Meandering on the Way — March 18 to 24, 2025

Tuesday, March 18th

We did some grocery shopping today. The store is just 600 feet away, which isn’t very far, but we do have to walk home carrying all that stuff. And suppose that your items happened to include, as was the case today, a liter of newly squeezed orange juice, 1.2 liters of San Pellegrino, 1.25 litres of limonada, and a bottle of wine. At one point, M wondered if maybe we should stop buying so many liquids. E showed little enthusiasm for that idea, but she did pull one of the bottles out of M’s bag and place it in her own.

Once our larder was resupplied, we had a light lunch and then set off for a visit to the Prado Museum. We took the metro and got off at a stop called Estación del Arte (Art Station—kind of a no-brainer.) When we came up out of the metro, rain was pouring down like crazy; and it turned out the Estación del Arte is actually three fourths of a mile away from the building that has the art in it. There were rivers running everywhere in the streets and you needed to stay far away from where the cars were splashing by. When we finally got to the museum, we were pretty damp despite our raincoats. Luckily, the museum was warm and over the next hour or two we slowly dried off.

It’s a big museum, so we planned to focus on just three artists: Velasquez, Goya, and Federico de Madrazo, Madrazo being the painter who did the portrait of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda that we liked so much at the Galdiano Museum last week.

First we found the big Velasquez section, which of course included Las Meninas. Then in the Goya section we saw many portraits of Spanish aristocrats (yawn) but also some other things, like Two Old Men Eating Soup and the double masterpiece Second of May/Third of May, 1908 about violence during the French invasion of Spain. And somewhere along the line we also found another striking painting by Madrazo: the Portrait of Amalia Llano.

We also found the coffee shop on Floor 0. It is huge and efficient. So nice to have a place to sit for a spell. That gave us enough energy to buy a couple of t-shirts. And when we got outside again, had the rain stopped? Yes.

Wednesday, March 19th

We went to the city of Toledo today. Instead of driving or going by train, we had decided to book a bus tour. That meant that we had to get ourselves down to Callao in time for a 9:00 AM departure. The bus was huge and very full. The weather was fine, no rain in Madrid and a lot of sun forecast for Toledo. It was a one hour ride to Toledo and the first part was pretty drab as we passed through an endless succession of business parks and light industrial sites that lined both sides of the freeway. E remembered that the area had long been known as the place you went to buy furniture. And still today, there are lots of furniture outlets. Oddly enough, we also law lots of Asian restaurants—hot pot shops and so on. Does this mean that Spaniards who make furniture tend to like Asian food? Maybe. But more likely it indicates that Chinese furniture maker reps make frequent visits here.

During the second half of the trip the views improved a little, showing us some open country and green fields. And when we got to the city of Toledo the views got radically better, which is one reason people like to go to Toledo. In the first phase of our tour the bus drove us around the edges of the old town so we could experience some of its more photogenic aspects.

The city was originally founded on easily defensible high ground above the river. The earliest remains are from the Bronze Age.
The old city is set in a bend of the Tagus River, the longest river in the Iberian peninsula. As you can see, rain in the region has been plentiful this year. The previous two years were dry.

Big tour buses cannot navigate the streets of the old city, so our bus dropped us off at a place at the bottom of the hill. Our bus load of 60 tourists was separated into two groups of 30. Headphones and radio receivers were distributed, and our two guides led us onto a long series of escalators that took us up to where the action was. We spent two hours walking around with the guide. Among the high points was an old synagogue that looked more like a mosque to us, but which in any case had been turned into a church when Spain ejected the Jews in 1492. Just a year earlier, the Christian armies of Castille and Aragon had ended the Muslim presence by winning the battle for Granada. Those two developments marked a major change; Muslims had been living in Spain for eight hundred years while Jews had been around for more than a thousand.

This meant that in Toledo’s formative years, it was inhabited by members of all three religions, who managed to live together largely in harmony. Today all of the tourist brochures call it “a city of three cultures.” So why not go there and take a look at a synagogue that looks like a mosque, which has been turned into a church?

The gold decoration at the back was added when the building became a church. Previously the back wall might have been plain white.

Another stop on the tour was at the church of Santo Tomé to see a famous El Greco painting called The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. It was painted in 1586 to depict events said to have occurred in Toledo 250 years before. In 1323 a miracle occurred when two saints (St. Stephen and St. Augustine) came down from heaven to personally lay to rest the body of a nobleman and philanthropist named Don Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, a.k.a. The Count of Orgaz.

Our guide pointed out some interesting aspects of this painting. First we have to understand that the bottom half shows the scene down on earth where the burial is going on; the top part is meant to show heaven where Don Gonzalo’s soul is being welcomed in. Something else we might notice in the earthly half is that everybody is either watching the body be interred or else gazing up at heaven—except for two figures on the left just next to the robed figure.

The two figures are El Greco himself and his son. El Greco is the one who is looking somewhere off to the left and El Greco junior is looking straight out at us and pointing to the part of the picture where the main action is. Our guide said that El Greco deliberately depicted himself as not looking at the burial because he wanted to make it clear that he had not personally witnessed the miracle, (which occurred 200 years before he was born.) That almost makes sense…but not quite.

Another tour stop was the massive Toledo cathedral with its many incredible decorations. But sometimes we tire of cathedrals, so here is a clip that includes just one of the cathedral towers along with a little of the street below.

Thursday, March 20th

We spent this day doing chores around the house and exploring the neighborhood. For lunch we got take-out from a deli just a couple of blocks away. We’d passed by it several times but had never been inside. It turned out to be interesting. E got a sort of twice-baked eggplant dish: half a long eggplant stuffed with chopped eggplant, tomatoes and sweet peppers. M got a pastrami sandwich. We had heard from M-HP that pastrami was having a moment in Madrid and sure enough, there it was, right in our neighborhood.

Later on we went out for a drink at a restaurant called 11 Knots. We sat out on their terrace. It was just what E had been looking for and we were there right at sunset. Not that we saw any sunset. For one thing, the sky was totally cloudy and for another, the main view from the 11 Knots terrace is of the upper floors of the apartment building across the street. But still, it was a treat to be up high above some of the streets where we walk every day. As we were sipping, a light rain began to fall. Happily, the terrace had a big awning and several heat sources, so that was nice too.

Friday, March 21st

E invited a guest for a late lunch today. We got some lasagna from our newly discovered deli and E made a salad. Our guest brought dessert: an amazing pistachio cheesecake. (It seems that cheesecake is also much in fashion here.)

Since we were entertaining, we decided to use the formal dining room…

Saturday, March 22nd

Dinner at M and P’s with the old gang. Wonderful meal and lively conversation.

The occasion featured two desserts: Milhojas de Crema and Pastel Ruso.

Milhojas originated in France, where it is called Mille-Feuille. (Either way, that comes out as Thousand Sheets.) This is an internet photo of Milhojas de Crema; The one we had looked better than this, but unfortunately we did not take pictures.
Pastel Ruso was also invented in France, to honor the occasion of Czar Alexander the Second’s visit to the Paris Exhibition of 1855. But Spanish sources say that it is neither Russian nor French. It was created by a team of Spanish chefs who had been brought to France by Napoleon the Third’s wife, Eugenia de Montijo. She was from Granada and when she married and moved to Paris, she took her cooks with her.

Sunday, March 23rd

Just a relaxing Sunday. We decided to go for a walk in Retiro Park, which is not so far away; but when we got there, we found that the whole park was closed! They had some weak excuse, but never mind. The weather was mostly sunny and it was nice just to walk around town a little, stopping for coffee and a shared dessert along the way.

Monday, March 24th

Error Alert! Contrary to what you may have read in one of our previous posts, the modern incarnation of MG Motors does in fact make smallish convertibles. This is the Cyberster, made by SAIC in China. It is 20 inches longer than a 1962 MGB roadster and, being an EV, weighs more than twice as much. Not really a sports car.

Meandering on the Way — March 11 to 17, 2025

Tuesday, March 11th

We set off to Barcelona today, primarily to see the current state of the Sagrada Familia, which is, of course, a Catholic church. But because it has been designated by the Pope as being of special importance, it might be best referred to as a basílica. Whatever you call it, it is certainly unique. When the building was begun in 1872, the initial plan was to construct a conventional gothic style church. But that definitely did not happen. For whatever reason, in 1873 the original architect resigned and was replaced by Antonio Gaudí, who created a new design that mixed gothic elements with Modernismo, an artistic and cultural movement related to Art Nouveau. Gaudí continued to apply his extremely fertile brain to the project until his death in 1926, at which point the project was about one quarter complete. In the following years, progress was slow and sporadic. In 1985, when M last saw it, the building had a couple of impressive looking towers but not much in the way of walls. Since then, however, things have speeded up, partly due to advances in construction techniques, especially computer aided design and milling. The goal now is to have the building essentially finished by 2026, the 100 year anniversary of Gaudí’s passing.

Our Sagrada Familia tickets were for Wednesday, so today we just did a little warm-up by going to see what is probably the most famous Gaudí-designed residence, the Casa Battló, which is located on a broad Barcelona avenue called Passeig de Gracia.

And while we’re in the neighborhood, here’s another house just two doors up the street.

Wednesday, March 12th

The Sagrada Familia is a massive tourist attraction, so when you buy your tickets online, you also get an assigned entry time. In costs $38 to enter, unless you want to go up in one of the towers, in which case it costs $80. But never mind that, because you have to reserve weeks or months in advance for the towers. We arrived at the site about half an hour before our scheduled entry time. So we sat down at an outdoor cafe to have some coffee and take a picture. It wasn’t quite warm enough to sit outside, but the view was great, so we enjoyed it anyway.

The main structure is more or less complete, but, several of the towers remain unfinished.

Soon it was time to make our entrance through the east side of the building, which is named the Nativity Facade.

This facade was the only one that was completed during Gaudi’s lifetime.
Here you can see some details. Gaudí was fond of details.

Next it was time to go inside. There, things looked a little different. The branching pillars are just one striking feature of the interior.

One thing that is finished is the stained glass. It is awesome.
Some of the interior columns have embellishments that are sure to be symbolic of…something or other.

Eventually we were ready to go outside again. We exited on the opposite side of the building. As we came out, we saw lots of people looking up toward something just above the our heads. When we also turned to look, we saw what is called the Passion Facade. Gaudi designed the church to have three great facades, all very different looking. Two of the facades of are finished and the third, the Glory Facade, is still under construction.

Is this the same building?

After the church, it was time to meet Andrea’s cousin P and his father J for lunch. After a fifteen minute walk, we met them at a restaurant called Molina de Pez, (The Fish Mill.) It was a long, leisurely meal with lots of interesting conversation. P has studied at McGill and later at Harvard and also has an interest in veterinary medicine. His father and Roberto were cousins, so J also knew Roberto’s father. J remembered meeting E once before, when she and Roberto made a visit to Barcelona while they were living in Madrid in the 70’s.

Besides some talking, there was also some eating. For starters there were croquetas de jamón serrano, ostras, and boquerones fritos—ham croquettes, oysters, and fried anchovies. For their main course, E and M split a sea bass, which was presented whole and then separated by our server at the table. A fish should swim thrice, they used to say, once in the ocean, once in butter and once in good wine. Yup. And by the way, if anyone is wondering what fried anchovies taste like, M notes that they do not taste anything like the anchovies that are found on some particularly unpalatable pizzas. Fried anchovies are good.

Thursday, March 13th

We got up and had breakfast at our hotel: the Catalonia Park Putxet. You have to pay extra to get breakfast there, but it’s an awfully good breakfast. Eve still raves about the eggs. And the orange juice came from one of those machines that squeeze some oranges for you while you wait. Oh yeah. Today we were able to have a leisurely breakfast before packing up and heading back to Madrid.

On this trip we traveled by train. There are several different companies that operate intercity trains in Spain, all of them running at around 150 MPH. Our Iryo train included one intermediate stop in Zaragoza and covered the 380 miles from Barcelona to Madrid in a total of two hours and forty-five minutes. That speed is about normal for high speed rail in Spain. For comparison, trains in China run at around 180 MPH while Japanese bullet trains and some German trains run at around 200 MPH. Japan, China and Germany also have a limited number of maglev trains, which travel at about 350 MPH.

Friday, March 14th

Today we had to go downtown to pick up E’s new pants from the seamstress. The shop was called The Little Seamstresses, but we only saw one. She was normal sized and also delightful. M’s Spanish lesson of the day consisted of the words written in white on the sign—dressmaking, tailoring and alterations.

While we were downtown, we made an obligatory stop at another of E’s favorite places, a rooftop eating area called the Terraza Corte Inglés Callao that is also, apparently, known as the Corte Inglés Gourmet Experience Gran Via. This is a little confusing whether you speak Spanish or not. Anyway, we got there around 12:30 PM, early enough so that it wasn’t too crowded; so we were able to get a tiny table by the window. We had a vermut and a snack and looked down at the city, just as E had done so many times in a former era.

Saturday, March 15th

Today we went out to meet E’s old friend M. (This M used to work at Hewlett-Packard, so we will be referring to him as M-HP to avoid confusion with M-OSU.) He took us walking along the banks of the Manzanares River. The area used to be a freeway but is now a long, park-like river walk, a change that happened partly because two sections of the above ground freeway were converted to tunnels in the mid 2000’s. M-HP grew up in a nearby neighborhood that is located just across the river from the Royal Palace Gardens. When he lived there, it formed the extreme edge of the city. The city has expanded greatly since, but the area where he lived has changed little.

It is a very quiet area, completely different from the hubbub and tourist crush of the main downtown plazas, which are not all that far away. At least we thought it was quiet, until M-HP motioned us in through the doorway of the old Tirso de Molina Market. We say “old” because the place had clearly been built to house an open market back in the days before we had grocery stores. So you have to imagine a largish rectanglar space with an iron frame holding up a simple roof to keep the food vendors from getting rained and snowed upon. This view shows the basic idea:

This is a nice enough picture, but it has one big problem, at least from our point of view. When we were there, instead of three people on this aisle, there were twenty or so. And of course it does not show all of the food sellers. There are in fact 15 retail stands or mini-shops, including five butcher shops, two charcuteries, one bakery, one fruit and vegetable stand, one gourmet foods shop, one Asian market, one pickle and olive stand, one fresh fish seller, one organic food shop, and one cake and pastry stand. There are also a few restaurants and bars in the market, eighteen of them in fact. We said that the space was largish, but it isn’t that large, so all those bars and restaurants have to be small. The eateries spill out into the aisles and the whole place was jammed with customers. The customers were all drinking one thing or another—mostly beer. All them were talking and they were all talking loud enough to be heard above the noise of all the other talkers. And so, once we passed through the door, the neighborhood totally stopped being quiet. We found that it all worked quite smoothly and it was pretty clear that a good time was being had by all.

We put our name in for a table in the paella restaurant and drank a vermut at a bar nearby. The bar was just a tiny stand but was hugely busy. We spent 20 minutes there and then sat down at the paella place to eat. E had a portion of vegan paella with artichokes and M had some paella Valenciana, a carnivore’s dish that is made with the (unwilling) assistance of chickens and rabbits. It was pretty good, but he still prefers the seafood varieties.

There were six different paellas on offer.

Lastly, here’s proof that we are not just making all this up. We are actually in Madrid.

Sunday, March 16th

Today’s expedition was to the Lázaro Galdiano Museum. Galdiano lived from 1862 to 1947 and spent most of his life in Madrid. A number of sources describe him as “a journalist, magazine editor, and collector.” Okay, fine. But check out his house, which is now the home of the museum. Is this the house of a magazine editor?

Must have been some magazine.

Construction of the house began in 1904, soon after Galdiano’s 1903 marriage to Paula Florido y Toledo. The museum website describes Florido as a “dama rica Argentina, tres veces viuda (a rich Argentine woman, three times a widow.) Okay…that might partly explain the house, which nowadays contains a huge collection of things: paintings, furniture, sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, coins, and weapons, most dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The most interesting painting for E was this portrait of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, a 19th century Cuban-born Spanish writer.

E remembers reading one of her books for a college Spanish class and being impressed to have a woman writer included in the curriculum. There was also a nice El Greco painting called Saint Francis in Ecstasy. In addition to the paintings, the entire interior of the house is a work of art in itself and the old furniture pieces are amazing.

This 400 year old table is beautiful, but it has a broken piece of inlay, so it’s probably not worth much.
This desk is in better shape, but it doesn’t have any holes to put your cords through, so what good is it?

Monday, March 17th

Nothing much going on today, just resting up and doing a little planning. Also laundry and maybe a little purse shopping. Only two weeks left here.

Meandering on the Way — March 3 to 10, 2025

Monday, March 3rd

The day started with an hour long metro journey to the airport. We had to negotiate a couple of flights of stairs along the way, but that was okay. This time we were travelling light—no big suitcases. There were masses of people at Barajas airport and at first the security check area looked like chaos. But it turned out that the lines were moving amazingly fast. The only hard part was that Barajas Terminal 4 is one of those places that is primarily a shopping mall and only incidentally an airport.

It was a two-hour flight to Naples, time enough for a very good meal. As our plane descended, we got a pretty view of the Bay of Naples. Everything went smoothly at the airport and pretty soon we were out in the sunshine trying to figure out where to catch the shuttle to the rental cars. We’d been following signs, but the signs had pretered out. We found the shuttle anyway, and twenty minutes later we were behind the wheel of an MG, the first Chinese car we had ever been in. For those of a certain age, the MG part might sound strange, but we assure you it’s true. In Europe and Asia MG is a major car brand. MG’s are produced in China by a company called SAIC. They make sedans and SUV’s instad of little convertibles, but they do legally own the MG trademark.

The moment we pulled out of the rental car lot was the point at which our Italian adventure really began. With M driving and E helping Siri navigate, we had to get ourselves out of Naples and onto the autopista, then drive thirty or so miles to the city of Pompei and find our hotel. We didn’t do it the easy way because of course we missed an important early turn. And of course driving in Italy is…a little different. We recognized it though; it was like driving in Cyprus, except just a little easier because at least in Italy they drive on the right. So the actual driving part wasn’t bad. Navigating was harder. Siri was generally okay, but not always precise. E quickly learned how to make up for those shortcomings and whaddya know, after a while there we were in front of our hotel, right across the street from the Pompei Archaeological Park. But now what? We knew that the hotel offered free parking, but there was no indication of where that might be. This being Italy, we stopped in a No Parking zone and E went into the hotel to ask. Turns out, you had to go around to a little side street, stop at a locked gate and push a button. We did that and after a moment the gate started to slide open. As M maneuvered the MG through the opening, we saw that we were entering a very lovely combination car park and people park. The first thing we noticed was a huge lemon tree bearing equally huge lemons. We thought they were grapefruit—but they weren’t. Anyway…whew. Long day. And prettiest parking lot we’ve ever seen.

Turesday, March 4th

This was the big day! We’d booked a tour with an archeologist guide that started at 10:00. We met our group at a place called Porta Marina, which, back in 79 AD, was one of the main gates into the city of old Pompei. Old Pompei was a port city, and the Porta Marina was very close to the docks. Before we walked up through the gate we were in fact standing directly above where the old docks had been. The eruption threw out so much debris that the old docks were now thirty feet below us and the sea was more than a mile away.

The Pompei Archeological Park is a big place and our guided tour covered only a part of it, but there was plenty to see.

Of course we got to see some of the plaster casts that give such detailed representations of some of the victims. Many people died quickly, being buried under tons of hot ash. Over time, their bodies and clothing decomposed, leaving hollow spaces in the layer of volcanic debris. A man named Giuseppe Fiorelli was the first archeologist to develop a technique for using these spaces as molds to make plaster casts.

We also saw a number of surviving mosaic floors and frescoed walls.

This mosaic is at the entrance of a place called the Wounded Bear Tavern.
Inside the Wounded Bear, there is a well-preserved shrine and a partially complete fresco.
One of the best frescos we saw was this one.

These photos may not show it, but in fact there were tourists everywhere in the park. The photo below was taken at what seemed to be the most popular attraction of all. It was, of course, an ancient brothel. The photo shows one of the rooms. In the tavern part of the establishment, which was just across a very narrow street, archeologists have been able to read the posted price list. Glass of wine: 1 coin. Glass of really good Falernian wine: 4 coins. Prostitute: 2 coins.

And speaking of sex, penises were everywhere in old Pompei. They symbolized fertility, growth and prosperity, so having a phallus displayed was thought to ensure the success of a business. Below is an example. It appears on the outside wall of some kind of shop, just above the name of the business.

Of course, no good luck charm is infalible, and 79 AD was a really bad year…

And finally, in this picture taken from the window of our hotel breakfast room, we see a tranquil view of Vesuvius, the mountain that caused it all.

That’s Vesuvius on the left. Mt Somma, to the right, is a much older volcano that has collapsed.

Wednesday, March 5th

Early morning sights and sounds from our hotel room balcony..

You might think that Vesuvius would be satisfied with burying one city under thousands of tons of debris. But no. During the two-day eruption, the wind direction varied. At some point the wind blew north toward the city of Herculaneum. So that town too was buried, and hundreds of people died there as well. Only a small area of Herculaneum has been uncovered, but we heard that the ruins there were in somewhat better condition than the ones in Pompei. So, after breakfast we packed a lunch, fired up the MG, and set out to see if we could find them. Eventually, after a certain amount of trial and error, we did.

Like the Pompei ruins, the Herculaneum ruins are bordered by a modern cityscape. Also like old Pompei, old Herculaneum was a port city, right at the edge of the sea. More than a hundred people died beneath the arches at the bottom of this photo. They had gathered there in hopes of escaping the city by boat.
This was a food stand/restaurant. There are tons of these in both Pompei and Herculaneum. Archeologists think that most people in Pompei were poor and did not cook food in the small spaces that they lived in. Everybody got cheap take-out.
These frescos are inside a building used by a group who worshipped the god/emperor Augustus

There is a nice little park in the middle of the Herculaneum ruins. It has Mediterranean pines, olive trees, pomegranate trees, and a flower or two. There is also a little glass booth full of books and magazines and, best of all, a big rack of lounge chairs for anyone who feels like resting for a while.

And if you don’t want to read—maybe because most of the reading material is in Italian—you can just lie back and enjoy the view upward.

Thursday, March 6th

Since 79 AD, there have been more than two dozen further eruptions on Vesuvius. These have been relatively small, but still have caused many fatalities. A major eruption today would be catastrophic. Three million people live near Vesuvius, making it the most potentially life threatening volcano in the world.

Today we went to see the top of the mountain. A small tour bus took us most of the way; we hiked the last mile.

The Bay of Naples from near the top.
The red building is where the bus dropped us off. You can see a fairly recent lava flow at the base of the mountains.
The crater at the top of Vesuvius
The mountain still has a little steam action going on.

Our flight back to Spain was going to leave very early the next morning. So at the end of the day we drove to back to Naples and checked into a hotel near the airport, saying goodbye to the MG in the process.

Friday, March 7th

The Naples airport is old and a little cramped, not much fun at 5:00 in the morning. But it did its job and we were in the air by 6:30. We were on the ground in Madrid by 9:00 and back into our little apartamento by 10:00. We did some grocery shopping and some laundry and in the evening made ourselves a non-Italian dinner of tuna sandwiches and gazpacho. The food in Pompei was fine, but it was also tourist town Italian, with masses of cheese and carbs. We needed a break.

Saturday, March 8th

We did some miscellaneous errands today: pharmacy, grocery shopping for what we forgot yesterday, and some general searching for this and that.

We ate dinner at home again, still trying to keep it simple: garbanzos and rice with a few spoons of homemade chutney. This was followed by a chocolate or two from a Madrid shop call La Mallorquina. Couldn’t stay away from that.

Sunday, March 9th

We met L and daughter S for lunch today. They were in the neighborhood visiting the archeological museum, so meeting up was easy. We ate at a nearby restaurant and then invited them back to our place for tea. E had been dying to do this and it was fun. It was also nice to get to know S a little better, especially since she showed us how to get more channels on our TV.

Monday, March 10th

¡Chocolate con churros in la Chocolateria San Ginés! Nos sentamos en la sala principal al lado de una foto de Tina Turner.

Meandering on the Way — Feb. 25 to Mar. 2, 2025

Tuesday, February 25th

We went to an archeological museum today, the Museo Arqueológico Nacional. It’s quite near to us, just a 20 minute walk. The exhibits focus on the Iberian Peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal) from the Stone Age up through medieval times.

One of the most famous items in the collection is a limestone bust called La Dama de Elche.

The bust was created sometime in the 4th Century BC. Experts believe that it is an image of the Carthaginian goddess Tanit, who was worshipped in some parts of Iberia at that time. The bust was found in 1897 by a farm worker who was clearing land near the town of Elche, Spain. The landowner placed the bust on a balcony at the front of his house so that everyone who passed would be able to see it. Soon, however, news of the discovery spread to Paris and the Louvre offered to buy La Dama for 4,000 francs, a large sum of money for the time. Thus La Dama resided in Paris for many years. Finally, in 1941, the French and Spanish governments signed an agreement that resulted in her return to Spain.

Today the Dama de Elche is exhibited next to another 4th Century BC sculpture, a seated figure called the Lady of Baza.

Wednesday, February 26th

Well…there’s a birthday coming up. Time to do some present shopping. First we went downtown because E wanted to look for some makeup at a famous department store called El Corte Inglés. It was only two Metro stops away, so that was easy. And it was pretty easy to find the gigantic cosmetics section. In fact the only difficulty at El Corte Inglés was the price of things. Of course that was to be expected, but still it was a shock and E decided to put off most of her purchases for another time and place.

But what about some clothes shopping? For that we left the area around Puerta del Sol and walked a few blocks down toward the Plaza España. There we found a store called Zara, a much more congenial place. Another big difficulty, though, is that the styles are so different here, first because they’re so European and second because they’re so urban. But E was up to the challenge.

We passed several Metro entrances during our travels today. Here are photos of two of them. We’ve edited out the station names. But even without labels, perceptive readers might be able to tell which is Chueca and which is Plaza España.

Thursday, February 27th

And then, suddenly, it was the day, the actual day of the birthday. In the morning M went off the papelería (paper store) to get some needed supplies. When he returned he closed himself off in our little bedroom and got busy wrapping. By 1:45, we were suitably dressed and ready to get on our way to the La Maruca restaurant over on Velasquez Street, just five Metro stops away.

By 2:45 we were seated around a table for eight and getting started with some white wine…

…and one of us got flowers.

La Maruca specializes in Cantabrian food and everything we tried was delicious. Cantabria is on the north coast of Spain and many of its famous dishes are seafood based. E had merluza (hake) served with boiled potato pieces in a sauce of onion, garlic, paprika and olive oil. She loved it. M had albóndigas. Albóndigas are meatballs served in a small amount of rich broth. It is often a modest dish and M had had it before many times on both sides of the Atlantic. Usually it is a tasty but unassuming dish. As he looked through the menu M suspected that La Maruca albóndigas might be on a whole other level. He was right; they were superb, the best he has ever had.

For dessert E had a piece of lemon meringue tart, this on the very day that some of her Oregon friends were holding a meeting of the Corvallis Lemon Meringue Pie Society, a meeting that E had to miss.

The gathering was fun, and a special reunion of old friends. Yes, the friendships are old and so are we. We all have our health challenges, some more than others. E is very grateful for the efforts that everyone made to attend.

And finally, here are a couple of photos at our place back in Chueca.

 Friday, February 28th

A much quieter day today. Our agenda was pretty simple: sleep in, then go out and get a fresh loaf of bread and maybe a can of soup to go with the broccoli that’s sitting in the fridge. That would do for dinner. For lunch we went to a very modern, mostly vegetarian restaurant called Honest Greens. Very nice. Corvallis definitely could use a branch. And oh yes, E also made a trip down the street and around the corner to a little shop called the Bazaar. She wanted some clothespins.

 Saturday, March 1st

Rain. Hmm. We may have to leave. But meanwhile, continuing our quest for affordable cosmetics, we took the Metro out to a mall in another part of town—a place where normal people shop. And we found success: identical products for half the price! The cosmetics store had a tiny men’s section, which M decided to examine while E was occupied. He found a row of products meant to keep men’s hair in place. These come in various strengths, ranging from Estilo Despeinado, (The Uncombed Look) to Glued, then Ultra Glued, and finally Hard Cemento. Perhaps you think we are joking, but no…

Scenes of a mall.

Sunday, March 2nd

More rain today. Definitely time to head for Pompeii.