Spain, 2017

(part 2, Madrid and daytrips)

When we arrived at Atocha station in Madrid, we headed straight to the turtle sanctuary at one end of the station. Because it was a large station, though, with lots of trains, subways, stores, etc., we needed to ask directions to the turtles. "Perdon, donde estan las tortugas?" is not a question I ever thought I would get to say in real life, much less multiple times in one day, as textbook-Spanish as it sounded, but everyone knew where las tortugas were and directed us accordingly.

That night, the eve of Three Kings' Day, we took the subway up to Plaza de Colon and watched the big parade. The kids loved the hard candies that were thrown out, and the giant balloons and the spectacle.

We had a really nice dinner with croquettes that I'm sure had foie gras in them, beef tartare, butterfish, and scallops, and then everyone slept well in our AirBnB apartment just a short walk from both Puerta del Sol and La Latina. There were two bedrooms and a loft, and after the first night, once she'd mastered the steps to the loft, Samantha took the loft and Marcus the bedroom below.

The next morning, on Three Kings Day/Epiphany, we had a roston along with the rest of Spain, enjoying the sweet bread and the cream filling. It took us two days to find the little baby "king," and Samantha finally got it, but we all enjoyed the cake.

On Three Kings Day, as on New Year's Day, a lot of things were closed, so we went on another food walking tour, but this one a much cheaper one, basically just a friendly guy who set himself up doing this thanks to the Internet. It was nice to walk around the city with a local on our first day there, especially with so many things closed, but he didn't really know much about food.

We started the tour, though, at a statue in Puerta del Sol of a bear and a berry tree, which is the icon of Madrid. After Jorge mentioned it, we did start noticing the bear and the berry tree on trash cans, light poles, and all sorts of other municipal fixtures. Samantha was pretty enamored of this bear, and later on the trip drew her own version of it.

We went to (though we didn't eat in, because they don't open until 1:00) the oldest restaurant in the world, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, and walked through all its floors and its wine cellar, even seeing (supposedly) Hemingway's table from when he used to come here. We sampled burrata tostas with salmon in the Mercado de San Miguel, and all sorts of other tasty treats--Samantha at one point had a ham y queso empanada in her right hand and a churro filled with custard in her left hand, as she rode along.

One of our favorite stops was for a squid sandwich--just a basic length of bread (Italian/French-style, like a standard 8" hero roll), filled with fried squid rings. Robert wished there'd been some sauce or aioli or something for it, and Samantha just pulled out the squid rings and ate those and the bread separately, but overall I think this was the food item from our trip that all four of us agreed was fantastic. That doesn't happen all that often, actually!

Through January 6th, there were still Christmas carousels set up around the city, and we stopped at one near our house. Sadly the double-decker carousel near the palace was closed.

Over that day and the next, we explored more of Madrid, climbing up to the Egyptian temple on a hilltop (rescued from flooding from the Nile), and Robert one night after the kids were asleep even went out and tracked down the location of one of our favorite comedies, "El Crimen Ferpecto," a movie set in a Madrid department store that is now a Fnac.

This was the night we finally made it to "dinnertime," eating, along with a German family, alone in a huge restaurant at 8:15 at night, still unfashionably early, but enjoying our quarter of a roasted lamb, served with croquettes, of course.

One night we went to a tosta place that had no seating, and was really just a small (very small) bar. El Capricho Extremeno was eccentric and delicious, filled with half a dozen hipsters and one older man, plus the owner in his captain's hat. We had six huge tostas--the best was one with fat and juicy white anchovies and a lot of olive oil (plus cornichons, but Marcus ate all of those) and another with a thin layer of goat cheese, a thick slice of brie-like cheese, some big walnut halves, and some dried dates. Perfection! Six of these came out to fourteen euros, and we left stuffed. The owner kept insisting that no one speak English in his shop, and some of the hipsters made fun of Robert for not knowing Spanish. The older man asked Marcus to feed scraps to his dog, and interrogated me about where we were from and what else we'd done in Spain. It was a great experience.

We also went twice to Churreria San Gines, which became our favorite churros place--seating was a little at-your-own-risk but the line moved fast, and their chocolate was less heavy on the cinnamon than some of the others we'd had. Helen was thrilled to sit on Robert's lap and have her very own piece of a churro to eat (with almost eight teeth, she does a great job of biting and chewing now). She was a little suspicious that she might have been missing our on something--the rest of us had sugar sprinkled on our churros and then we dipped them into the communal chocolate cup (only four euros for chocolate y churros here), but she was so glad to have her own churro she didn't mind.

On Saturday, we went to Santiago Bernabeu to watch Real Madrid play Grenada. Apparently even infants in arms need tickets, ostensibly for security purposes, which in my experience is anomalous in the world of professional sports (Fenway Park, for example, says kids under three are free if they sit on your lap, no ticket or registration required). I found all this out when we attempted to enter the stadium, only to be told (in Spanish) no, you only have four tickets and five people. High school Spanish allowed me to explain that I didn't think the baby needed a ticket, she couldn't even sit in her own seat, etc., and then to understand being told no, sorry, you need to go get her a ticket. We were first directed to ticket window 37, which was a long walk around the stadium from where we were. Over there I repeated myself--Hello, there's a problem with my tickets. I didn't know babies needed a ticket, can you please help me get a ticket for the baby?--but then were told they could only help me at ticket window 6, another even longer walk around the stadium back in the direction we came. By this point Samantha needed to go to the bathroom, so Robert took her and two tickets and went further on to Tower D to enter and get her to a bathroom, while I took Marcus and headed in search of window 6. Eventually, we got the ticket, then went through security and climbed up to our seats, maybe twenty rows from the back. When we entered the stadium, Marcus just stopped and said "Whoa!" and was clearly impressed. I loved how much leg and knee room you have--because the stadium is so vertical, my feet were at the very top of the heads of the people sitting in the row below me, and there was just a waist-high bar in front of us.

We watched Madrid make five goals (apparently Grenada isn't very good) and joined in eating sunflower seeds with everyone else. Interestingly, though, there was very little eating in the stadium at all--most people seemed more intent on watching the game (match, I should say). It was a great experience. The stadium was nearly full during the game, but we let a lot of people leave and then took a picture overlooking the field. I don't care at all about soccer, of course, but I'm glad we went.

On our last two days in Madrid we did day trips out of the city by train. On Sunday we went to Toledo, just a 30-minute train ride away, where Robert lamented we didn't quite have time for the cathedral (he is much more of a cathedral/mosque tourist than I am, interestingly), but we did get to eat some delicious marzipan (and go back for more at the end of the day) and see the army museum in the alcazar, and have a great (and slow--hence the lack of time for the cathedral) three-course lunch with a roasted pork stew that is the speciality of the town, and walk back down to the train station, following the bridges across the river, zigzagging along.

On Monday we went to Segovia, which is twenty kilometers further than Toledo but also just took half an hour by high speed train. The trains were so easy to navigate, so clean and comfortable, that for that reason among others, at the end of our trip, when heading home to Boston, I observed to Robert that this entire trip to Spain had just been so easy, in contrast to, say, navigating the train stations in India or driving in Israel or doing absolutely anything in Vietnam, it actually felt like--yes--a vacation.

On the train to Segovia, sadly, Robert lost his Apple watch. He had taken it off to let Helen chew on it and play with it, and it must have fallen down between his and Samantha's seat and gone unnoticed. We tried to track it down by phone calls, emails, and a visit to the Renfe customer service people, but it seems to be gone for good. Despite that, Segovia was my favorite day of the entire trip. I loved the aqueduct that runs through the city, and we had another nice lunch (also quite slow) and then had to hustle a little bit to get to the castle and then back in time for our train.

Marcus and I loved these handmade piggy banks we saw for sale in the Segovia Plaza Mayor. After hearing so much about (and eating so much of!) the acorn-fed black pigs of Iberia, it was very cool to see these. We feared they'd get broken on the way home in our luggage, though, so we settled for a picture.

The castle was extremely cool, both inside and out. I did not climb to the top of the tower, opting to sit in the cafe and nurse instead, but the kids really liked it. Unfortunately, this was the coldest day of our trip, and it was sort of foggy and misty all day (actually, until we were taking the train home--then the sun came out quite brightly!), so it was hard to see much from the tower.

From the castle we walked back on the outskirts of the city, circling the old city walls. There was one high section you were supposed to get a code to unlock the gate to go up to, but the tourist office had closed at three (possibly to re-open at eight, who knows), so Robert begged a Singaporean woman on the top of the wall to wait for them and hold the gate.

This was the view from the topof the walls--a classic example of a fortified city, Robet observed, very satisfied. Segovia was our last full day; the next day we pretty much just grabbed something for breakfast and took the train to the airport (and stood in line there for over two hours, because somehow Helen, an infant in arms, had been put in first class and we, clearly, were not, and this was simply too great of a dilemma for the Air France computers to attempt to resolve) and flew home.

 

Appendix 1: Marcus's Journal and Scrapbook for the trip

 

Appendix 2: Elegy for an Apple Watch Left Upon the High-Speed Train to Segovia, by Robert

Alas, poor Apple Watch--I knew you! A watch of infinite texture and taste, I have chewed upon you a thousand times... and now! How abhorred in my imagination it is! Here hung this band that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your chimes now? Your flowers? Your Mickey Mouses? Your flashes of merriment that kept my hard times happy...?

 

 

 

 

 

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Created: 1/13/17. Last Modified: 1/17/17.