Day 22: July 5-6 (Madrid-Toronto-Los Angeles-Home)

We woke up to our last morning in Spain, expecting to be home and sleeping in our own bed by night.  After we checked out of the hotel, we walked to Puerta del Sol to take the Metro to the airport.  Neil had mapped out the route online.  The trip ended up taking about an hour, largely due to some long walks between transfer points.  We were, once again, very happy with our packing strategy of carrying one carry-on, wheeled suitcase apiece.  The train was packed with people but very convenient, putting us right inside the airport terminal.  There was an extra one euro surcharge to enter the airport on top of the regular cost of the Metro ticket.  Cheap. What a deal!

As usual, we were ultra-careful and arrived very early.  Our Air Canada flight to Toronto was, however, delayed over four hours in departing Madrid.  When we finally departed, the ride was largely uneventful.  The flight went fast because of the great little monitors set in the setbacks for entertainment.  There were a huge number of entertainment choices - a lot of movies, old, current, foreign, etc. and HBO tv, etc.  I watched parts one and two of HBO Mildred Pierce and a dumb movie with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.  We were fed a lot. There was a baby next to us who started screaming horribly for most of the last half of the flight.   We got into Toronto at about 7 pm, which was way too late for our connection to Los Angeles.

Our experience arriving in Toronto was the worst, especially since we had already been "on the road" for over 14 hours.  There was no instruction given by Air Canada regarding what we should do as to customs, hotel, rebooking, etc.  There were no announcements on the plane; there were no representatives outside the plane - nothing.  We followed the flow toward baggage claim and got some wrong information from Air Canada people.  We waited in a long line to talk to an agent who really did not know who we were, but we finally did get hotel vouchers and rebooked us onto a flight for tomorrow.  The agent told us the wrong hotel (with vouchers also printed incorrectly); one that did not exist according to people at the bus stop she directed us to.  A bus from the Radisson was picking up people I recognized from our plane, but our voucher said Renaissance.  Neil thought it was the agent's mistake, but I made him get off the bus to the Radisson.  After several calls from the airport hospitality phone system (we had no cell phones that worked outside of Spain), we decided that the Radisson was where we were supposed to be and got on the bus.  Everything was agonizingly slow, as we were being processed along with all the others from our plane who were being put up for the night.  Our room at the Radisson was super stuffy and the air-conditioner was super loud and everything smelled of cigarettes.  The plug in the bath tub did not work and there was too much light.  After weeks of incredibly nice hotel experiences across Spain, this was a shock!

Killing time in the Airport

We did get to sleep, partly because we were so totally exhausted.  It was 5 am Madrid time.

We slept for several hours and got up to catch the shuttle to the airport at 5:30 am.  There were so many people from our flight in our situation that we wanted to make sure we were on a shuttle that had enough available room.  We wanted to allow plenty of time to clear customs for our early flight.  The airport had a special fast track terminal for passengers to the US and we got through without incident.  We had enough time to have coffee in Starbucks in the Toronto airport - our first Starbucks coffee in many weeks - and recounted to each other the plots of the movies we had watched on the plane from Madrid.  The airport had free wi-fi so Neil did some checking up on his ipod.  Our plane was on schedule and we were on our way home.  On entering the plane, we passed through first class.  I had never seen this type of seating arrangement before, with all the seats on a diagonal for more footspace.  We sat in the emergency door aisle with plenty of leg room, but the entertainment monitor in Neil's seat wasn't working.  Neil did not really care since he saw everything he was interested in yesterday. The flight attendant was super nice, and comped us some food.  Across the plane from us, we noticed a young, Spanish couple ("cool" because the guy had a hat similar to Neil's) who had been with us from Madrid and at the hotel in Toronto.  As difficult as the layover had been for us, we felt bad about people dealing who weren't English speakers.

We were finally back at LAX; almost home.  There was about a two hour layover, so we walked outside almost the whole perimeter of the airport from the Air Canada to the United terminal.  It was warm, but not oppressive.  We tried to get our boarding passes for our United flight to SLO from the electronic kiosk, but it did not work.  We weren't surprised, figuring it was a result of the rebooking in Toronto.  Even a human agent had a little bit of a problem finding it but, eventually, it got done.  I went through a full body search at security, which was very shabby and did not even have a place to sit and put shoes on.  The decor of LAX was painfully run down compared to that of all of the other airports we had been through on our trip.

After we got some sandwiches, we headed down to the boarding area.  We had tickets, but no seat assignments.  At first, our assignments were in different rows.  Shortly before boarding, however, we were called up to the ticket counter and reticketed with seats next to each other.  The ride was short.  The small plane was pretty full.  Grabbed a taxi and found the house as we had left it.

Home. On the Ground.

Today, we took our kayaks to Avila Beach. I saw a pilot whale and I hurt my foot falling off the car while loading the kayak...

Day 21: July 4 (Madrid)

It is the 4th of July! Fireworks back home. The final day of our trip here.  We got up around 10 am and went around the corner to get coffee.  The museum we had planned on visiting today, Thyssen-Bornemisza, is closed on Mondays, so we opted for the Sofia Reina instead.  The Sofia Reina is the Modern Art Museum.  The square it faces was the first place we wandered when we first arrived in Spain three weeks ago!

After reloading on tape for my feet at a Farmacia, we walked along the route we took several days ago to the Prado, down the Paseo del Prado and over to the Reina Sofia.  The Prado was also closed today, so (I think) there were more people at the Reina Sofia than usual.  There was a line of people stretching out the front when we got there.  It took us about ten minutes to get in, one of the longer lines we've been in. The people behind us were having a long conversation, the man never stopped talking and Neil and I felt ever so close to actually being able to understand him.

Garden Courtyard of Reina Sofia

Modern Wing of Reina Sofia

We started out in a beautiful inner courtyard park featuring a big Calder, relaxing on a bench and plotting our course. We spent a couple of hours in the exhibit rooms on the second floor,  looking at art from 1900-1945ish.  There were many, many Picassos, including Guernica.  Neil and I both liked several beautiful portraits of women by Dali. We had lunch in the cafeteria.  There was an attached restaurant but it was very tony.  The wing which housed the cafeteria was very modern, with a nice courtyard with a sculpture.  One side of the courtyard was the library.  The cafeteria was very contemporary in design with lots of red / orange furniture and seating.  Neil asked for a "jabon" (soap, instead of "jamon", ham) sandwich by accident, but, luckily, none were available.  We had a wild discussion of the modern art "racket" over lunch before heading back.  We had a lot of fun going through one of the temporary exhibits which was a retrospective of the work of a Japanese woman who worked mostly in the US in the 60s and 70s.  She was in the middle of the New York, Warhol scene.  There were pictures of "happenings" she produced with lots of naked bodies.  There was furniture upholstered with penises.  There were rooms with huge red and white polka-dot spheres.  We especially liked walking through a black light lit living room with multi-colored dots and a room dark except for strands of changing colored lights and mirrors.

Black Light with Dots

Colored Lights and Mirrors

We also saw "dumb stuff".

Crystal Palace

After the museum, we had a pleasant walk back through Retiro Park - another return to our first day in Spain.  We sat and relaxed in the Park near the Crystal Palace, visited the boating pond, and continued through to Plaza Cibeles.  We had only seen Plaza Cibeles through the window of the airporter bus that had brought us into Madrid after arriving in Spain.  The Plaza is lined by huge government buildings with a large fountain on a roundabout in the middle.  We continued down Gran Via and cut through on a road to Puerta del Sol.  This road was a busy pedestrian walkway where we saw very obvious prostitutes right across from the police station.

We got back and rested and showered.  We headed over to Mercado San Miguel a little early, planning on buying stuff and sitting down and ordering drinks.  It was, however, way too crowded for us to carry out that plan so we sat at Cerveceria La Plaza outside.  This is the place we did not eat last night because it was too dark to read the menu.  The food was very good.  I tried the Iberica ham as a tap because I had seen it listed and because it is very expensive.  It turned out to be the same tapa we had been served for free with water in Toledo.  We had a very good Ensalada Nueces which we hope to try to replicate at home.  It was iceberg lettuce, Granny Smith apples, walnuts, hardboiled egg whites, white mushrooms (not many) and a vinaigrette that had mustard and a bit of sugar.  We also had very good revueltas with ham and some chantrelles.  I had two tintos veranos.  We thought about visiting the Mercado for a sweet to top off our meal, but decided against it because we had splurged on a piece of chocolate cake at the museum for lunch.  Neil did get an ice cream on the way back to the hotel, trying rum raisin instead of his usual dulce de leche.

Back to the hotel to pack! Tomorrow is a long trip back home.

Day 20: July 3 (Madrid)

San Miguel Market

Today was a "free" day.  We slept in and got going at about 10:30 am.  We had coffee on the way to the nearby Convent de Las Descalzas Reales.  The next tour was an hour away, so we did not hang around.  We headed over to the Mercado San Miguel, which was not at all a real market like the Boqueria.  It was housed in an old market building but the vendors inside sold mostly prepared food, wine, etc.  We got some skewers - one with ham and a kind of fritter, one with chicken satay and one with veggies - along with some little roasted potatoes with a dipping sauce that turned out to be very spicy, like butter with chiles.  We also had a delicious dessert called zarzuela, a coffee and hazelnut cream.  We ate that and took the rest for later for a picnic.  Neil finally found a hat that fit, looked good and wasn't too expensive.

Temple of Debod

After the market, we headed for a new (to us) part of town and found the "Temple of Debod" which was moved piece by piece from Egypt in 1968 when the Aswan Dam was finished to save it from flooding.  It was very close and extremely hot inside, especially in the upper floor exhibit hall.  Even the people working there had to step outside and cool off fairly often.  Outside was nice, with a pool of water leading to the temple entrance.  The temple was at the edge of the Western Park which bordered Paseo Rosales.  The neighborhood was very upscale and the park was super pleasant with paths, lawns, plantings, etc.  We walked over to the Telferico aerial tram and cabled over to Casa de Campo.  The tram cars were small - we had our own - compared to the large trams we rode in Monserrat and Barcelona.  There was an audio program that played in the tram during the ride.  We tried to tell the attendant who loaded us into the car that we wanted the English version, but we got Spanish.  From above, we could see the large "project" apartment buildings.  Many of them had center courtyards not visible from the outside.  The park area was huge.  We trammed above an expanse of dry woodlands crossed with bike trails and paths.

The tram to Casa de Campo

The tram station had a vending machine restaurant and opened onto a grassy picnic area with a playground.  We settled under a tree in the picnic area to relax and eat the food we had brought from the market.  In the distance, about a mile away, there was a sprawling amusement park.  Neil rested.  I caught up on some of my journal writing. There were very few people around.  Nearby, on the picnic grounds, was an old couple well settled in with folding chairs and a card table, a couple of younger couples, and a young family with twins and another child all dressed in red.  We thought it would be busier, especially on a Sunday.  It was quiet and restful.

Picnic Scene with Amusement Park

After strolling the grounds, we took the tram back.  Neil, once again, tried to explain that we wanted English for our audio program.  We thought all was understood but, when we started our tram ride, our journey was described in French!!  Clouds had come in during the day, keeping the temperatures down a little (high 80's to low 90's).  We walked through a rose garden which was huge but seemed nowhere near as well kept up as other areas in the park.  As we walked through the park, we saw several groups of picnickers, including several girls playing badminton.  We stopped to relax at a cafe right on the edge of the park on Paseo Rosales.  It was a late afternoon and the service crew was relaxing.  There was only one other customer.  The setting was very nice, across from a pretty fountain and away from the crush of crowds.  We had drinks, cafe con leech, coca cola, and water and we had to pay for it.  This cafe was expensive.  Our small drinks cost us over 10 Euros.

Lunch spot

We headed back to the hotel along the Gran Via, a new route for us. While on the part of Gran Via called Princessa, we saw a traffic accident.  Actually, we heard it as it happened right behind us and we turned to look.  A woman rear-ended a Mercedes which then hit the car in front of it.  Apparently, the women was driving and did not react to the cars stopped at a red light at the intersection. The Mercedes had some damage to the rear but the car that caused the damage was pretty banged up.  All drivers got out and hugged and everyone was okay, although quite a bit of gas was spilling out the front of the damaged car.  Remarkably, three or four police on motorcycles and an ambulance arrived at the scene within about ninety seconds. Wow!  We continued our walk and peeked through the gate of the Palacio de Liria.  When we got back and checked the internet, we found that this palace was privately owned by the Duke of Alba.  It had been rebuilt after having been destroyed in the Spanish Civil War.

Neil has a good map sense of the city by now.  He turned off Gran Via at just the right place to get us back to the hotel.  We read and rested.  After all our travels, I consulted the internet on "how-to" and experimented with the bidet in the bathroom.

Once again, we followed our routine and set out to find dinner at about 10 pm.  Once outside, I went back for my sweater, although it was probably about 75 degrees farenheit! We headed to the Mercado San Miguel where we had started our day.  We sat down at a place right outside the Market, but there was not enough light and we had too much difficulty trying to read the menu.  We left and wandered some more and sat down at a table with a white tablecloth at a place outside the walls of the Plaza Major.  We were very happy with this choice - Cafe de Asquininas.  The placement was such that you could see people strolling, but it was not a beehive of activity.  Our waiter did not have as many tables (compared to other places we have eaten) and he was relaxed, friendly and attentive.  Neil had an egg / green bean / garlic / shrimp dish and I had some fried cod and tuna salad.  Everything was delicious. Toward the end of the meal, we were puzzled as to why all the waiters were all staring raptly down the street.  I asked and found they were looking for a customer who had left something at his table.  Some thereafter, the customer returned to retrieve his guidebook.

Our trip back to the hotel again took us through the Puerto del Sol.  Although there were still crowds of people about, it was much less congested and mellower than last night.  Additionally, there was a lot less garbage.

Day 19: July 2 (Madrid)

We got up around 10 am and went for breakfast at the Chocolateria San Gines. It was yummy the second time too.  Neil, however, said "No more!"  Too filling and too sweet.  There was an older white woman there with a black child.  They were not getting served and I thought it was a race thing but there was a mixed race couple right next to them who had no trouble at all.

The Police Band

We left breakfast and walked to the Royal Palace. The palace was fronted by a huge garden surrounded by very nice buildings.  There were many tour groups evident, including a group on Segways. We heard some music and followed the sound over to a street concert performance of the Madrid Municipal Police Band.  The day was pretty and we enjoyed standing around in the shade and listening for a while.  A woman spoke to Neil in Spanish.  We walked down the street to the tour entrance of the palace.  There was quite a long line to get in, but nothing like the line for the Sagrada Familia.  The tour was expensive, 16 euros, but it included entry to a temporary exhibit of Polish art.

The inner courtyard of the palace

The palace was enormous.  We started in the Royal Armory, a huge collection of various kings' ceremonial suits of armor.  The exhibit included a display of armor for horses.  There was even armor for a dog!  We found the armory more interesting than the actual palace.  We went through the palace along with a tour so we heard some of the information about the room contents and historical context.  It was a lot to absorb.  There were ceremonial rooms, dining rooms, family rooms, etc, and probably only about 10% of the palace was accessible to the public. I felt somewhat claustrophobic in some of the smaller rooms.  We had a good lunch in the Palace cafeteria to build up some energy.  The next stop was the Royal Pharmacy, consisting of rooms lined with shelves on which sat lots and lots of labeled jars.  There was also a room with processing equipment including a still.  Finally, we went through the Polish exhibit.  The exhibit was not too big, well presented and very interesting.  The exhibit ended with paintings by Da Vinci and Rembrandt.  The Da Vinci, "The Girl with the Ermine", was the reason I wanted to see the exhibit.  It is normally in Krakow, so that it was unexpected to encounter it in our travels.  The Rembrandt, "The Girl in the Frame", isn't well known and has not often been exhibited to the public.  We had difficulty trying to find more information on the internet about this painting, partly because we couldn't find a good translation for the Spanish word "marca".

Stained Glass in Catedral Almuden

After leaving the palace, we wandered across a large courtyard which was under renovation until we reached the Catedral Almudena.  This cathedral was completed in 1993, after 200 years of construction.  It was Neil's favorite cathedral, very light inside with beautiful, brightly colored ceilings and very modern stained glass.  There were a lot of priests up on the pulpit energetically discussing something.  We left and walked around the corner where there was an archeological excavation.  Across the street from the dig, a big well-to-do wedding party was spilling out the doors, cheering the bride and groom.

We walked down to the Sabatini Gardens on the other side of the Royal Palace.  Taking a stairway down from the street, we strolled through the gardens and past a stage set up for a presentation of Swan Lake on Ice later that evening as part of the citywide Verrano en Madrid program of events.  Finally, we headed back to the hotel for our early evening rest.  The crowds through the Puerta del Sol and Plaza Callao were already large and growing on this Saturday night.  Once in our room, I did my usual laundry chore.  I called about doing a Segway tour, but all tours were booked through the next week. I read for a while, then napped.

Teatro Espanol at night from Plaza Santa Ana

We went out in search of dinner at about 9:30 pm.  We turned the other direction away from Plaza Major and went to Plaza Santa Ana, which fronts a very colorfully lit Teatro Espanol.  This is a square known for its outdoor dining and it was crowded.  We grabbed a table at the Cervecia Alemana.  The table area was being serviced by one waiter, and he was busy!!  We had a huge salad, tortilla espana and albondigas.  I tried some "apple beer" from Asturias and liked it.  This beer is traditionally served by pouring it into a glass from a bottle held overhead, but I did not get this treatment. Crowds were enormous.  It was 11:30 pm and the playground in the plaza was filled with kids.  There was a schizophrenic guy quasi-living in the plaza "acting out" while we ate.

We were literally stepping over people sitting everywhere on the street on our way back to the hotel.  The public trash cans were full and overflowing into the streets with refuse from fast food places.  I think that it is kind of a Spanish thing to throw trash on the ground.  It appears that a good part of the local government budget must go into paying the many municipal trash workers we have seen working at all hours.  The trash is quickly collected and, generally, streets in Spain are very clean.  Heading back, the Gay Pride event was going strong with loud techno music entertaining the crowds.

Day 18: July 1 (Madrid - Toledo - Madrid)

We got up and took the metro to the Atocha train station for an early departure to Toledo.  We were back at the train station we had left at the beginning of our trip.  Full circle - a reminder that we'd been traveling for a while and our trip was nearing its end.  Even though we had been there before, we were turned around and had to ask directions to the AVE train platform.  We were early enough to grab a coffee at the train station before departure.

Toledo rail station

We arrived in the train station in Toledo and grabbed a bus up the hill to the center of the historic section.  Even though it was still early, it was already stiflingly hot.  We were somewhat confused about where we were when the bus dropped us off but we stumbled around and found the central information center and got a map. We headed off to the cathedral first.  The cathedral museum had an impressive collection of art -  El Grecos, Titians, Van Dykes, Goyas and more.  Neil liked the perspective of the ceiling art in the museum. It looked look you were really looking at the ceiling scene from below.  There was also an interesting alabaster and marble sculpture called "El Transparente" which was showcased by natural light from a hole cut into the ceiling for this purpose.  The hole was decorated to look like the entrance to heaven.  The side chapels were very large.

After the cathedral, we stopped at a bar with some tables set outside for some cool drinks and early lunch.  The waiter looked dismayed that we were there, which turned out to be because they weren't really ready to be serving lunch.  We ordered some bottled water, which the waiter brought along with some delicious Serrano ham tapas appetizers.

Tower of San Tome

We visited San Tome nearby which housed "The Burial of Count Orgaz", by El Greco.  This was my mother's favorite painting.  She had the poster on the wall of her bedroom.  I was interested in seeing it in person.  Here (and everywhere) Toledo was swarming with huge tour groups of all kinds.  I was a little overwhelmed by the crowds at every stop of interest.  Now that it is July, schools are out everywhere and summer vacation is in full swing.  We are caught in the tourist crush and have to live with it.    One thing I do not understand is the point of having so many churches so close to a giant cathedral.

Next on our wanderings was a temple, converted to a monastery, finally to a church. It is now restored to serve as the Sephardic Museum, telling the story of Jews in Spain.  I found it depressing.  It did not address what happened to the Jews on Spain.  It was more an examination as if the Jews were some kind of exotic zoo animal.  Very odd!

Once back out on the streets we were really hot and hungry.  We searched for a restaurant and ended up at a nice (air conditioned) sit down place called Adolpho's.  It was a gourmet type menu where, once again, we were unsure of what we were ordering.  Unfortunately, there were no English speakers among the staff.  We ended up ordering carpaccio, something we thought was thinly sliced meat.  We were partly right.  It was thinly sliced raw venison.  The other thing we ordered was torta de cabra y oveja, which turned out to be a big ball of melted cheese.  The venison wasn't bad.  The cheese was quite heavy.

Festive street

After lunch, we walked around in the heat.  Our energy was gone and our heart wasn't in it.  We waked back across the city to the main gate and found a place to sit at the Cafe and Te in Zodocover square at about 3 pm.  We nursed a smoothie and ice cream.  The weather was rapidly changing.  It clouded up, but it was still oppressively hot.  I was somewhat revived.  Sitting at our table, I reflected that, throughout the day, i had noticed  many people in religious attire out and about.  I saw many nuns as well as a priest smoking outside a church talking on his cel phone.  I had also noticed many buildings and balconies strung with garlands of flowers.  The streets were covered with shade tarps, as I had noticed in other cities.  I struck up a conversation with an English speaker, an air traffic controller, who told me that a some of my observations were explained by the fact that a religious festival had just ended in Toledo.

Alcantara Bridge

We left the city by the main gate and walked down the hill, crossing the river on the Alcantara Bridge, and arrived at the rail station.  The rail station is, itself, a very distinctive mudejar structure.  The train we caught was one of the last going back to Madrid.  It had about ten cars, as opposed to the three or four cars of the train we had arrived on this morning.  There were many people waiting.  We waited about an hour, sitting on a bench outside along the track where the train was waiting for boarding.  When we finally boarded, we were thrilled by the wonderful air-conditioning. The train left right on schedule.  In fact, every bus train and airplane during our entire trip has been right on time.  The longest wait we have had for the Metro in the cities has been four minutes, with waiting time of two minutes the norm.

The hotel was bliss after the train / Metro back.  I immediately took a bath while Neil checked online with his ipod.  We went out and ate at a different place in the Plaza Major at around 10 pm.  We decided that, based on our limited experience, the places in the Plaza were too tourist oriented to serve really quality food.  We still really do not understand some of the cultural ethic here, like why do waiters bother at all if they are not getting tips?  The Plaza and surrounds were more crowded tonight than last night, probably because it is Friday.  It even sprinkled a little tonight, but not enough to notice.