SEVILLE: DOIN’ THE STOMP

The day did not start well.  Had trouble sleeping last night, so I took an Ambien about 1:30.  It worked too well.  Neither of us awoke until 9:30 this morning.  That wouldn’t be so bad at home, but here we missed breakfast and had a 9:45 bus departure time.  Who’s that speedy comic character?  The Flash?  Well, he had nothing on us.  From zero to bus in 14:59!  I felt lousy all morning from the residual effects of the pill.  Our first stop of the day was the Seville cathedral, the biggest in Spain and the 3rd largest in the world after St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. 

On our way there, we walked past this wacky monument to the discovery of America.  It’s a ship, if you can’t make it out.  It reminds me of the flying boat in the Terry Gilliam movie, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The old mosque (1171) and the subsequent old cathedral were torn down in 1491, save for the minaret, and Sevillans built their new cathedral in just over a century – light speed when compared with others.  The minaret became the bell tower for the church.

Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones wanting to get in.  Actually, this is the only time on the entire tour that I can remember us having to get into a long line.  We usually had a group pass that let us go ahead.  Surprisingly, this line didn’t take that long to enter – about 15-20 minutes.

Once inside, it was very Baroque.  Despite its immense size, it had a shockingly low seating capacity of only 250 until it was decided to reorient the worship area by moving the alter to one of the naves, thus seating everyone across.  Presto:  now seating for 2,500. 

There were some soaring aspects, as seen at right, which shows some of the 7,000 pipes for the double organ.  Back in the day, it required 80 men to pump the air for the thing.

For the most part, everything in the cathedral, beautiful though it might be, is hidden behind huge iron grates, effectively ruining the views.  Below is the huge high altarpiece in the main chapel, stunningly gold, but all but invisible from outside the grate (left) and rather awe-inspiring once you poke your camera between the bars (right).  This is the largest altarpiece in Christendom, measuring 65 feet by 43.  It depicts 36 scenes from the life of Christ, and is constructed of gold overlay on chestnut wood.

Here’s a closer view of some of the 36 scenes:

and a closeup of the nativity one just above the silver statue; exquisite detail work.  I’m rather pleased with this, as it is not a telephoto, but rather just a crop from the above shot, which itself is a crop.  My new camera has no telephoto beyond 70mm, which is nothing, but its large sensor allows me to get more detail for cropping.

Seville has a history of great seafaring journeys.  It was the port of embarkation on August 10, 1519, for Magellan’s ill-fated (for him, anyway) around-the-world cruise.  The cathedral boasts that it is the burial place of Columbus, and there is a monument to him showing his coffin borne aloft by the four kings representing the medieval kingdoms of Spain:  Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarra. The one closest in the picture below is holding an oar in his right hand to symbolize the discovery of America.

Now, Columbus isn’t really buried here, at least not all of him.  They have maybe 150 grams of his remains, confirmed by DNA, but he was moved often and no one is really sure where the rest lies.  There’s a tomb in Santa Domingo, and he actually died in Valladolid, northwest of Madrid.  Seville has a number of ties to the U.S.  It’s patron saint is Fernando, after whom L.A.’s San Fernando Valley was named.  It’s sister city in the U.S. is Kansas City, which has a replica of the Plaza Monument in one of its shopping malls.  No shopping malls here.  After the cathedral, we were on our own, so we poked around the winding streets.

Time for lunch, so we circled back to the cathedral area and picked out one that had been recommended by our guide, called Genova.  We both had salads (shown) and shared an order of Spanish “omelet.”  Forget what we know as that in the States; throughout Spain it’s sort of a potato quiche.  Tasty, but nothing to rave about.  I think mine is some sort of marinated fish with avocado.  I’ll tell you, it’s an adventure ordering when you can’t read the menu, and the “English speaking” waiters are frequently just as fractured in their English as I am with Spanglish.

Whenever you sit down at a restaurant in Spain, they immediately bring out a dish of olives, some bread, and some butter.  These are not free!  If you don’t waive off the waiter and say you don’t want them, they are added to the bill.  We usually kept them (see the depleted olive dish on the left) as the olives were delicious, the bread tasty, and the butter, well, it was butter!  After lunch, one more stroll before we caught the bus.

Back at our hotel – the Hotel Melia Sevilla – we kicked back for a while before our evening excursion to the Flamenco show this evening.  We stayed in the Melia chain for most of our nights in Spain, and they were all quite nice in décor and furnishings, but they all had uniformly puzzling (yet all different) controls for the A/C.  I never did get this one to work, and it made for a stuffy night as opening the window let in too much street noise.  Others reported similar problems.

Flamenco is on UNESCO’s list of “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.”  Whew!  And I thought it was just tap dancing.  Anyway, you can’t come to Seville, the home of Flamenco, without seeing a show.  I was supremely skeptical, but came away biting my tongue.  It was pretty neat.  However, I still maintain a little goes a long way.  We went to one of the oldest companies, dating from 1952, El Patio de Sevillano.  We had great seats, right down in front (thank you, Collette), and the performance was right in our face.  For me, this woman just oozed the essence of the dance.  She looks utterly classical.

The guys on the right and the left don’t play any instrument, they stand there and clap in time to the dancing.  Two (sometimes three) guitarists are behind.  No flash photography allowed, so this is all available lighting, which was often dim and oddly colored.  I longed to stand up and take photos, but I had many rows of viewers behind me.  I’ve cropped these as best I can, but the heads in front of me still intrude.

The show lasted about an hour and a half, so we got our money’s worth, and the dancing seemed to be excellent to my untutored eyes.  We had a lot of fun.  Our group ole’d like crazy, and the dancers seemed to appreciate it.  The rest of the room were duds.  One of the male dancers was hilarious with his smug pompous airs, but I guess it’s all part of the theatre.  I could have done without the large woman’s caterwauling.  Too much like opera for me.  Well, in fact, they were doing a flamenco version of a snippet from Carmen! 

Right up the street from the flamenco place was the local Plaza De Toros, and they were having the first bullfight session of the two-week season tonight, complete with camera crews on cranes.  Despite mingling about just in front, we never heard anything from within.  No oles.  It made for a very pretty sight with the setting sun bouncing off.  They don’t hold bullfights year-round, but make a traveling circuit to various cities.  Like rodeos, I guess.

Despite missing breakfast, and only a salad lunch, we decided to skip dinner and hop the bus back to the hotel.  We didn’t miss the food a bit (yesterday we overstuffed).  Since the hotel was near it, we took a twilight dash over to the Plaza de Espana where I just managed to get in a shot before nightfall.  This was Spain’s centerpiece pavilion at the 1929 World’s Fair.  I wanted to take a panorama shot, but I couldn’t get the camera to allow it.  Some other setting must be conflicting.  So, this is just a part of it as it continues to sweep around way to the left.  Technology in the dark.  Bah!

Another lousy night tonight.  I had to open the window for some air, and was treated to the cacophony of the trash pickup in the streets below until midnight.  Things quieted down until the woman in the adjacent room starting shrieking and cackling with laughter for a half hour, then commenced to snore loudly.  Curse my Vulcan hearing!

FIRST, DO NO HARM?

Isn't that Googles corporate mantra?  Well, faithful readers (there are some of you out there, yes?), the Blog is temporarily sidelined due to the behemoth ships passing in the night of Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft was the developer of Windows Live Writer, the best publishing program for bloggers ever.  Unfortunately, they stopped servicing it about 3 years or so ago.  Still, it works admirably, better than anything else out there.  It allows me to integrate photos from my computer, without first having to upload them to some cloud storage place.  It also allows tremendous flexibility in moving, sizing, making collages, etc, that just isn't available at Blogger or anywhere else.  Google is now the owner of Blogger, which is the host for this blog and countless thousands of others.

On or about the 26th of this month (May, 2015), Google changed the login code for Blogger and probably other apps.  It claims it announced its intentions long ago.  Microsoft, not supporting WLW anymore, ignored or didn't get the word.  Thus, on the 26th, the many thousands of bloggers using the WLW platform to create and post their blogs were suddenly unable to connect their WLW program to Blogger.  No posting!  Forums online report that the two are talking with each other, but I don't see any quick resolution here.  Frankly, it is a huge pain to try to compose a blog without WLW.  There is nothing like it, and using Blogger's own program to create a post with pictures is a nightmare of steps, with a vastly inferior result.  So, while I have post drafts waiting to go, I can't get them loaded.  I'm writing this using the Blogger program.  It's fine for straight text, but it's the pictures that make my blog go.  Stay tuned.  Sigh. 

COR’-do-ba

So who knew? All these years I thought it was Cor-DO’-ba.  Now you know.  Today we were off for Seville, by way of Cordoba and its famed Mezquita mosque-cathedral.  More on that hyphenation later.  We had our usual buffet breakfast at the hotel and boarded the bus to loosely follow the path described in Don Quixote.  Plenty of classic old windmills along the way, but I never saw a one of them turning.  Guess they are just static displays these days.

Another sight we saw often were the “Osbornes.”  Say, what?

There are some 90 or so of these giant metal bull silhouettes scattered along the roadways of Spain.  They are the remnants of a long-abandoned advertising campaign of the Osborne Sherry Company.  When they were ads, they had red company logos painted on them.  After the Europe-wide campaign to eliminate roadside signage, the company was going to remove them, but the resulting hue and cry by the public resulted in their remaining.  The silhouette is today superimposed on the Spanish flag by partisans of various sports teams when they support their heroes.  Supposedly, there are a couple of these in Mexico as well.  Anyway, we saw a couple of dozen in our travels, the bus erupting with “OSBORNE” upon sighting.  We were easily entertained.

Enroute to Cordoba, the bus made a pit stop in the tiny town of  Puerto Lapice, famed for nothing whatsoever except a smallish gift shop that offered travelers a free bathroom.  I don’t know that anyone bought anything, but the stop was much appreciated.  This is where I shot the windmills. Loni posed in front of the small church.  There was nothing else picturesque.

Cordoba was the Roman and Moorish capital of the Iberian Peninsula.  The Romans arrived in about 200 BC, and were ousted by the Visigoths around AD 600.  They built a church on the site of the Mezquita, but didn’t last long, falling to the Moors in the 700’s.  Emirs and Caliphs held court here until the early 11th century, with Christians, Jews, and Moors living in civilized harmony.  At that time, Cordoba was one of the greatest centers of art, culture, and learning in the Western world; just one of its libraries held a staggering 400,000 volumes.  Factional squabbling broke up the Caliphate in 1009, and the weakened smaller kingdoms were conquered by King Ferdinand in 1236.  All this background is necessary to understand the pictures.

Cordoba lies along Guadalquivir River, which is crossed by a bridge that still has Roman underpinnings, although it has been rebuilt and added onto over the centuries.

On to the Mezquita, a truly bizarre collision of religions.  When the Moors took over, they destroyed the Visigoth church and used its pieces to help construct the mosque.  When the Christians took over, they repurposed the place (ca 1236) as their church, but largely left the structure alone.  For a while.  Along comes Carlos V, who in the 1520’s sanctioned the construction of a baroque cathedral to be built within.  His idiot architects retained the outer portions of the mosque, but gutted the fabulous center, and built  their mediocre cathedral in the shell of the mosque.  To his credit, Carlos decried the sacrilege when he saw it, denigrating the builders:  “To build something ordinary, you have destroyed something that was unique in the world.”  Too little, too late, methinks.

The first thing you see from the outside is the bell tower, which completely encloses (and uses for structural support) the mosque’s minaret.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The exterior of the Mezquita is formed by high walls that are rather plain.  They enclose the mosque structure as well as courtyards, once filled with palms, and now with orange trees.

The dazzlement, of course, lies within.  This is the entry hallway.

It can only begin to prepare you for the forest of the mosque’s arches that surround the church.  The highlighted arch way down the center is where the cathedral begins.  There are 850 of these pillars, many crowned by ornate capitols taken from the Visigoth church.  The ceiling above the arches is carved cedar. 

In the mid-800’s, the mosque held an original copy of the Koran and an alleged arm bone of the prophet, and was a pilgrimage site second only to Mecca. The Moorish architecture is exquisite.

As we approach the beginnings of the cathedral, things become a bit less elegant.  Not less ornate, mind you, but less elegant, more cluttered and haphazard.

And awkwardly out of place, to my eye.

At left, below, are the vaulted ceilings of the cathedral, and its organ.  To the right is the main alter area.  Sorry, I think it’s a hideous mishmosh.  YMMV.  The brochure that we got with our entrance fee is, of course, a Catholic publication.  It describes these things thusly:  The result was . . . an ingenious integration of the caliph structures within the gothic, renaissance, and baroque creators.  Ah, yes, spin doctoring is alive and well.

One area of the cathedral is known as the “Treasury,” where various icons and such are stored.  One of these is Corpus Christi monstrance that is still used in modern-day processions through the city to show the devotion of the people.  I’ll bet they walk v-e-r-y carefully.

There actually are two monstrances in this photo.  If you look at the left, you will see a Chinese lady holding up her laptop to take pictures.  You will also note that she’s in my picture, despite my having waited for EONS for her to move on.  She’s the wife of the shoemaker that I mentioned in an earlier post.  She is utterly clueless that anyone else might like to take a shot or actually see something close up.  Throughout the entire trip she was the bane of all photography.  Always in the shot;  always holding up that computer to block your view of anything;  always standing right next to items or interest or someone demonstrating something, so that no one could see.  She was the blockage that wouldn’t die!  Loni will rag on me to delete the foregoing, but I wanted to strangle this otherwise pleasant woman on numerous occasions.  And, Loni will have to admit that even she had to ask her to move out of the way during a demonstration of craftmanship at a porcelain factory.

Anyway, the Mezquita was stunning, and a must-see on any “greatest hits” tour of Spain.  We exited the walls, and promptly encountered the gypsy women and their offspring begging shamelessly just outside the exits.  Mournful pleas of “for the babeee,” held in one arm while the other was outstretched palm up, were everywhere.  We had been forewarned by our local guide that (a) the babies were believed to be drugged to make them look passive and sick, and (b) they had been followed “after hours” and seen getting into newer Mercedes sedans to make their way home.  Total scam.  I did feel sorry for the babies, but paying the mothers would only perpetuate the abuse.

Cordoba had some quite pretty sights as we strolled about the town on our way back to the bus.

One of our stops was at this statue of Maimonides (1138–1204), a resident and exemplar of the tolerance of this city during his time.  He is widely viewed as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period and is still widely read today. The Mishneh Torah, his 14-volume compendium of Jewish law, established him as the leading rabbinic authority of his time and quite possibly of all time.  He also achieved fame as a physician and wrote medical treatises on a number of diseases and their cures.

Once we got to Seville, we just had time to drop our bags, wash our hands, and head off for a group dinner at El Cabildo, which was quite nice.  Tapas of cheeses, almonds, calamari, tuna-pepper-tomato salad, asparagus soup, and a main of nicely done grilled salmon.  Chocolate mousse for dessert.  We were quite stuffed, and decided to walk back to the hotel to work some of it off.  We stopped and took a night shot of the cathedral, then hoofed it home to bed.

HOLY TOLEDO!

The phrase is apt.  Toledo has long been considered the spiritual center of Spain, both for the Moors and the Catholics.  We got on our bus and motored south from Madrid about an hour.  Toledo is perched on a rocky mound, surrounded on three sides by the Rio Tajo.  It’s a spectacular setting.

 

The Romans got here in 192 BC and built their fortress (the Alcazar) on top (big building dominating the right skyline above), which later was “remodeled” by the Visigoths and everyone else.  The Moors showed up in the 8th century, and made Toledo a model of religious tolerance.  I wish the fanatics today would learn from their forebears.  This attitude continued when El Cid and Alfonso VI captured the place in 1085.  But the Catholic Church gradually developed profound hostility towards Arabs and Jews, Ferdinand expelling the latter in 1492 as part of the Inquisition, and finally ousting even the converted Arabs in 1601.  El Greco lived and worked here from 1572 until his death in 1614, during the time of the great intellectual and artistic decline, which supposedly is reflected in his works.  Most of the Alcazar was rebuilt many times, especially after the civil war of 1936-39.  We didn’t go there, but rather focused on the huge cathedral, seen at the center of the skyline.

The exterior is unremarkable, to my eye, a gothic façade inspired by Chartres and others.

  It’s the inside that was special, and it contained an element that I think was the most striking thing I saw on our entire trip.  This is purely subjective, of course, and Loni thought other stuff was more interesting.  But, it struck me and I was dazzled.  Atop the middle of the ambulatory is a skylight cut into the ceiling by Narciso Tomeso to illuminate a baroque piece on the floor below, known as the Transparente.  The Transparente is supposed to be the star of the show, and the skylight a mere means of lighting his masterwork.  But that hole in the ceiling had me agog.  Along the edges of the skylight are an array of statues of Biblical figures who seem to peer down into the cathedral.  It was almost creepy, but wonderful.  Here’s the basic view, but the opening is overexposed.

Now here’s the opening as it appears to the eye.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

OK, so what was Tome trying to illuminate?  The Transparente.  Frankly, it was just a lot of elaborate jumble to me.  But you can see that the light from the hole makes it glow in an otherwise dim space.

Off the northern end is the exquisite sacristy, with its late-baroque ceiling and several El Grecos, including El Espolio (Christ Being Stripped of His Raiment).

The high alter was a mass of gold applied over wood.  Way too busy for my taste.  Looks like hanging moss.

More interesting, to my eye, were the choir seats, elaborately carved and still looking beautiful hundreds of years later.  At left below, the seat is flipped up, revealing the snakes underneath waiting to bite the inattentive.  Above the seat back are carved panels depicting various battles or events.  I think this one was of El Cid.

Enough with the Cathedral.  Except for the god-hole and the seats, I thought it was way too fussy and cramped.  On to a more pedestrian destination, but one which was essential.  Our local guide led the way with that embarrassing group flag.  On our last Collette trip, 10 years ago, to Australia and New Zealand with Mom, was just about the beginning of this blog.  At that time, we were easily the youngest members of the group.  Now, well, we’re mainstream.  Sigh.

We were off to an artisan shop where they did gold engraving just like has been done for centuries.  It was interesting to see them inserting hair-like strands into the works, and the gift shop had plenty of pieces to ponder, from swords to brooches.  But our real intent was to use their bathrooms.  There are virtually no public bathrooms in Spain outside of museums.  If you want to go, you buy something in a café and use theirs.  But these shops depend upon the tourist trade, so to entice you in they provide decent facilities.  Collette always managed to find us some place to go every 1 1/2 hours or so.  With all the geriatric bladders, it was a necessity!

Don Quixote is, of course, alive and well in Spain.  Cervantes is widely regarded as the father of modern Spanish, as his masterwork had ten times the word count of any other contemporary piece, and contained virtually every word in the then-Spanish language.  Or so said our guide.  In between the cathedral and the gold shop, we stopped for a look at the Alcantara Bridge, which had Roman understructure and Moorish and later end-pillars.  Built to last!  Toledo and its environs were really pretty and often dramatic.  Liked it a lot.

Crossing the bridge to get to the tour bus.  As with all our trips, follow the red hat!

Done with Toledo, we headed back to Madrid for a visit to the 18th century Royal Palace, set on the site of the first foundation laid in Madrid, the 9th century military post set up by Mohamed I.  It’s not a residence, but is used for government functions and serves as a museum of sorts.  It’s a colossal thing, built as three sides of a square, enclosing a massive courtyard. 

It has 2,800 opulent rooms (!).  The official guided tour, which we did not take, is a mile in length.  The banquet room table, used for state dinners, seats up to 140!  Unfortunately, we could only take photos in one gallery area, so you’ll just have to imagine (or google).

As with all tours, there are “side” tour options you can spring for, at a fairly healthy price.  One of those was for tonight, deemed “Madrid by Night with Tapas Dinner.”  According to the tour book, 18 people would be needed in order to run this option.  We mustered only 13, but I guess that still afforded ample profit (at $85 EACH, I should think so).  Our first stop was at the Plaza Mayor, the city’s largest gathering place for people meeting and watching.  One side of the square (entirely ringed by buildings) had this frontage with rather racy paintings on the side.

The whole plaza is huge, and I suspect is a madhouse when they’re really celebrating something.  Who’d want to live right on such a place?  We were there fairly early in the evening, still plenty of light out, so it wasn’t too crowded.  Spain doesn’t “happen” until well after dark.

You will note the double image of the boy in the foreground.  That’s caused by my using the HDR (High Dynamic Range) function of my new Lumix LX100.  Where there are scenes with very bright parts (sun bouncing off the building on the left) and other shady spots, you can turn on this feature and it takes three shots with one press of the button, in rapid succession, each with a different exposure value to accommodate the bright and dark parts.  The camera then instantly combines all three into one photo with, ideally, proper exposure for each of the elements.  Well, it works fairly well in a lot of situations, but if anything is moving while the 3 shots are being fired off, you could get a motion blur that the program could not resolve.  So, the best thing to use it on is a static scene, using a tripod so there is no movement.  Anyway, next we were off to dinner. 

We ended up at Los Galayos, in a 16th century basement wine-cellar restaurant that, at one time hundreds of years ago, was a building on the waterfront.  Today, we are probably half a mile from any water.  Our happy band, below.  The balding guy to my right (you can spot, me, right?) was a retired bespoke shoe maker from Yorkshire, a very nice guy who had one of those nervous laugh tics that ended virtually every phrase that came out of his mouth.

The restaurant has been operating continuously since the 1890’s.  We both had a falling-off-the-bone, utterly succulent, roast suckling pig which tasted every bit as good as it sounds. It had a delicious apple compote as a side.

This was preceded by several rounds of tapas (meh; olives, toasted asparagus & goat cheese, cod tart, potato frittata) and a salad, ended with a nice Napoleon for dessert, and all the grappa (see bottle, above) you could handle.  In my case, zero.  They kept the wine flowing as well, and our table demolished a ton.  I had beer, in deference to my radiation-scarred throat.  Below, at right, is our guide, Nadine, Boston born, Portuguese islander by descent, five-year veteran of Spanish tours, and now a resident of Canada by virtue of her boyfriend.  She was a sweetheart throughout the trip, and a source of endless factoids about everything we were seeing. On the left are Joe and his daughter, Ilda.  She’s U.S. born, but he was a Barcelona native, and this trip was his opportunity to show her his country of birth.  Nice folks.

 

After dinner, we strolled over to the San Miguel mercado, a sort of farmer’s market that goes on to all hours of the night, lots of wrought iron holding up a high, tin roof.  It had stalls for fresh fruit, fish, meats, shellfish, tapas bars, and at least twenty wine bars.  It was one big party.  This was on a Monday night.  When do these people sleep?

The rest of the Madrid-By-Night was a crawling bus ride around the same monuments we had seen during the day, and not particularly well-lit at night.  We could have skipped this part altogether and not missed a thing.  By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 11:30 and time to crash.  The end of our first full day of touring.  We were exhausted, but happy.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADO

No sleep for us.  We find that the jet-lag thing works best for us if we power through the day and evening and go to bed at the appropriate time for this time zone (+9 hrs).  It makes a hellacious first day, but things go smoother thereafter.  So, we’re in the room, our stuff stowed, and we’ve been up for 23 hours.  Hey, let’s take a long walk to a big museum.  Actually, this would be our only chance to see the famed Prado, as our group is going elsewhere tomorrow.  Armed with Nadine’s directions, a hotel-desk map, and John & Meghan’s Fodor’s Spain 2015, we set off walking.  Nadine estimated 25 minutes, but it easily took 45.  Part of that is due to the many cross-streets we had to traverse, and the fact that virtually all Madrilenos take “don’t walk” lights seriously, even if there is no cross traffic visible for many blocks.  They simply wait.  Not wanting to be ugly Americans, we waited as well.  It’s not a particularly beautiful walk from our hotel to the Prado, except when we traversed a parkway for part of the trip.  Madrid reminded us of Buenos Aires, only cleaner.  In fact, in retrospect, all of Spain and Portugal appeared to be quite clean and tidy.  After getting only a little lost, we finally reached the Prado, which, externally, is rather ho-hum.

On arrival, we were confronted with very long lines waiting to buy tickets.  We debated whether to bag the whole deal, but spoke with an attendant who assured us that that l-o-o-o-n-g line would be at the tellers’ windows in only 17 minutes.  Those are those three dark entrances behind Loni, above.  This pic was shot after our visit, after the lines had disappeared.  They stretched way around the building to the right.  Sure enough, we were at the windows in exactly 17 minutes.  Guess they know what they’re doing.  28 euros lighter, we entered, intent on running down Goya, Valazquez, and the special Picasso items being shown.  Photos weren’t permitted, which I found out after I had snuck in this shot which, frankly, was the best of the Picasso’s.  I really can’t stand his later fractured works, so it didn’t take long to get through the special exhibit.  What I was surprised to find was that I wasn’t much impressed with the permanent collection.  Jetlag?  Plebianism?  Dunno.  I liked Goya’s famous Second of May and Third of May, 1808, but was pretty cold to everything else except his extraordinary range of styles.  Valazquez didn’t do it for me.  I also liked Bosch’s Garden of Delights, but I was really revolted by several renditions of Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons.  I was so tired after an hour of shuffling around that I had to sit down and close my eyes for a few minutes.  I literally felt ill from fatigue.  We cut our visit short and made our way back to the hotel, again abiding the crosswalks all the way. 

As is their custom, Collette held a welcome meeting where Nadine explained how the tour operated, including the use of “whispers,” which are Walkman-like devices with an earplug for listening to the guides at our various stops.  These are a great development, as the guide can speak normally and you can hear him/her clearly in noisy environments, and can walk all over the place while the narration is going on.  We were each issued one, with dire threats as to liability for loss or breakage, and a plea to please turn them off when not in use so as to make the battery last for the duration of the trip.  Actually, Nadine was so sweet, that she doesn’t know the meaning of dire, and she always had spare batteries for the slower-witted.  Our group was only 29, which is a great number as it is easier to manage and you get a chance to meet everyone.

Dinner tonight was arranged by Collette at El Septimo, and we fairly packed the place.  There was a table of “others,” with a women determined to get her share of wine, and with a cackling laugh that turned heads all over the restaurant.  I started with a red tuna Carpaccio, with a partridge risotto for a main, and an almond-raisin apple strudel with ice cream for dessert.  All quite nice, in pleasant surroundings, but nothing to get overly excited about.  Them partridges is small boids.  Cackling woman not shown in below shot.

Back to the hotel at about 10 pm.  Now up 33 hours, so an Ambien is called for.  Otherwise I’d lie awake with my head spinning.  Ahhhh, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

THE LOOOOONGEST DAY

As usual, we didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before starting out on our trip to Spain and Portugal, and waking at 4:30 to ablute and throw the last of the packing together didn’t help.  Chuck and Alice did the chauffer honors, picking us up at 5:30;  just like old (well, just last September) times in the BMW wagon with bags in the back.  No traffic at that hour so we breezed to the airport and decamped at the United terminal.  Of all the combinations of flights and airlines I researched, United had by far the best coming and going times, and when we allowed Collette Tours to make our reso’s, they selected the exact same flights; so, once again we submitted to UA’s cramped seats and nonexistent meals.  Taking self-service the extra mile, United had only one agent manning three counters.  Using the kiosk check-in, I thought I had printed out all our stuff, but as we were walking away the gal who had been behind us ran up and handed us our second leg (Newark to Madrid) boarding passes which had waited forever before spitting out while she was trying to input her data.  Whew, glad she was a good Samaritan.  I stopped off at the men’s room to inhale my morning Advair, which drew a puzzled look from some young lad (“Dad, what’s that man snorting?”).  One good thing about the upgrading of the LAX terminals is that some edible food is being introduced, in our case it was a Wolfgang Puck outpost that was decent.  We had breakfast there and bought wrapped sandwiches for the flight to Newark, as United only offers to sell you crap, giving nothing away.  The flight itself was just fine, save for the lack of leg room and seats that are a chiropractor’s dream.  No lumbar support whatsoever.  The seat actually bows away from your lower back.  Pot bellies, sure.  Pot backs?  Never seen one.  Fortunately, I always fly now with an inflatable lower back rest that works great.  One thing I will praise United for is the selection of movies and other entertainment.  At least 60 movies, with lots of new stuff, including several of the best-picture Oscar nominees.  Not bad at all.  Of course, they screwed that up (literally) by having Loni’s earphone jack being filled with a screw that we couldn’t extricate.  Nice plane servicing, United. 

This trip is a big step for me, as I was very sick lung-wise in January, and slowly recovered in February.  By March I was feeling fairly good, and my allergy doc prescribed some new stuff in an off-label use (okaayyyy . . .) that actually seemed to work at clearing my breathing.  Carpe diem, so I quickly dreamed up this venture, made the reso’s, and got ready to go with less than a month before departure.  But, how would I fare in an airplane environment?  Things weren’t helped when the small kid in the seat behind mine starting sneezing and coughing as soon as we took off.  Great, all I need is a respiratory challenge.  It got worse when Loni happened to talk with his mother.  She reported that the father was spending the flight in the bathroom throwing up.  Auuggghhh!  I calmed a bit when she later said it was probably food poisoning.  Long story short, I endured my usual health anxieties, felt weird on occasion, but nothing happened.  Good news on the ear front as I had clearable clogging both ascending and descending.  Hurray!  No more exploding head agony.  No more hours of deafness.  I’ll have to send a thank-you note to Dr. K, my EMT who operated on my sinuses. 

Enroute, we had nice views of the Great Lakes shorelines, with lots of floating ice visible.  Upon landing at Newark, while taxiing to the gate I rummaged through my bag and found I had left our iPhone at home.  Fortunately, I did have our ancient iPod for internet use, but it doesn’t have messaging and it’s Facetime app no longer works because the operating system is too old and can’t be upgraded.  I also realized that my Tilley hat was AWOL.  Yikes, three weeks of (hopefully) Iberian sun and no hat.  I need a minder.

Three hours to kill between flights, but we headed straight for the gate to make sure we were at the head of the “C” line peons.  While we were waiting there, we noticed that our plane was waiting at the gate at least two hours before boarding time.  So, how efficient is United?  They called everyone for boarding about a half-hour before ETD.  Loni, as usual, had long ago popped up and started standing at the head of the peasant-boarding queue.  There were a lot of folks in the “elite” and “priority” lines ahead of us, but even more were lined up behind us.  However, we did not start boarding.  We waited and waited and waited.  “Cleaning and catering,” they said.  On a plane that’s been sitting there for hours?  We finally started the boarding process at the scheduled ETD.  Leading the line of the great unwashed, we found plenty of overhead bin space for our two small (i.e., they actually would fit in those sizing boxes that the airlines threaten you with, but seemingly never actually use) carry-ons.  Those behind us did not fair so well.  Those bins quickly filled up with full-size suitcases and multiple boxes that some were hauling aboard, and chaos in the aisles ensued.  I really thought they were going to come to blows.  No one was moving, everyone was shouting.  It took forever for the attendants to sort things out (as in, haul out the bags of the end-of-the-liners, instead of enforcing the rules on everyone).  Once airborne, it was a night flight, so the dimmed cabin lights soothed the savage breasts.  No sleep for us, I never can get a wink on a plane, so I watched three movies (Hunger Games 2 [Zzzzzzzz], Wild [dopey slut hikes to zen], Kingsman Secret Service [dopey good fun!]) and other fare.  Seven scrunched-up hours later, we landed at Madrid.

I swear the schlep from the gate to the baggage claim was one full mile, including going up and down several sets of stairs, and following a rat’s maze of passages.  A minor panic as our bags had not appeared while most of our fellow passengers had claimed and decamped, but they finally tumbled off.  Easy entry through passport, no customs check at all, and there was our smiling Collette Tours rep, Nadine, waiting with our nameboard as we exited.  Made it!  She collected four other passengers, and we boarded our bus to go to the hotel.  It’s only 11:00 a.m. here, but is the next day, the 12th, so I’ll end this narrative with a shot of the Hotel Princessa, our home for the next two nights. 

REVISIONIST BLOGGING

Not wanting our Scotland-Ireland trip posted over a period of eight months or so, I went back and re-dated all of the posts to last August and September (2014), when we actually went.  So, start at 8/24/14 for consecutive posts that generally match our trip timeline.  Now, how long will it take me to get Spain and Portugal entered?