tbaroundtheworld

The weather hadn't improved when dinner time rolled around. We left our place and combed the neighborhood for somewhere to eat, but the menus just weren't thrilling and it was only 8:30 and all the places were empty. Even though it was raining cats and dogs, I just couldn't bear the shame of being the first couple in the place. So we left our barrio and crossed the street into the tourist land at Plaza Mayor. While the outside tables were set up, and covered with umbrellas, there were no patrons – it was just too cold. As we walked around the outer portico checking menus, a short waiter tried to get us into his place, but it looked like the worst diner on the worst day of the year so we went on. We stopped at the first main gate and read the menu for a place halfway down a set of slippery stairs. I told My Lovely Wife to wait at the top – no reason to climb if the menus stunk. I liked to looks of one of them but when I got to the bottom of the stairs, they were not yet o...

It took us three attempts to get to the Royal Botanic Gardens today. This was the first bad day of weather on the trip, bad in the sense that it was cold, windy and raining pretty hard. Our first time out, we made it as far as the Corte Ingles on Calle Arenal (~.5 miles) before it just became too wet. So we browsed their bookstore and stopped for coffee before returning home. After sitting around for a bit and looking out the window, it seemed like it might be letting up little bit so we left again, this time heading across and out of Plaza Mayor (~.5 miles) before the wind and rain really kicked in and we called the journey due to weather a second time. Three-fourths of the way back to the house we decided to wait out the weather over lunch and stopped by one of the places that had relegated us to their basement last year for being too early for dinner. We were seated in a pretty fancy dining room, one way more deserving that the bocadillos we wanted so when it came time to order we...

We spent the better part of Sunday trying to figure out the washing machine. Before that though we took a hike to El Rastro, Europe’s largest flea market. But before that, we had to figure out how to get across Calle Mayor without disrupting the Madrid Marathon. It turned out to be a day of this and that, a mishmash of interesting stuff. We awoke to the sounds of helicopters go hovering overhead and figured it was just another demonstration. Only when we walked up the street did we discover that we were on the route of the marathon. Trying to get across through a never ending stream of runners was tough, but we finally found a window and scooted through the throng, hopefully without disrupting anyone’s pace. We popped into Mercado San Miguel of the off chance of finding some coffee but the bar was three deep and frankly I burned up all my interest in jostling during my years in China. We left and headed downhill to the flea market and spent the next couple of hours roaming up and dow...

I’ll admit that this waiting around until later than 9 PM for dinner is a bit annoying. The Mali fellow at the African restaurant told me that they sometimes stay open until 3 or 4 in the morning for dinner guests. This makes me wonder how this country functions because I’d be of no use at work if I was out drinking and eating until 4 every night. After lying around and recovering from our day of hiking in Toledo, we decided to go out for dinner. It was 8:30 and so we’d at least be hunting and gathering at a more socially acceptable time. On the walk over to Plaza Mayor, My Lovely Wife hit on a brilliant idea – let’s act like Spaniards and go eat tapas instead of dinner. That’s what they were all doing, and we could pretend we are like they are, only we wouldn’t be going out to dinner at 11 after we finished the tapas. I suggested one of the places we’d eaten last year, the one where we were relegated to the basement when we’d incorrectly answered the Test Question, “Dinner or Tapas”...

My shins are killing me today, the legacy that is Toledo, that wonderful, maddening, beautiful former citadel of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The city sits on a knob in bend of the Río Tajo, about 30 minutes SW of Madrid. It’s an easy train ride and while a short walk into town from the station, the smart ones pay the 4€ cab fare and save their legs for the climbing inside the town, not up to it. You ask to be dropped off at Plaza Zocodover and grab a bite to eat. Or just march off into the warrens. We began our day walking our street which was mysteriously covered in chicken feathers as though the bar crowd had held a light night pillow fight. Across Plaza Mayor and then hiking down Calle Atocha to the train station, we stopped along the way for a couple of Americanos (hot) and a napolitano. It was cold, probably 20 degrees lower than what we’d been used to in Sevilla, and the wind was blowing up the street into our faces, making it feel far more like November than the end of A...

Last year, on one of our last days of our stay in Madrid, I found a little restaurant just down the street from our apartment that had an interesting menu. I wanted to try it, and finally a night presented itself and we went by. Only to find it closed. There are a lot of little holes in the wall here around Calle Espejo that are like that. Open certain days only, open only late at night, open only for 15 minutes at a time soon to be announced. Between the Spanish expectation that dinner starts at 10 and the weird hours, it’s tough to scrounge a meal anywhere but places that cater to Brits, Germans and Americans. In other words, places that start serving at 7 PM. Yesterday we were heading down the hill and the little place had a menu out front. We stopped to read it and it looked good. The “menu of the day” was a prix fixe meal of pumpkin soup, mixed salad and Iberian grilled pork shoulder. A meal that sounded really good. While reading it, the waiter stuck his head out the door and ...

We slept in a bit, recovering from the terrible bed we had in Sevilla. It’s very nice to be back in this apartment, our second visit, because it’s everything a rental should be. Well appointed, bright, roomy and located in a perfect neighborhood close to Puerto del Sol, Plaza Mayor and Calle Arenal. It didn’t take much time to get back down the street to the Chocolateria for a post breakfast refueling of churros and molten chocolate bars. I suppose one should consider the consequence of eating a liquid Lindt bar before lunch, but really, why would you? This is vacation and the rest of the year is for thinking smartly. A short trip to the Prado was on today’s agenda, our second time here. We got there late and it turned out to be a good choice as it wasn’t very crowded outside of the usual youth tours wasting their parents money, including a big batch of really rude French second year students. Not nearly so much last time and thus easier to get a good look at the paintings I had br...

One of the great things about renting apartments for your vacation is the interaction you have with the landlords. Barring problems, most of the time it’s minimal and friendly but when thing arise it can get challenging. The language barrier always adds an additional degree of difficulty and once you give a hint of your skill in their native tongue, things can get dicey. I’d been conversing with Juana our landlord for a couple of months, starting in English and ending in Spanish. Her skills in the former were about equal to mine in the latter, but I like the chance to practice and I make liberal use of online translators. I start by trying to write it and then verify before sending. Our conversations went to the next level when the cellular internet device she’d provided informed me that I’d used up my quota and would henceforth see reduced speed. “Reduced” in this case meant diminished to the old days of dial up modem. If you’ve tried to use the modern web recently through a 56k con...

Given that these countries we visit have a vibrant music scene, we’ve had pretty poor luck in actually taking any in. On multiple trips to Ireland and countless hours wandering around Temple Bar, I think I found one bar offering traditional Craich and it was too jammed to squeeze into. We’ve been to Spain three times now and have yet to stumble upon a decent opportunity. Last year in Madrid, we looked at three different shows but the price is off-putting. The bigger tablaos off two dinner shows a night, and depending on the quality of the performers and how much they want to gouge the tourists, the cost ranges from 30 to 100€ per person. In general, these are not even good restaurants so $80 to $260 just seems like a lot of money for an average experience. The Sevilla guidebooks pretty much presented the same offerings, although there were some that were a bit less costly, show and drinks only. We had a chat a couple of days ago at the local Flamenco museum, the Casa de Memoria a...

On this day, we decided to ride a bus. Not a tourist bus, an actual city bus with a city bus route. While walking to the station, we got talking about the last time we’d ridden a bus, not including those airport rental car buses but buses that required sitting with other people, interacting with the driver and going to a place that was not guaranteed (unlike the Hertz counter.) My Lovely Wife decided her last bus ride was from her college in Fort Collins to Denver when she swore she would never ride a bus again. That was the golden age of bus travel, when you sat next to people in the station who were talking to themselves and when you had to discard your clothing after the ride because it stank of lavatory disinfectant. She allowed that she might have ridden some buses in Mexico with her Uncle Ike, but the Fort Collins ride was so bad everything else has become a repressed memory, I had many bus rides during my college career including the one where an older woman sat next to me and p...

Forty minutes by train outside Seville lies Córdoba, the 10 th century capital of Al Andalus, the Moorish name for their empire in the Iberian Peninsula. Being the train ride lovers that we are, we decided to make a day trip there, primarily to see La Mezquita, the orginal grand mosque of the empire. You can never find a taxi when you need one and our day began as a testament to that old saw. We figured we go to the taxi stand by the fancy hotel, just down the block from our apartment. Of course on this morning there were none to be seen and the doorman was running up and down the tiny streets trying to flag a couple off of the nearest boulevard. We’d left plenty of time to walk to the station (2 miles) but though a cab ride would be a better way to start the day, allowing for fresh feet and legs. But now, our strategy was coming under fire. Heading off in the general direction of the train, we saw a cab drop off a fare in a small park, so I waved until I got his attention, jaywalk...

During the week of the annual Fería de Abril, many of the women of Sevilla don traditional Flamenco wear for their trips out and about. We saw ladies ranging from toddler to Doña throughout the city although the greatest concentration was on the actual fairgrounds. Walking in groups, or alone, chatting on cell phones or accompanied by their beaus who were often dressed in the standard Spanish business attire – tan or gray slacks, blue blazer and shirt, conservatively colored tie – their presence ala flamenca created a very festive and urbane atmosphere, particularly in contrast to the sunburned tourists in cargo shorts, tank tops and athletic shoes. Many Spanish women are quite stylish, both in cutting edge and conservative fashion, and seeing them in their dedication to this more traditional wear was a true highlight of our visit.  Click on the link below to visit the gallery - Dresses of the Fería de Abril .

Sunday turned out to be sort of a knock around day roaming streets we’d been to before, covering sections that were off our previously beaten path and visiting the site of the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. The day began with a stop at our new favorite Local Coffee Shop on the Cathedral square, Cafe Milagrito - “little miracles.” Unbeknownst to us, there was a morning floor show, three young men and a young woman, dressed to the nines at 10 in the morning, clearly coming off a long night of partying. One was responsible, trying to keep the loud drunk one in line. She was trying to blend into the background and the 3 boy was sound asleep at the table. In Latin America, I suppose they’d be called “hidalgos”, the compressed version of hijo de algo , or “son of someone.” The designated driver was having a bit of a hard time with the drunk, who was alternating between singing and laughing out loud at their sleeping friend whom they decided to abandon, wandering off down the street but stop...

I was very sorry to hear that Google had decided to stop publishing the Frommer’s Guides. I suppose they bought the brand thinking that they would do some cute, high-tech thing with it, selling e-books for Android tablets instead of actual books. And maybe Frommer’s has been in a financial pit every since the death of paper books was announced, some years back. But for me, I think we’re a case of the “cost of everything and the value of nothing,” because if there is one thing I like, it’s my Frommer’s Guide. Particularly their “Day by Day” series, and in double particular, the Neighborhood Walks they feature. We first used one of these cool little books on our trip to Valenica, following the map and itinerary for the old neighborhood we stayed in. The offer so many cool encounters, places where lovers through themselves off roofs, little pieces of the ancient Roman stonework included in the walls of a pizzeria, fun little stuff like that. I find that they give you a much more intima...