Paris stores, I’ll be okay. More than that – I’ll be delighted.

Who knew that to Parisians, this day is like Black Friday, December 23rd, last day before all stores close down everywhere and forever – all rolled into one. Whereas yesterday I may have written – gosh, Parisians aren’t that into shopping, today I’d have to cross that one out. They’re just into last minute shopping.

And maybe it’s the weather. It was to rain on and off, but really, for the vast bulk of daylight hours, it was lovely. My friends were having a light day and so I set out on my own, on a path that is so pathetically familiar and repetitive that even minor adjustments and detours can’t take away the feeling that when in Paris, I really am a very boring person.

So follow along, if you wish. I’m concentrating on the right bank today. Only half of it – forget l’Etoile, Champs Elysees, Louvre -- all those right bank standards. Move over to Bastille and the Marais. But not just yet.

First, the morning stroll past high school students who, unfortunately, being French, have school on Saturdays.

Sorry, guys. I feel for you. Just remember, you have free Wednesdays. And you can look forward to long vacations eventually when you work. (At breakfast, the waitress grumbled that the hotel only gives her 30 vacation days per year.) So, off you go. The bell is ringing. Throw down your cigarettes and turn off your incessant friendly chatter. You’re already too good at it.

I cross the river to get closer to Notre Dame. If it’s Christmas (season) and if I’m even mildly going along with the traditions of this holiday, then surely I ought to pay my dues here. It's lovely in the morning light.

Alright. Cross over to Ile St Louis, where it’s quiet on a Saturday morning. You get the feeling that people are only now emerging. Doing their morning routines...

Picking a nice scarf for that walk with the pooch. You never know who might see you.

Cross the river on the other side of the island and I am in the Bastille – Marais neighborhood.

Christmas trees for sale everywhere. What I like about the French trees is that they’re sold in stands. Natural ones, made of timber logs. You don’t have to put the darn thing up. It’s already up. But it can be heavy, so you may want to use your shopping cart to roll it home.

Place des Vosges. My kids used to ask – mom, why do we always go to Place des Vosges when we’re in this city? Easy answer: because I like it.

These days, the walk from it, back toward the center of town is quite different. The streets have gone the way of gentrification and it’s one of the nicer shopping areas in Paris. Except, of course, on this Saturday. When it’s crowded. Still, there's plenty to admire. Some window displays, yes that. Here's a brasserie that's done up for the holidays (though the woman with the white poodle seems indifferent to it all.)

And Zadig and Voltaire -- a quite nice clothing chain -- is pushing penguins, which, I suppose, can stay in place well beyond the holidays. Efficient and cool.

I go in one shop -- Maje -- and note that they're focusing on bright orange in their clothing selections. Here's a salesclerk, a mannequin, oh, and me there in the mirror.

I take a pause from the craziness of stores. Inside the courtyard of one of the museums (of old books) there's an area where you can take a restful moment.

Back to the tumult. And still, it's really all so lovely and the people seem delightfully energized. (Or maybe they're all on a sugar high. Incapable of resisting the seasonal delicacies. These modern yule logs are drop dead gorgeous.)

Eventually I reach the Centre Georges Pompidou. Here’s your basic photo of the open space before it.

I'm just passing through. On my way to Les Halles -- or rather the blocks to the north where you'll find the best stores with cooking supplies. (Perhaps you know that this whole space is under construction now. You can expect a beautifully designed new Les Halles here in a few years. Here's a dad explaining it all to his kid.)

Insanely crowded today. I don't bother with my camera. Just one photo. Of soup ladles. They're pretty soup ladles. Shiny and bright.

Okay. Out and weaving my way through the neighborhood to get back to the river. It feels almost warm now, in the high afternoon. Almost.

As I pause, deciding on which bridge to take, I notice the clouds. The stuff of yesterday. Yep, there'll be rain.

I'm in my neighborhood now. People are partial to their neighborhoods in this city. I surely am. In fact, keep your fancy pastry stores and perfect yule logs. I love this place just two blocks away from my hotel. And if I were to eat anything from it, it would be this cake. Fraise de bois (wild strawberries, for lack of a better translation) and me go back a long way. To the days in the Polish village where my grandma picked and served them with honey for dessert.

It's late afternoon. The rain does indeed come down. I'm tired, cold and hungry (not in that order). I pause at a tapas bar. Why? Because it's there. I order a snack of grilled prawns with a glass of wine (even though the place is called "Jambon Jambon," which translates into "ham").

The streets are wet now. A question that I mull over in my mind: how is it that the French manage to stay upright and avoid crashing into each other? Even when streets and sidewalks are wet, they scoot around on their bikes and motorbikes with reckless abandon. Rosie would be delighted -- she'd be among her own! And I haven't seen a crash yet. I think it's because they start practicing early. Kids routinely go shopping with maman taking their scooters along. It's amazing how good they are at zipping along on crowded sidewalks!

I have a quick errand at the department store. There. Done now. Out again, among the heavy traffic of pre-holiday shoppers.

And finally, I'm back in my own neighborhood. My friends and I are heading out to supper. I'm returning to a place that actually is an Ed discovery. Weird, I know. It's behind the oyster stand on Rue de Buci.

The Bar-Brasserie is called L'Atlas. Good, solidly French, very unpretentious. The star on the menu is, of course, the fresh Brittany oyster.

But there's more going for L'Atlas. It's a lively place with a stellar waitstaff and a wonderful casual air to it.

And the rest of the food is nothing to sneeze at either. A good steak frites, a wonderful creme caramel...

...all good. And still, what I have to admire, perhaps over and beyond the food, is the camaraderie -- the stuff that brings people together over the dinner table. Here, this small group has had an evening of pleasure being in each others company. You can see it in their faces, in the relaxed slouch, in the appreciative laugh.

Perhaps it's infectious because our own table is much the same. Shared humor, stories told and retold in the comfortable manner that you can have after sitting down to many meals together. It's been a wonderful run of shared meals. One more on Sunday. Just one more and then we return to our separate homes across the ocean.