Out of Portugal

I loved Portugal. I hate to have to leave it. But we've been in Spain for four days now and it's time to get up to date.

We zipped back to Lisbon by train and flew to Madrid for some ridiculously low fare. Of course the fact that there was no boarding lounge for the flight and it turned up 20 minutes or so late (some comments being made about siesta by jaded English-speakers among the waiting throng) had nothing to do with the low price. It arrived safely and more or less on time - and we didn't care anyway.

Ron had found a hotel for us right in the center of everything, nicely placed between two metro stations. Our first night we had supper at a very nice tapas bar (Canmore's Tapas has nothing to be ashamed of, though). Then we tried to sleep through the nightlife of the Madrileños carried on right outside our hotel window. They're extraverted night people, these Spaniards.

The next day, Sunday, we did the Prado museum - Spanish art from the beginning to the 19th century. On Sunday's it's free, and the lineups were impressive. So were the buskers - really competent musicians who made the waiting tolerable. The art varied from the mildly amusing (Elijah being fed in the wilderness by the birds - when I suggested that it was special delivery from Tim Horton's a couple of young Americans near us lost it completely) to really mind-blowing (El Greco for me, and Velazquez' portrait of the young princess with her courtiers). I'm glad we saw it. One more tick mark for our life list.

Then we caught the hop-on-hop-off bus to Plaza Colón, the monument to Christopher Columbus' voyage. I haven't been able to join in with the glorification of Columbus, partly because since reading 1421 I realize that the Chinese and the Portuguese did it first, and partly because I remember how it turned out for the native North Americans. Nevertheless, I liked the monument listing the members of Columbus' crew. They were the ones who really did it, after all.

Then we went to a bull fight. Ron expected, and so did I, that I'd be disgusted by the blood and suffering. If you look at it in the moment without the context of human history and mythology, it is disgusting. But I kept remembering the place we'd seen where bulls were sacrificed as part of the rites of Serapis, and realizing that Madrid's patron goddess is Kybele, the ancient earth goddess, whose worship included the sacrifice of bulls, and I looked at the men as they got ready for their encounter with the untamed wild (Ron had found us some superb seats right in the first row behind where the toreadors got ready). And I realized that there was an ancient and deeply symbolic ritual being enacted there, and somehow that made it all right. I don't know yet what it meant, and if I could put it in words I wouldn't be doing it justice. There's something older than civilization happening in the bull fight. It says something about death, which we all face - and the bulls are given a chance to face it heroically - and masculinity, which I can't understand. It's a profound experience and carried out with the respect it deserves. I've seen Christian masses carried out less respectfully and profoundly (I've celebrated my share of them). I don't know what the rest of the spectators got out of it, but I found it a deeply significant experience.

And then we went back to our hotel and had dinner at the little restaurant beside it. A neighborhood bar sort of place that felt very comfortable and homey. Our waiter was a cheerful Costa Rican; his colleagues were from all over the Spanish-speaking world, and so was everyone who came in. The food was good, too.

Monday we did the laundry - always an experience when you're a tourist. We were helped to figure out the machines by a young Spanish man, and we taught a German-Spanish couple what we'd learned. Then we went to the Queen Sophia museum of modern art to see Picasso's Guernica (moved me to tears) and some other stuff. Finally we went to the railway station to get our tickets for Granada, and discovered the wonderful gardens in the remodelled 19th-century structure. We had lunch there and I had a moment of truth when I decided I wouldn't settle for the crappy glass of wine I'd been given. Called the waitress over: "No es vinho (Portuguese - oops!)." I said, "es agua" (This isn't wine, it's water!) I said. And she went away and brought me a glass that was maybe half wine - big improvement. Don't eat in the Madrid railway station.

Finally we finished the hop-on-hop-off tour. It was becoming really cold and windy, and by the end we were huddling downstairs in the covered area. I guess it's only March still.

Tuesday we went by train to Granada. We left early and we both slept a lot, but we travelled 1st class and were blown away by the service - breakfast served in our seats, etc. We got settled in at our hotel (Posada Pilar del Toro, a very nice place), walked around a bit, and caught the hop-on-hop-off bus for a tour around the larger town. This being off-season, our tickets are good for two days, not just the 24 hours they promise.

Today we got another tick mark on our life list by visiting the Alhambra. What a beautiful place! Those words are totally inadequate. I think the Moorish kings tried to make it a vision of heaven on earth, and they came awefully close. It is one of the most beautiful human creations I have ever seen. If you go to Spain you must go there, and you must buy the tickets well in advance if you're coming in tourist season. As we saw at the Prado, the Spanish are very sensible about allowing a reasonable number of people in at a time. You can't enjoy humanity's most profound creations in a crowd, especially a Spanish crowd. So book ahead. And go. This is one place that you must see.

Tonight we had dinner at a little restaurant - Café au Lait - just behind the cathedral, not far from here. We went because they advertised a flamenco show in our hop-on-hop-off bus map. We lucked out again. Our hotel wanted us to go on an expensive tour to a cave somewhere where we would see a jaded tourist-oriented show. We weren't feeling up to that, so we walked the 10 minutes to the café and enjoyed a good-enough meal with some excellent dancing by a young woman who reminded us of both Evan's Anna and our Rachel. I told her she danced with her head and her heart and and body, and she cried. She wasn't some jaded old woman who'd been doing it for a lifetime. She was a student of the art and knew it inside out. Worth doing.

So tomorrow we leave for Malaga, then Gatwick, then Izmir - the cheapest way by far, tourist agent Ron says. Stay tuned.