Hoy invitamos a H y T para celebrar el cumpleaños de H. Durante muchos años H y E han mantenido la tradición de cenar juntos para celebrar el cumpleaños de cada una. Solían ir a restaurantes pero recientemente han preferido celebrar en casa. Este año E ofreció hacer una paella y H aceptó. Okay. Es verdad que aquí en Corvallis no es fácil conseguir el arroz correcto para paella, pero habíamos pedido varios elementos de una tienda online. La tienda, que se llama “La Tienda¨ esta ubicada en Carolina del Sur y los dueños son Americanos, no Españoles. Pero sí tienen un surtido interesante de comidas y utensilios de cocina procedente de España, incluyendo jamones Ibéricos que cuestan entre 100 y 200 dólares cada kilo. Afortunadamente, nuestra cocina is mas vegetariana que carnívora. Whew. Teníamos mas interés en arroz para paella, aceitunas rellenas de anchoas, y un tipo de bombones de higo que se llaman Rabitos Royale.
En nuestro cena de celebración empezamos con lomo y manchego (que sí son fáciles de comprar aquí) y continuó con paella y ensalada. Después había un poco de helado y al final los Rabitos. ¿A todos nos gustaron los Rabitos? Oh yeah.
Sidra espumosa para la homenajeada y vino para los demás.
H entre paella y bonbon
Martes, 16 de mayo
Estuvimos muy ocupados con varios recados y citas, pero también paramos unos momentos para disfrutar del muy buen tiempo. “Spring has sprung,” como se decía en tiempos antiguos. En esta época, nuestro jardín está lleno de iris y peonias.
¿Mencionamos citas? Citas dentales, por ejemplo? En una oficina dental que solía ofrecer cupcakes gratuitos a los pacientes, un costumbre que terminó cuando empezó la pandemia? Pues, hoy en la misma oficina E estaba encantada de encontrar una clara señal que la pandémia había terminado.
Miércoles, 17 de mayo
Por la mañana estuvimos ocupados preparando para ir de camping en las montañas Cascadas. Ibamos a pasar solo dos noches y debía ser fácil de preparar, pero resultó difícil. Siempre hay tantas cosas y decisiones. Salimos de Corvallis a la una and llegamos al Camping Trout Creek un poco después de las dos. Este camping–cuyo nombre significa ‘arroyo de trucha’–es un lugar que hemos pasado docenas de veces por la carretera sin pensar en pararnos. Parecia demasiado cerca de Corvallis con un clima no muy diferente. Pero en esta temporada nos pareció que podría ser un destino interesante para pasar un par de noches. Más arriba en las montañas haría frío con mucha nieve.
Acampamos al lado del Río Santiam del Sur en el sitio 13. Elegimos el numero 13–a pesar del riesgo de mala suerte–porque tenia su propia playa rocosa y una pequeña cascada estacional al otro lado de rio. Como es normal en esta temporada el río corría alto y rápido. También era ruidoso. E dice que hubiéramos dormido mejor con tapones para los oídos.
Jueves, 18 de mayo
Hoy nuestro proyecto fue una visita a los Lagos Gordon. Estos dos lagos pequeños se encuentran en un sitio bellísimo más arriba en el lado sur del cañon. Un lago está a 150 metros del otro y también está a quince metros más arriba. Hay un hermoso riachuelo que desciende del superior al inferior. Los lagos no están muy lejos de nuestro campamento,–no más de quince kilómetros en linea recta. Pero también están a 650 metros más arriba. Otra cosa es que había mucha nieve este año y no sabemos la condición del camino, que es nada mas que un camino forestal. Con todo eso, sabíamos que el proyecto no estaba asegurado de tener éxito. Sin embargo, con temperaturas en los 80’s (F) y mucho sol, fue fácil imaginar que fuera possible. Subimos a la camioneta y conducimos por la carretera hasta que encontramos Forest Road 2044. Allí giramos a la derecha y nos dirigimos hacia arriba.
El siguiente problema fue localizar el camino particular para Lagos Gordon. Después de seis kilómetros en Road 2044, lo encontramos y giramos otra vez a la derecha. Yes! Al mismo tiempo, también hemos notado algo más–pequeñas islas de nieve al lado del camino estrecho. Hmm. Pero estábamos viajando directamente en dirección de los lagos. ¡Adelante!
Pero no por mucho tiempo. Las pequeñas islas se hicieron cada vez más grandes.
Dejamos la camioneta y empezamos a andar
Estábamos pensando que los lagos podrían no estar demasiado lejos, pero lo estaban.
Después de caminar dos kilómetros por el camino cubierto de nieve, decidimos que seria más prudente dar la vuelta.
E odia no llegar a un destino. En este caso echa la culpa a la nieve. Primero la pisotea…
…y luego la patea. Nuestros estimados lectores comprenderán que M tiene cuidado de no interponerse entre E y sus objetivos.
Incluso sin ser pateada, la nieve en el camino está en peligro mortal. Se está derritiendo rápido. De regreso a la camioneta pasamos por este tramo, al que llamamos Calle de los Cuatro Ríos.
A media tarde estábamos de regreso en el campamento. Aquí E encuentra una manera de relajarse junta al río.
Viernes, 19 de mayo
Esta mañana nos despertó a las cinco y media un ruidoso arrendajo de Stellar justo afuera de la ventana de nuestra tienda. Los Stellars son pájaros vulgares pero bastante guapos.
(This photo courtesy of the internet. Our jay moved too fast for our photographer)
¿El pájaro nos inspiró a salir de nuestros cálidos sacos y comenzar un día nuevo a las cinco y media de la madrugada? No. Por fin nos levantamos a las siete y media, y a las nueve y media nos dirigimos a casa.
Sabado, 20 de mayo
No sabemos cómo sucedió, pero hoy nos encontramos comprando aún más plantas para la jardín. Ahora tenemos más trabajo para plantarlos. ¿No tenemos suficiente trabajo? Locura.
En cuanto a los espárragos, esto is lo que tenemos después de dos años y medio…
Domingo, 21 de mayo
El viernes pasado nuestra amiga J tuvo una cirugía de reemplazo de hombro. Está recuperando en casa. Tiene cuidadores que vienen en turnos para ayudarla durante los primeros días. A E le tocó un turno hoy y mañana le tocará otro. Afortunadamente J se está recuperando bien.
M plantó cuatro patatas y dos pimientos dulces. Estos y los espárragos son los únicos cultivos alimentarios que tendremos este año. Admiramos a los jardineros que producen alimentos saludables once meses al año, pero sabemos que no pertenecemos a ese grupo.
We had H and T over for dinner today to help celebrate H’s birthday. About a week ago E had offered to either take H out to a restaurant of her choice or to make a paella. Paella was chosen, so E has been preparing to produce one along with a few accompaniments. But to promise someone paella, you really should have paella rice, which is not easy to find in Corvallis. It’s easier to go on-line. Fortunately we had recently put in an order to La Tienda, a place in Williamsburg, South Carolina that specializes in imported Spanish food and cooking utensils. Being half vegetarian, we passed on their Ibérico style hams, of which they have a good selection and for which they charge between 50 and 100 dollars per pound. Instead, we got rice, anchovy stuffed olives, and a much too small box of eight Rabitos Royale. These last are bonbons made with figs and dark chocolate.
We started off with some locally procured lomo and manchego, continued on into the paella and salad, and then had a little ice cream before finishing with four of the bonbons, which turned out to be awfully good. Shoulda ordered more of those things.
There was sparkling cider for the honoree and wine for the other guests.
Here is H smiling, even before she had her bonbon.
Tuesday, May 16
We were busy with chores and appointments, but also managed to notice that the weather is warm and spring has sprung. The back yard is bursting with iris and peonies.
Did we mention appointments? As, for example, a dental appointment? At a dentist’s office the used to offer free cupcakes but stopped doing so when the pandemic started? Well, E was overjoyed to find this definitive marker that the pandemic is over!
Wednesday, May 17
We spent the morning packing up for a little camping trip into the Cascades. We left at about 1:00 and got up to Trout Creek campground just after 2:00. It’s a place we’ve passed by dozens of times without ever thinking to camp there. Too close to the Valley, with an altitude just 1,000 feet higher than our house in town. At this time of year we thought it should be good because spring would be well along there, unlike the higher places where the snow lingers into June.
We camped next to the South Santiam at campground site # 13, which–on the plus side–has its own rocky beach and a little seasonal waterfall just across the river. These days the river is running high and fast.
The minus side of site #13 was that the river was noisy; E wished she had brought earplugs for the nighttime.
Thursday, May 18
Our main project for the day was to see if we could get to Gordon Lakes, a charming spot up high on the south slope of the canyon. The two lakes are about 200 yards apart and the northernmost lake is maybe 50 feet higher than the southern one, which makes for a lovely tumbling stream that links the two, the outlet of one and the inlet of the other. The lakes weren’t far away from our campground, probably less that ten miles away as the crow flies. They were also 2,000 feet higher than our camp and we’d had a fairly heavy snow year. So yes, getting there was going to be an iffy proposition. But with the temperatures in the 80’s and lots of sunshine, it was easy to imagine we might make it. We drove up the highway to House Rock, turned off on Forest Road 2044, and headed steeply upward. We found the unsigned turn on the nameless road that leads to Gordon Lakes. But already we were seeing bits of snow in the shady spots–first little bits and then not so little bits.
Just because you can imagine a clear road to your destination doesn’t mean you’ll find it. We parked the truck here and decided to see if we could walk the rest of the way.
We were thinking that it might not be too far, but it was.
After walking about a mile and a half up the mostly snow covered road, we decided we had had enough. A disappointing result but not a disaster. It was nice up there and we managed to find a dry spot to sit down to lunch.
E hates not getting all the way to a destination. She seems to have found a couple of ways of expressing her feelings about the presence of so much snow. First she stomped it…
…and then she kicked it.
Even without being kicked, this snow is in trouble; it’s melting fast. At one point, about a mile from the truck, we found an almost clear area of road. We named it Four Rivers.
By mid-afternoon we were back in the campground. Here E finds a way to unwind by the river.
Friday, May 19
We were awakened at 5:30(!) by a noisy Stellar’s jay, who seemed to be just outside the window of our old “Hobbitat” model REI tent. The Stellars are considerably handsomer than the Western scrub-jays that we see in our yard, but their vulgar behavior seems similar. Despite the bird’s best efforts, we did not get up at that time. It was around 7:30 when we made a multifaceted breakfast of cafe mocha, instant oatmeal, yogurt, trail mix, orange juice, fruit and a Clif bar. After that, we started packing up.
Once packed, we started up the truck and headed back out to the highway. Before turning west toward home, we made a brief stop just across the road at the start of the Walton Ranch Interpretive Trail. That turned out to be an easy quarter mile zigzag up the north slope of the canyon. At the end of the trail there is a viewing platform from which you can get a look at the site of an old ranch on the south side of the river. The information at the viewing platform says that the ranch house was a popular stop in the 1890’s when the Santiam Wagon Road crossed through the area. The sign also says that “European-Americans first settled the area in the 1980’s.” We’re pretty sure one of those dates is wrong. The ranch house and barn are mostly gone and the area is now managed as elk habitat.
On our way back home, we had to pass through the town of Lebanon, Oregon, which is home to Hazella, a Scandinavian bakery that we had never visited before. We picked up a few treats for the weekend.
Saturday, May 20
We don’t know what possessed us, but somehow we found ourselves at Shonnard’s, buying more plants. Now we’ll have to find time to get them into the ground. As if we didn’t have enough to do harvesting our suddenly productive asparagus patch. When did M plant asparagus? It was so long ago we don’t remember. Probably about two years ago. And now suddenly here they are, We don’t have too many spears, but enough for us to notice that when they decide to pop up, it doesn’t take them long. We’d swear they grow several inches an hour. Keeps you on your toes.
Sunday, May 21
Our friend J had shoulder replacement surgery on Friday and is recovering at home. She has caregivers coming in shifts to watch over her for the first few days. E had a shift today and another tomorrow. So far J is doing well. M worked in the yard and planted four Yukon Red seed potatoes and two sweet peppers. As far food crops go, that will be it for this year. We admire gardeners who are able to produce great quantities of wholesome veggies ten months of the year, but we know that we are not they.
In the morning M loaded his expedition gear into the truck. At 10:30 he departed on another trip to the wilds of northern Nevada. Three hundred miles later, he still hadn’t gotten out of Oregon. But that was all part of the plan. He spent the night in Lakeview, Oregon, where he had had the foresight to reserve a room.
E, meanwhile, had more important issues to attend to. She was having her annual birthday dinner with D, a friend and former colleague. She met D at their usual place, Dulce de Alma, where they could both order small portions of delicious things. But what to wear? The weather had turned quite warm, so E treated herself to a new spring blouse.
What do we think? Is it springy enough?
Wednesday, April 26
M left Lakeview at 8:30 or so, with the remains of the previous night’s Mexican take-out tucked into his backseat fridge. Unlike the Dulce de Alma in Corvallis, El Aguila Real in Lakeview specializes in huge portions of more or less edible things, so there was plenty left over. After an hour or two of driving, he was still in Oregon, but he had gotten as far as the Doherty Slide, one of his favorite places in these parts.
Oregon 140 is almost dead straight for many miles, but then comes to a one thousand foot high barrier. The road turns right and traverses up the face.
After another hour and a half on the road M was well into Nevada and ready to get off the pavement and find a place where he could stop and eat his lunch. On the map, there was a gravel route called Knotts Creek Road. It looked promising, although just what it promised was not clear. But down the road he went. Five or ten miles in he passed a very active cattle operation.
After that, the landscape got emptier. Eventually, he came to another ranch, this one not so active.
Windmill out of order.
Kitchen not up to modern standards. And anyway…
…the house is too small for the modern consumer lifestyle. But on the plus side: no noisy neighbors, zero maintenance yard, plenty of wire, and very small chance of having a tree fall on you.
Just a mile or two past the abandoned ranch, the road enters an area called Pearl Canyon. There M found a place to stop and heat up his chile verde.
There was a rushing stream down in that low spot.
Rushing this day…probably not so rushing a few weeks from now.
After lunch, instead of going back up Knotts Creek Road to the highway, he went farther into the boonies, turning first east and then north on Leonard Creek Road. This got him back to the highway, but at a point some 40 miles beyond where he’d left it.
Buoyed by this nifty maneuver, he decided to try a similar strategy to find a place to camp for the night. He drove a little farther east and decided to head down another gravel road, this one called Sod House Road. On the map, he could see that it connected to Sand Pass Road, which would take him into some likely camping areas.
As it happened, this was not a good idea. After driving for about an hour on a not very good road, M found that his Nevada atlas and his Nevada reality failed to sync up. Sod House Road did not connect to Sand Pass Road or to anything else. All he could do was to drive back the way he had come and start all over again, with not many hours of daylight left.
M ended up stopping for the night on a hillside, overlooking a very dry looking valley.
The sunset went on forever. The night was cold.
And what was E doing on this nice April Wednesday? She was off taking pictures of flowers, picking rhubarb from our garden, and making a pie!
Last week the fawn lilies were barely starting to unfold. Now here they are in full bloom.
E also found that there were still trillium flowers around, both newish–the white ones–and oldish–the pink ones. E wonders why people can’t turn pink and pretty when they get old.
We’re pretty sure that she intended to share both the photos and the pie with M…probably.
Thursday, April 27
E started the day at tertulia with J and R, after which she attended the Zoom BBB (Better Bones & Balance) class. In the afternoon she did Laughter Yoga, and for dinner went with H and T out to Gathering Together Farm. E and T had oven baked fish with broccoli rabe and garlic herb mashed potatoes, while H had fresh pasta. Was it good? It’s always good at GTF.
M started the day by cooking bacon and eggs on his hillside and listening to a couple of meadowlarks. Then it was time to go into town to get some gas and start the homeward leg of the journey. The plan was to explore the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge with an eye toward spending the night somewhere therein. If that didn’t work out, he could always just go on back to Lakeview. What he discovered was that the reserve wasn’t exactly prepared for visitors. All the little roads to all the interesting places had suffered washouts over the winter and it was going to take time to repair them. There was no announcement about this and no one around to ask, so M had to find it out for himself by driving around and discovering the washouts one by one. That in itself was entertaining up to a point, but got old. Finally, though, he found his way to an actual place. It was called Gooch Spring.
Here’s a place where water seeps out of a hillside at Gooch Spring.
At some point someone figured out a way to get some of the seep to flow into a pipe and drip into a tank farther down the slope. By now the metal tank has taken on the colors of its surroundings.
M briefly considered camping at Gooch Spring, but there wasn’t much to look at once you’d finished with sagebrush and, at an altitude of 6,090 feet, it was likely to get pretty chilly overnight. M decided to head back.
The drive to the west provided another encounter with the Doherty Slide, this time going down the traverse instead of up. There are several YouTube videos of vehicles traversing the Slide. Here’s a link to one. The word “slide” in the name does not refer to cars or animals sliding over the edge and falling down into the valley. Instead, it probably refers to the large amount of eroded material found along the base of the ridge.
Friday, April 28
M returned home with a truck covered with dust both inside and out. Cleaning took hours, and even then the interior did not pass inspection. M got a piece of rhubarb pie anyway.
Saturday, April 29
It’s been warm for several days now–shorts weather–and flowers are blooming all over town.
Monday, May 1
Oops, it’s cold again. Time to put those shorts aside.
Tuesday, May 2
In the morning we went for a walk at the Finley Wildlife Refuge south of town. The pond on the Woodpecker Loop was as full as we’ve ever seen it. We noticed that the season has reached an important milestone: the poison oak is back! And boy is it healthy looking. One small consolation is that just when the poison oak leaves pop out, the wild irises come into bloom. They both seem to like the same conditions and are often seen close one another, though not usually this close…
Back at our house, a flicker has been coming around lately. He makes a racket by tapping on our metal chimney cover. Here he is at the feeder.
Wednesday, May 3
Lots of work in the garden today. E needed to repot her rosemary, which has been the centerpiece in her flower bed out by the front sidewalk. Last week she got a big new pot for it and today we made the change. Wasn’t easy.
In the afternoon we went for guided walk through a neighborhood that contains some of the city’s older homes. Most of houses featured on the tour were built in the period from 1890 to 1910. The oldest house, however, was the Biddle-Porter house, which was built circa 1856, making it one of earliest Corvallis homes still standing. Benjamin and Maria Biddle came to Corvallis around 1852 and had previously lived in Springfield, Illinois, where Biddle had been friends with Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer who also lived there. Apparently the friendship continued, as shown by the existence of letter from Lincoln to Biddle written in 1860 during Lincoln’s first presidential campaign.
The Biddles resided in the house until 1877. The house was then occupied by three different OSU professors before being sold to Jack Porter in 1925. It stayed in the Porter family until 2010. It is currently being restored by its preservationist owner.
Thursday, May 4
Tertulia today with J and R. Like us, they’ve been out looking at wild flowers. R has seen fairy slipper orchids (Calypso bulbosa) blooming at the Lewisburg saddle. After tertulia M worked on his drip irrigation network and pulled weeds. E did a one-hour exercise class, planted some candytuft in her old rosemary pot and then went off to the nail salon–all this well before lunch.
We spent the morning finalizing our itinerary for the next ten days: France, Switzerland, Germany, then back to Madrid. We have friends in Switzerland and Germany. We have no good reason to stop in France, but we’re doing that anyway.
Tuesday March 14
In order to travel a bit lighter, we’ve leaving one of our suitcases behind in Madrid, where L has kindly agreed to keep it for us. So today, we packed it full of this and that and made the trip out to Rivas to drop it off. Turns out we also got a wonderful lunch: a kind of Catalan paella made with pasta called Fideuá.
Then it was back to Calle del Trinquete (Topmast Street) to spend our last night in the rental apartment. Six weeks it’s been. We had a very light supper because after the sumptuous banquet at L’s, we didn’t need a big one. The menu was green salad with tuna dressed with oil from the can. As always, we could look out from the dining nook to see a small slice of city.
Wednesday March 15
Up at 7:00 for a bit of breakfast, then out the door for the last time. We rolled our suitcases down the familiar 12–minute walk to the Manoteras metro stop. Then it was four stops to Mar de Cristal and a transfer to Línea 8 for the ride out to the airport. By 10:30 we were settled into our seats for our flight to Lyon. Compared to the seats on the intercity trains, the ones on the Airbus 320 looked like folded postage stamps…but they sufficed. The worst thing is that we were seated in row 31 of a 31 row aircraft. Thanks, travel agency, great work.
We landed at the Lyon airport at around 12:40. We were in no hurry, so we decided to have lunch there. The weather was a bit cooler than in Madrid, but still mostly sunny. After lunch we took the airport train into the city center. Once there, as soon as we walked out of the main railway station, we could see a rank of waiting taxis just across the street. It’s true that everyone was speaking French instead of Spanish and E kept wondering if we had somehow gotten to Quebec, but other than that, what an easy life.
As we approached the taxi rank, we saw that the driver of the first taxi in line was out of his car and was engaged in conversation with a potential customer, one who did not look pleased about how the conversation was going. We looked at the driver of the second cab in the rank, who looked back at us but then got out of his car and said something to the other driver before looking at us again. E told him where we wanted to go and he shook his head and got back in his car. Just then, the other customer walked away and first driver turned to us to explain that it was not possible to take us anywhere near where we wanted to go due to the manifestation.
We had already heard that French president Macron had proposed raising the French retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030. France has the lowest retirement age of any developed country and a lot of French people think that that is an excellent state of affairs and shouldn’t be messed with. Hence, strikes and demonstrations have been ongoing. So..how could we get to our hotel? Possibly by Metro, was the answer.
Being modern people, we next asked our phones how to get to the hotel. Siri suggested a combination of tram and bus. And just up the street was a tram hub. Off we went to find our tram line. Once there, we found a small difficulty: an electronic sign at the stop was showing the message Service Interdite. We may not know too much French, but we could guess what that meant. It meant that the tram couldn’t get through either. So, back to the Metro idea. But how to do it? E phoned the hotel. The receptionist kindly gave us instructions in English and off we went, down into a nearby metro station. Our motto? Onward!
Four stops and one transfer later we emerged. We were still a ways from our hotel, but it was walkable. Just as we were getting our bearings, however, we noticed something else—the imminent arrival of a large and rather noisy manifestation at exactly our location!
Well, that was exciting. After taking in the sights for a bit, we edged around the fringe of the crowd and set off toward our destination, the Hotel Citadines (on the) Presqu’ile. This was near the oldest part of Lyon, which dates from the Roman era when a camp and later a city were established at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers. For a short distance, just before they meet, the two rivers run parallel to one another, less than half a mile apart. The land between isn’t really an island, but it kind of seems like one. Hence the name in French, Presqu’ile, which means “almost island, or peninsula.” But whatever its meaning, what we’re wondering—after all the effort it took to get here—is whether this is a good location for a hotel in 2023? Well, as we discover, yes it is. For one thing it’s close to the extensive Roman ruins and their associated museum and for another it’s right at one end of restaurant row: a dozen or more interesting restaurants just a few steps away. Thanks, travel agency, all is forgiven.
Lyon cooking is famous all over France; some consider it to be the country’s culinary center. And indeed we had a fantastic dinner. We don’t have the expertise or the vocabulary to describe it all, but we do remember this much. They have a thing called quenelle, which is sort of like a large croquette. But it is cooked in broth like a dumpling rather than fried. It is then served in a sauce. They make it with various fillings and various sauces. E’s was made with pike and was delicious. Even better was her first course: a poached egg floating in a sauce made with a special cheese. The name of this dish is Oeufs Cocotte au Saint-Marcellin.
Thursday March 16
We spent the next day exhausting ourselves by walking across the Saône and trudging up the thousand foot hill on the other side. Our goal was to see the Roman ruins and the newly rebuilt museum. We also thought we should take a look at this basilica that we could see from down below.
We took this picture from just halfway up a long, long hill.
On the way up we stopped to see the ruins. There is also a large museum at the site, but the museum is built into the hillside and camouflaged in such a way as to be invisible. Here’s the view we got from the basilica. Our hotel is somewhere in there, just to the right of the bridge and one street away from the river. Those snow covered things in the far background are the Alps.
Once we got back to our hotel, we wondered what was going on with the political situation. It was bad, but how bad no one really knew. Lyon seemed calm, but there were riots and burning vehicles in Paris and there were calls for a nationwide rail strike. Yikes. Might we be marooned on this almost island for days or weeks or years? Well, maybe not years. Still, we are scheduled to leave Lyon by train tomorrow. We hope that works out…
Friday March 17
And in fact all went well. A taxi(!) took us to the train station. A French train took us to Geneva; a Swiss train took us to Bern; our friend Urs picked us up and drove us to the suburb of Belp, at which point we had a delicious fondue dinner. Urs and Ursula (The Bears) are old friends of E’s, also from her time in Chicago when Roberto was in graduate school there.
Here’s a view out the train window. At this point, we’re in Switzerland near Geneva.
The last ice breaking up on Lake Geneva.
Here’s a view from inside the Geneva main train station. This restaurant offers a Whiskey Burger made with “beef carefully selected from our own Swiss farms.”
Our dinner was extra special because our hosts’ daughter Eva found time to join us. In fact it was she who brought the fondue. Eva is a heart surgeon these days and the mother of twin ten-year-olds. Way back in 1993, though, she was a high school student spending a year living with E in Corvallis, Oregon. During that year, Eva convinced E that humans were meant to eat butter and that margarine was not a good thing. Another example of the benefits of intercultural exchange.
Saturday March 18
We went train touring today. We had a one day pass to ride free on any form of public transport anywhere in Switzerland and a little bit of Italy. We went all over the place, including a few places in the mountains where whoever built the tracks must have been both very competent and a little crazy.
The pastures are just turning green while snow lingers on the Alps. Good time to visit.
Just for a bit we dipped down into northern Italy. This is the town of Domodossola, where pretty much everything is cheaper than it is in Switzerland. Up on the side of one mountain, looking over a few more.
We got back to Bern around 10:00 that night, having definitely used our train passes to advantage. Since we’d had a lot of pizza in Domodossola, dinner was a light repast of ham, cheese, bread and beer. Okay, maybe not super light, but it was awesome.
Sunday March 19
Today we visited Gruyère. We went by car this time; it was about an hour’s drive. The town of Gruyère is on a hill overlooking a broad valley of green pasture land dotted with farms and villages. It’s such a pretty view that it would be a shame to spoil it by building a highway through it. Yes, but what about the thousands of visitors who want to visit? A high capacity road is needed. What to do? How about putting some of the highway into a tunnel that goes under the farmers’ fields? Would that work? Well, apparently it would.
Today’s excursion was to the town of Gruyère, traditional home of the eponymous cheese. Did we get on yet another train? No. We went by car. It was about an hour’s drive away. As we neared the town, we came into a valley of green pastureland dotted with farm houses and small villages. The whole place is so pretty looking that it would be a shame to build a busy highway through the middle of it. But what about the thousands and thousands of people who want to visit Gruyère every year? Well, why not build a couple of tunnels to take the road underground and leave the pastures undisturbed? Which seems to be what they’ve done. The old fortress town of Gruyère is on a hill overlooking the farmland.
The old city is more a monument than a town at this point and is definitely a tourist magnet.Here’s what the main drag looks like looking down the street from the castle.A view from the old castle fortress at the top of Gruyère city. This newish church is outside the city walls and down the hill a ways.
Below the town of Gruyère there is a demonstration cheese factory. Naturally, we had to check it out. Here’s a photo of the maturing room. The cheese is aged for six, nine or twelve months. At this factory there are around 7,000 wheels being aged at any one time.
These wheels weigh 80 pounds and have a retail value of about $2,000 each.
Monday March 20
Time to say goodbye to our friends and hit the road for another day of traveling. We went from Bern to Zurich by train, Zurich to Hamburg by air, and then got another train to get downtown. Here’s the Hamburg main train station, from which we finally emerged.
Northern Germany was gray and damp, but it was nice to be outside for a while as we took a short walk from the station to our hotel.
Tuesday March 21
We had chosen the Senator Hotel ourselves, sight unseen. It turned out we were pretty good travel agents because it was to a wonderful place. It gives a modest first impression and yet it has all that one could ask, including a delightful breakfast room on an enclosed terrace overlooking the street. We would like to have stayed in Hamburg another night or two, but we had places to go and promises to keep. We only had time for a couple of hours to take an unguided walking tour of nearby sights.
The old city hall, (the Rathaus in German) was wonderfully ornate.
St. Nikolai church was mostly destroyed by bombing in 1943 and 1944. The spire remains intact along with a small part of one wall. The entire site remains as a reminder of the impact of war.
Pretty ornate toward the top there.
In the afternoon we took another train, this time to Rostock, Germany, about two hours away. We stayed at a cheap, new, and trendy hotel called Motel One. It wasn’t too bad.
Wednesday March 22
Our friend Umut picked us up this morning and after dropping off our luggage at his place, we set off on an expedition to Lübeck, our goal being the marzipan museum. Yes, another food related project. Do we detect a theme here? Of course there is much more to Lübeck than marzipan.
For one thing, they have Easter decorations (made of marzipan).
And they appreciate literary figures like Thomas Mann (also made of marzipan).
And of course they have a lot of history. It’s just a coincidence that all of these things involve marzipan.
We also visited the St. Petri’s, a place with quite a history. Originally a large Catholic Church dating from the 13th century, it was taken over by Lutherans a few centuries later. At that time, all the ornate carvings and metal work were removed. The gold was melted down and used to fund whatever war was going on at the time. As per Lutheran principles, the interior walls, ceilings and supporting pillars were all painted plain white. The building survived until 1942 when it was mostly destroyed during a British bombing raid. The raid came in response to an earlier German raid on the British city of Coventry. After the war, the ruins of St. Petri’s were partially covered to preserve them. Then, in the 1980’s, a campaign was launched to rebuild the church. To mark the project’s completion in 1987, a choir from Coventry came to the church and joined a Lübeck choir for a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Requiem for War.
We rode the elevator to the top of the St. Petri’s spire. The space up there was memorable for two reasons: great views of the city and a biting cold wind.
The thing with the twin spires was one of the main gates into town in medieval times.There was another big church nearby. These Lübeck people do love their spires.
Thursday March 23
We’re staying a couple of nights with our friends Umut and Jacqueline in the town of Kröpelin, which is just a few miles from Rostock. This area is in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. To the north is the Baltic Sea; to the east lies Poland. We kept closer to home today, spending much of the day exploring the coast. We passed one place where you can buy yourself a four-story beachside chalet if you like. Prices start at around 10 million dollars. The weather was cool and windy, not totally different from the Oregon coast at this time of year. The great difference, though, is that the Oregon coast is mountainous. But here, on the Baltic coast, the land in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is flat as a board.
In the afternoon we had a look around the town of Kröpelin. The town name has the same Germanic root as the English word ‘cripple.’ And, in fact, the town was named after a differently abled person. The story goes that a man who couldn’t walk made a bet with the king that he could get himself from one end of the county to the other before sundown. The king took the bet and lost. The name Kröpelin commemorates the events.
This is the town symbol as preserved in the small Kröpelin Museum.
The town museum is in an old building with three stories. A public library occupies the first floor; a museum of town history is on the second floor; and on the third floor we found something unexpected: a shrine to East German rock bands of the sixties and seventies. It was called the Ostrockmuseum Kröpelin. There were dozens and dozens of photographs, posters, album covers, and articles of clothing, plus quite a collection of period guitars, drums and audio equipment. Had we ever heard of the bands? No. In that era East Germany—whose official name was the German Democratic Republic—was behind the iron curtain. The band members couldn’t travel to Western Europe and we doubt that many bands from the West ever toured the GDR. But rock and roll itself was alive and well, and here was the evidence to prove it. If you’re ever in Kröpelin, you need to drop in. Admission costs 1.50 Euros.
Soon it was time to head home and start thinking about packing up for an early departure the next morning. It was a short but quite wonderful visit.
Friday March 24
Up at 5:00 AM to begin another long travel day: Rostock to Hamburg to Brussels to Madrid. By 5:30 PM we were in Madrid, having completed our great European tour.
We took the train south to Córdoba today. Our train was an Avant, which are high speed trains that make more stops than the intercity expresses. But even with a few stops, the 190 miles to Córdoba went by in less than two hours. So comfortable, so much leg room, and so much elbow room—just three seats across: two seats, a wide aisle, then one more seat on the other side.
The Romans founded Córdoba sometime around the year 150 BC. The oldest part of town is on the north bank of the Guadalquiver River and eventually, in around 75 BC, the Romans got around to building a bridge to the south bank. Eight centuries later, the bridge remained but the Romans had gone and the Muslim Umayyads ruled southern Spain. Somewhere around the year 750 the Umayyads did a major renovation of the bridge. After that, the bridge remained in continuous use until the middle of the 20th Century. Until 1940, it was the only bridge in town. These days it’s still in use, but it’s pedestrian only.
The building in the background above is the Great Mosque of Córdoba. But, you may object, if it’s a mosque, what’s that Christian-looking bell tower and cross and stuff.? Well, that’s because since 1356 the place has had a new owner. Like many new owners, they’ve been doing some remodeling. And they’ve turned it into a cathedral.
It’s still very mosquelike inside, light and airy like most mosques, even though it was built 1200 years ago.
It’s a huge space. The building is a rectangle a block long and most of a block wide. Presumably all the interior walls at one time looked like this….
…or this.
Only a few of these original Umayyad style interior panels still exist. Dozens of others have been replaced by elaborate Christian-type niches. There’s also a huge organ, an elaborately carved wooden choir box and a beautiful basilica.
The lower part of the basilica
Much of the Christian stuff is beautiful in its way, but the overall effect is as if someone planted groups of showy exotic flowers at random places in a tranquil natural landscape. But never mind, much of the original effect is still there, especially in the Patio of the Orange Trees shown below.
In the afternoon we took a tour of the city. Here’s our tour bus. It was called a tuk-tuk, but being electric, it didn’t do a lot of tukking.
One stop on the tour was the 13th Centrury Santa Marina church, which was built soon after the Muslims were forced out of the city by King Ferdinand III. The site previously was occupied by a mosque.
Tuesday March 7
Responding to a reader request, we also visited the old Córdoba Synagogue. It was a ten minute walk from our hotel through a maze of medieval era streets.
The upper floor is the women’s section..
Here’s the menorah…
…and here is an inscription just above it.
The inscription reads: “Provisional sanctuary and abode for the Testimony completed by Yishaq Moheb, son of Mr. Efraím Wadawa, in the year of seventy-five. So return, Oh God hasten to return to Jerusalem!”
On the way back from the synagogue E stopped to talk with Maimonides, the great 12th Century philosopher, scholar and physician. Maimonides was born in Córdoba, but alas, he was born a hundred years too soon to have worshipped in the synagogue we had just seen.
Amazingly, while E was there the Maimonides statue actually bent down and spoke to her! M quickly snapped a photo but found later that it had disappeared from his phone! E has not revealed what it was that Maimonides said.
After visiting the synagogue and doing a little shopping in the morning, we got back onto a train in the early afternoon. Before long we were in Granada and safely into the Hotel Grisol de Guadalupe, up on a hill, just across the road from the Alhambra. That evening we took a walk down the hill for a ways and got this view of the oldest part of the city.
Wednesday March 8
Granada is a city of about 225,000 people and, to be honest, most of it doesn’t look at all like the old part shown in the last photo. Granada is home to a number of universities and, of course, to one of the most popular tourist attractions in Europe. One of our taxi drivers said that education and tourism are the only two things that keep the city alive. He claimed that the Alhambra gets an average of 8,000 visitors per day.
The Alhambra is a large complex of palaces and gardens on a hill overlooking the city. It consists of three main areas. The Alcazaba is a fortress dating from the 11th Century. The Nasrid palaces were built later and were home to the rulers of Muslim Spain for about 300 years. The Generalife is a garden complex on a hill above the palaces. The Nasrid palaces are the star attraction and access is by appointment only. Our appointed time was 2:00 PM, so we went into the complex at a little after 12:00 and went to the Generalife first.
One of the nice things about these Muslim era gardens is how much water there is: in pools, in fountains, and best of all, flowing in small stone runnels along one’s path or across the courtyards.
A view from the Generalife down into other parts of the complex.
Here are a few photos from inside the Nasrid palace. They hardly do it justice.
Thursday March 9
We managed to get back to Madrid today, despite an unexpected two hour layover at a new high speed rail station in the middle of nowhere.
Was it lunchtime? Yes. Was there a cafe at the station? No, there was a vending machine. Did the cellophane wrapped sandwiches all have a little blurb that said Improved Recipe? Yes! What exactly had the recipe been improved from? Very hard to say. And who, you might ask, is to blame for this scheduling catastrophe? Well, you might ask, but we might not say…
Sunday. March 12
Nice spring weather these days with highs of around 70. We are pausing to rest up and plan our next phase. It’s almost time to say goodbye to our little apartment. We’re visiting some of our local shops for the last time. While M was busy working on the blog, E took an excursion to visit her former neighborhood downtown. She walked through the Retiro Park and found that Avenida Menéndez Pelayo #37 was still intact. Roberto’s family owned three apartments in the building. E lived on the second floor in the back. E remembers that most buildings in Madrid were dingy looking back in the day. Pollution levels are much lower now and everything seems spiffier.
Later, as she returned to her current Madrid neighborhood and emerged from the dark caverns of the metro, she was greeted by this sure sign of spring.
Today it seemed as though we had travelled back through time. Were we looking at the prehistoric cave paintings at Altamira? No, no, not that far back. Did we visit the castle where Columbus made his pitch to Isabella and Ferdinand? No, not that either. We traveled back to a time that for many of us is within living memory. We visited a travel agency.
And you know what? It was really busy. There were six agents working and several more customers waiting for a turn. When you walked in, you had to take a number. Our number was R74. After a minute or two, we noticed that there was a big board that showed which numbers were being currently served. Oh good, now maybe we could get some idea of how long we might have to wait. Or could we? The number that had just been called was K42. Hmm. The next customers called had number M60. Hmm. But wait, those particular people had come in right before we had! Our spirits rose. We had to be getting close. But when the next number was called, it was J03. Our spirits fell. But, as it happened, J03 was a no show. And the next number was ours.
Our agent was Alejandra, a young Spanish-Venezuelan woman whose family lives in Florida. She was great, although her computer system was really slow. But it was good enough so that we could make all the basic arrangements for our late March travels to France, Switzerland and Germany. Good!
By the way, if you’re thinking that most of the customers in the travel agency were older people…you’d be right.
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Today we took the train north and had another nice day with M and M. First we did a walk along the river and then had a nice meal at their place. M made merluza (hake) and it was delicious. (We don’t get hake in Corvallis, which is a shame.) M’s merluza recipe involves a sauce which consists of tomato sauce, sweet red pepper and mayonnaise. We could have just dipped fresh bread into the sauce and even without the fish we would have eaten pretty darn well.
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Today we made a visit to the Gran Cafe de Gijón. It’s a Madrid landmark and as one writer puts it, es uno de los Cafés más prestigiosos del mundo. It was established in 1888 by a man named Gumersindo Garcia. He was from the northern coast of Spain and he named his new cafe after his hometown of Gijón. Over the years it developed a reputation as a literary and cultural gathering place and was frequented by several generations of celebrated Spanish writers and artists. In her day, Mata Hari came to the Cafe Gijón, as did Hemingway during his time in Spain. But we did not visit the cafe to imbibe the exalted literary atmosphere. No. We visited because of another, even more important figure who was also connected with the Cafe Gijón. In the early seventies E herself taught classes in a building two doors down. Every day, at around 11:00, she would take her coffee break in the nearest cafe. She doesn’t remember meeting any geniuses there, but she does remember the pastries. They were good.
In the early 2020’s E went back to the Gijón. Here she is at lunchtime with her wine and bread, waiting for her primer plato.
E recognized the Gijón interior right away. After a bit M noticed that the Gijón still had a cigarette vending machine. When he pointed it out, E said, “Oh, that’s what’s really different, this room used to be full of smoke.”
The announcement says that the management is not responsible for any malfunction of the machine and gives you a number you can call if you have an complaint. No mention of possible lung malfunction.
When M zoomed way in on this picture, he could make out the names of the cigarette brands currently on offer. As a former smoker he found them interesting. He saw Fortuna, a brand that he smoked when he lived in Barcelona, and a few unfamiliar brands such as Nobel and West. But the great majority were old American brands: Lucky Strikes, Marlboro, Chesterfield, L&M, Winston, and Camel. Chesterfield? Seriously? Back in the day, Chesterfields were the original coffin nails—long, fat and unfiltered.
Thursday, February 23
We got up really early today, had a quick bite for breakfast, then got a taxi to the train station at 6:15. E’s friend, another of the M’s, was taking us on a day trip to see the city of Leon, which is in the northwest of Spain. Leon is three hours from Madrid by car, but just two hours by high speed train. In our case, the train got us to the outskirts of Leon real fast, but then came to a halt. There were some issues to resolve before we could actually get into the station, 45 minutes worth.
Eventually we got off the train and began walking into the center of town. It turns out that Leon is a really lovely city. It was quite cold, so once we got to the center we were happy to drop into a cafe for cafe con leche and some little do-nuts called buñuelos. Then we were off to see the Leon Cathedral—which is awesome.
Another place we visited was the Casa Botines, which was designed and built by Antonio Gaudi between 1891 and 1894. Gaudi is most famous for the design of the Sagrada Familia and other buildings in Barcelona. Casa Botines is one of only three of his creations that were built outside his home region. Now a museum, it was originally designed as a mixed use building. The ground floor housed the family’s textile business while the Botines family lived on the top four floors.
Work downstairs, live upstairs. Just your basic mom and pop operation.
A little after 1:00 we stopped for lunch at a cafe/restaurant where a member of M’s family worked as a cook in times gone by. The dining room didn’t open till 1:30; we had a glass of wine while we waited. The barman also helped us warm up with some little cups of hot fish broth on the house.
We also had a tour of the Basilica of San Isidoro, a religious building whose history dates back to the early tenth century when a Christian church was built over the ruins an ancient Roman temple to the god Mercury. That church was destroyed in the middle of the tenth century by invading Arabs. A new Christian church was built just a few decades later at the beginning of the 11th century. Parts of this church still exist and our tour guide helped us to see the difference between those oldest parts and the many later additions.
In the book room of the basilica we saw hundreds of medieval era books, the oldest dating back to the 7th century. Another room, called the Pantheon of Kings, shows wall art from the 12th century. And, yes, the Holy Grail is also here, the very cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper, more than two thousand years ago. Wow. But how do they know for sure that this is the one? And aren’t there also more than a hundred other places in Europe that claim to have the Holy Grail? Well, yes. But hey, maybe more than one cup was used during that meal. Anyway, the one here is technically known as the Chalice of Doña Urraca. It has definitely been in Leon for a thousand years; but during the thousand years before that, the story is a little sketchy.
Here’s what we saw, but this photo is from the internet. No photography was allowed in the museum parts of the Basilica.
We stopped briefly in another religious museum so that M could say hello to an artifact from her personal history: the old wooden confessional from the parish church of her childhood.
After the museums, we spent some time having hot chocolate and churros at the Parador, the Hostal San Marcos. Then we walked back to the train station and caught another fast train home. It was late by then, so there we were rolling along at 150 miles an hour through the darkness, letting someone else drive, wearing no seatbelts, and facing backwards.
Friday, February 24
Fresh raspberries for breakfast today. From Morocco. Awesome. And then a nice restful day. Some grocery shopping in the morning. Later E went to the papelería and got us an actual paper map of Madrid. She’s busy working back and forth between what she sees now and the host of places and memories that rise up out of the past.
Saturday, February 25
Two days in a row with nothing major on the schedule. Nice. We did take a walk down to the nearest plaza to get a few essentials: pastry treats for our traditional Sunday breakfast and a bottle of champagne for some occasion TBA. It was about 1:00 PM on a cold, sunny day and it seemed like everybody was out and about. Despite the temperature, the cafes had all their outdoor tables out and just about all of them were full. Twelve o’clock to 1:00ish is the time for the aperitivo, a pre-dinner drink usually served with a little snack. We found a table outside a place called Bar 29 and ordered two small beers. They came with a complementary dish of green olives. By around 1:30 the tables started emptying out as people returned home to get ready for their midday meal. We headed home for the same reason.
There weren’t many children having aperitivo al fresco, but we did see a couple of little boys at a table near us. Mom was not there. E speculates that some time earlier Mom had said to Dad, “You know, maybe, while I’m getting this big dinner ready, you could get the boys out of here for a while.”
Sunday, February 26
Today, we went to a birthday celebration at M and M’s place up north. There were two birthday honorees: M and M’s daughter E and our very own E. Dinner featured two rice dishes: a yellow one called arroz a banda and another that they call black rice. Here’s a photo of the latter.
This has shrimp and squid and gets it color from squid ink.
After dinner there were cupcakes made by L and C, with help from their grandma, and also grandma’s wonderful pineapple upside down cake. There was candle lighting and Happy Birthday singing—in English.
Here are a couple of the cupcake makers at their own table.
7:30: Breakfast and final packing. 8:30: Metro to Chamartin Station. 9:00-9:45: Locate car rental place, sign out VW Golf, find our way back to our neighborhood, find parking place. Whew! 10:00: Have small second breakfast. 10:20: Wheel luggage down the block to parking place, depart for the Basque Country, M driving, Siri giving directions, E reminding M to stop at stoplights. 10:38: Notice that we are finally out of Madrid and on the freeway north. Whew!
By 1:00 PM we were more than half way to our destination, but our energy was flagging. We decided to stop in the next little town, which happened to be Lerma. Couldn’t find a parking place at first, had to go down a side street.
We went to small cafe and had coffee and bizcocho, a kind of pound cake. They said it was de la casa and it was good. We also went into a little supermarket, where E found some face cream that she’d been looking for.
After our coffee break we found our orange Golf right where we’d left it. And then it was adios Lerma.
Fifty miles later we stopped for gas near the town of Mondragón. By this time we were officially in the Basque country, much of which seems to be quite mountainous. We didn’t go over or around any mountains, though, we went straight through them. We’ve never seen so many tunnels, at least a dozen.
Here’s a view of Mondragón. Filling up with gasolina cost us 60 euros, about 64 dollars.
It’s close to 3:00 by the time we reach our destination, the town of Hondarribia in the extreme northeast corner of Spain, just a few miles from the French border. The border makes a political separation between the French and Spanish parts of the Basque Country; as far as language and culture are concerned, the two parts are much the same.
Our hotel is the Parador Hondarribia, which has been created within the walls of a castle fortress whose history goes back to the 12th Century. The castle was built at the top of a hill overlooking the harbor. We could see two or three (hundred) sailboats moored just across from us.
Tuesday, February 14
Early in the morning we woke up and looked out the east facing window of our room. Some lights were still on in the town, but things were definitely happening in the east. And speaking of things to the east of us, we’re pretty sure that mountain is in France.
The castle walls are pretty thick, close to three feet, so the windows in our room look like this:
We spent the morning exploring the area around the castle, which seems to be the oldest part of the city.
In the afternoon, we got back in the Golf and drove to San Sebastián, a much larger Basque city just twenty miles away. En route we took a small detour up to the top of another hill to see the Fuerte Guadalupe, an early 20th Century fortress. It turned out to be pretty strange looking. It appears to have been mostly underground and is now long abandoned, so it just looks like a bunch of grassy mounds.
But you can see what appear to be artillery firing ports…….and what seems like it was the main entrance.
We found that downtown San Sebastián is lovely, but a challenge to drive around in if you’re a stranger. As recommended by our friend M, we had coffee at the Hotel Maria Cristina, a lovely palace-like building in the central area of the city. The coffees were five euros apiece, but the setting was pretty nice.
Wednesday, February 15
Breakfast is served in shifts here at the Parador, sort of like on the train. Our scheduled time was 8:15. Did we make it on time? You bet we did. And what a breakfast—fruits, fresh juice, cheeses, baked goods and cold cuts of all descriptions, eggs or omelets if you want them. It was a challenge, but we did our best.
So that was one major goal accomplished. Next we had to get ready to check out and move on to the next segment of our journey. Since the next leg was only 70 or 80 miles, it promised to be a pretty easy day. We had time to take a few photos of the hotel before we left.
One wall of the breakfast room had lots of big windows. This was the view into the castle courtyard..That’s the main entrance to the hotel there in the middle. On the morning we left, there were a bunch of kids in the plaza on a field trip.That’s the coffee shop….….and this was taken in the old stairway to the upper floors. The canon, presumably, is to keep the riffraff out.
We left Hondarribia around 11:00 and headed southwest toward a different part of the Basque Country. On the way, we took a side trip to what the map said was a nature park. It turned out to be way up high in the mountains, and the narrow road up to it had some of the sharpest hairpin curves that we could remember. There was snow up there, but fortunately not too much.
The nature park was way up high……and kind of wild.
We didn’t stay long, though it would have been a really nice place to hike had we been prepared for it. But we were trying to take it easy, so we made our way down the mountain and back onto the main road. By 2:00, we were checking into our next hotel, the Parador Argomaniz, which is in the southern part of the Basque Country near the city of Vitoria-Gastiez.
Thursday, February 16
Clearly, we’ve come out of the mountains and away from the ocean. The weather here is cooler than on the coast, but still lovely—in a late winter/early spring kind of way.
After breakfast, we set off on another ridiculously complicated project, a visit to Bilbao. Bilbao is the capital of the Basque Country and by all accounts it is a city worth seeing. And since it is only about an hour’s drive north of Vitoria, we thought we’d run up there to see the Guggenheim and maybe have some lunch. Easy as pie.
(But what exactly does that expression mean? Easy as eating a pie? Easy as making a pie? Easy as picking the berries to make the pie? Easy as planting some wheat and harvesting the grain to grind some flour to make the crust? We’re not sure.)
Anyway, we made it into the center of Bilbao, the famous and very beautiful Plaza de Euskadi, and found ourselves a parking place not too many levels underground. Back above ground, we went into the Museo de Bellas Artes. Entrance was free and the art was arranged so that in each exhibition room there was a mixture of old art and new. We found several things of both sorts that we liked. Then we went down the street to the see the Guggenheim—Frank Gehry’s mishmash architectural masterpiece.
What a building.
The featured artist was Joan Miro. That seemed worth a look, so we paid our seven euros each and went inside.
The lobby was largish, maybe a bit too large.They had plenty of beautiful Miros. We especially liked this one, called The Hare….….and this one called Soirée snob chez la princesse. (Snob party at the princess’s)
Eventually, enough was enough. We went out through the gift shop—where M bought a Kandinsky mousepad and E got some socks—and then went to a cafe for a snack. It was warm in Bilbao, perfect weather for sitting outside, especially if you were wearing sun block, which of course M was not…
Next we located our car, extricated it from the underworld, and made the drive back to Argomaniz. We ended the day with dinner in the hotel cafe and a walk around the grounds to look at the stars.
Friday, February 17
Today was travel day and also use the car while you can day. We left Argomaniz around 10:00 and got back to Madrid at 2:00. At that point, instead of going straight to our apartment, we stopped at a shopping center called Gran Vía. There we ate lunch. One floor of the mall was a little bit like a food court, so E went to Rodilla and got a tuna salad that came with a crustless sandwich and M went to Bosforos and got a chicken kebab plate. Then we met up and shared a table. It was pretty nice.
Then we did our grocery shopping in the big supermarket, trying to focus on heavy items that are harder to carry on our walks to and from our local market. It seemed like it would be a lot easier to just load everything into the car. Of course when we got home, we still had the major job of hauling both food and luggage from parking place to apartment. (We will spare you the details of how all that works. Suffice to say that the process involves four different keys.) Once we had everything inside, we breathed a sigh of relief and sat down for a short break. Then it was time to go out again and return the rental car at the train station. That done, we took the Metro home.
So there we were sitting on our couch with lots of food on hand but both too tired to make dinner. But actually that didn’t matter. After a Parador breakfast and a mall lunch, neither of us was too hungry. So we sat down in our dining nook with wine, a banana, peanuts, and a cookie or two. We then watched an old James Garner movie on TV. It was in Spanish and—for those who might have trouble understanding spoken Spanish—it also had Spanish subtitles. It was fine.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
A quiet day today, but we did make a nice discovery in our local shopping area. We went into the Herbolaria—a small place packed full of organic, eco-friendly items, mostly personal care things. E was delighted to find a couple of things that she was running out of. From there we went to the paper store because E was looking for ribbon to wrap some gifts. It turns out they didn’t carry ribbon, but they offered to just give us some from their own roll that they kept at the counter. E happily accepted about 12 inches. We didn’t think of paying anything. Should we have? Too late now.
Back at home we decided to try and adapt to local rhythms by having a fairly big lunch around 2:00 and planning only a light supper later. E made a green salad dressed with some of our newly purchased vinegar and olive oil. M heated up some Barilla bottled spaghetti sauce and boiled some fresh spinach and cheese ravioli. We also had bread and wine plus a small flan for dessert. In other domestic news, we did laundry, which involves throwing stuff into the washing machine located in a little unheated room off the kitchen, and then setting up the drying rack next to the radiator in the living room.
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Today we had dinner with the C family at Taberna de la Daniella, a restaurant that specializes in something called Cocido Madrileño. MC is a Spanish friend of E’s from the days when they both lived in Chicago. When MC had a baby, who is now a distinguished architect, E became a godmother. She’s been a rather distant godmother over the years, but they’ve always kept in touch. Today we got to see the godson as well as the many of the rest of MC’s extended family, including the youngest generation. It was wonderful for us to get to meet them all. E, playing Santa, had brought enough gifts for everybody.
We’ve had Cocido Madrileño twice now, so maybe we know enough to describe it. First comes a soup course, thin little noodles in a yellowish broth that looks like chicken broth but tastes much more complicated. Then comes a plate of chickpeas served with boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. After that, they bring out a giant platter full of all sorts of meatish things including chicken, ham, sausage, beef, tocino, morcilla and whatever else they have on hand. (Tocino is a kind of salt pork—pretty much all fat—and morcilla is a kind of blood sausage made with rice.) E, of course, skipped all the meat, except for the morcilla, which she has always loved. M liked it too, though he hadn’t expected to.
When we got home, M took a nap while E went out for a stroll in the beautiful weather. She found a sidewalk cafe and ordered an orange soda. Oops! She had forgotten that beverages often come accompanied by a free tidbit of food. This time it was a very small open faced sandwich of Serrano ham. E was still full from lunch and doesn’t usually eat ham, but she couldn’t let it go to waste. It was very good.
A bright, sunny day. After a long stretch of clouds and fog, suddenly the world is full of light. But we’re busy packing. Our trip starts on Monday and we want to be ready! We’ve been packing for days, which seems ridiculous. Making a list of things to take is not too hard; narrowing it down to what will actually fit in a suitcase is a little harder.
Monday January 30, 2023
Still packing. It’s hard to pack for two months. And it’s not just our clothes and things. There are also all those presents that we need to take. In fact, each day that passes, E finds that she needs one or two more presents. Finally we just give up and leave, whether we have packed correctly or not.
We’re heading up to Portland in a rental car, which turns out to be a Prius with adaptive cruise control, which we have never tried before. M is happy. Once settled in Portland, we have a nice dinner at ParkStone and then go back to the Comfort Inn and set our alarms for 4:00 AM.
Tuesday January 31, 2023
Off we go into the sky, headed for JFK. We’re on Delta again, flying Comfort+ class, which just means more leg room. That’s fine. Our layover in New York is three hours. We depart just as darkness falls. Delta gives us dinner. Not too bad. One dinner option is chicken and one is vegetarian pasta. In the old days, E would have to make a special request for a vegetarian meal and then might or might not have gotten it. We don’t miss that.
Boarding at JFK was interesting. There were two lines. In one line people had to show a boarding pass for scanning, either a paper one or one on their phone. But in the other line, which we happened to be in, you just showed your face to a scanner and the agent waved you on. Yo! We might have known that it would come to that. But it’s here already?
The flight to Madrid took six and a half hours. M usually can’t sleep on planes, but this time, thanks to chemistry and a kindly supplier, he slept for half the flight.
Wednesday February 1, 2023
It’s just after 8:00 in the morning and we’re sitting surrounded by our luggage in an airport restaurant breakfasting on cafe cortado and croissants. We’ve landed, shown our passports, and collected our bags. But one thing remains, a formality related to our phones. We must face the dreaded activation of the E-sim. We purchased and installed these a few days ago. M has signed up for a cellular data plan. He won’t be able to make European phone calls, but he’ll have internet. E will have cellular data plus a European phone number, so she can call actual people and talk to them. But not unless we can successfully activate, which can’t be done until you’re in country. A tense moment. Will they work? After a bit of fumbling around…yes!
E then made direct contact with our AirBnb host to set up our arrival time. She also called her friend M who tells us not to take the airport train, but to take the airport Metro line (subway) instead. The Metro took us most of the way to our little apartment. A taxi took us the rest of the way. Soon we were installed and mostly unpacked. Whew.
That was the end of the easy part.
Thursday February 2, 2023
So our apartment turns out to be in a somewhat weird spot, not weird in a bad way, just a bit different from anywhere we’ve lived before. The immediate area consists mostly of apartment buildings, seven or eight stories high. There is lots of open space, however. The buildings are often arranged around large courtyards with mature trees, most of those now leafless. Our place, for example, is near a fairly busy street, but we are never aware of it because our apartment looks down into the courtyard rather than outward to the larger world.
Looking down from our living room window.
Our particular place is on the fourth floor and has three rooms: kitchen, living room, and bedroom. All the rooms are small, but the kitchen is fully functional with oven, cooktop and fridge; the bedroom has a nice large closet; and the living room has…a really tired couch and some interesting artwork. Here’s what our building looks like from the outside. Our place is in the middle of the photo. That air conditioner type thing is just under our living room window. The window to the right, on the rounded part of the building is our kitchen and breakfast nook. The window on the left is the bedroom.
Although most of our view is down into the courtyard, we can also get a glimpse of the outer world. Here’s what that looked like at dawn this morning.
Friday February 3, 2023
Today we went with E’s old friends M and L on a drive up to Salamanca, where their daughter T lives. T is a cloistered nun who is currently serving as the leader of a group of Clarisan Sisters. Her monasterio is located in a small village out on the Salamanca plain. To get there we drove on the autopista for a little over an hour and then turned off into a mostly flat agricultural area with broad fields punctuated occasionally by villages and small towns. Eventually we came to T’s village and found our way to the monastery, a long, two-story, beige-colored building with a mostly blank facade. We parked near the main entrance, which was a heavy door of darkened wood. We pushed a button and after a bit someone buzzed us in. We entered into a wide, high-ceilinged hallway, somewhat dimly lit, which ended in another heavy wood door. On the right hand wall of the hallway, there was a built-in display case showing examples of the various baked goods produced by the order. On the left side there was an open doorway that led to the visiting area. This was a plain but cheerful room with an orange tile floor.
It was really fascinating for us, first just to have a chance to see the setting, and then to see how such a visit took place. E and M sat in the two chairs facing the window, while T’s father sat on the left side of the table and her mother the right. After a few moments T came and pulled back the curtain on her side, which revealed a similar sized room on that side of the dividing wall. T greeted us all and sat facing us through bars. Parents and child all seemed really happy to see each other and we also felt welcome. We sat and talked for a long time. The whole visit lasted several hours and included a nice midday meal served at our table. This included tomato rice soup, lettuce salad with flakes of tuna and olives, baked fish with a layer of mashed potatoes and cheese on top, menestra de verduras (mixed vegetables in a thick sauce,) a fruit selection, and, finally, tiramisu with a selection of cookies from their bakery. After the meal we were joined by about twenty other sisters who sat in rows of chairs in the room behind Teresa. So we had a chance to chat with them as well. We talked about all sorts of things. It was quite an experience. On our way out we decided to buy some cookies, both because we wanted to show our appreciation for feeding us and because the cookies that we had sampled at lunch were so delicious.
We may have gotten carried away. In our defense, two of these items were gifts that we did not expect.
Saturday February 4, 2023
We took an early walk this morning and picked up some pan rústica for breakfast along with a few other items we’ve been missing. A mouse tried to get at the bread. And it turns out that it was a mouse that E herself had brought back from the monastery! The things that M has to put up with.
We tried to get a big red pepper, but we had to settle for this little tiny one.
Later in the day we went to visit some more old friends, who had invited us for dinner. P and M live in a town north of Madrid. We went by Metro and train to Las Matas station where P picked us up and took us to their lovely house in the hills. What a nice time. We talked a lot and ate too much.
Sunday February 5, 2023
Today we saw M and L again and had a meal at their house in a suburb to the south of Madrid. It’s not easy dealing with all this public transport, but for the second day in a row we managed to get where were going without getting lost or even being late. Good for us.
M and L—along with Buddy, Ke, and Jaeger—invited us for a dog walk into the nearby hills that overlook the Jarama river valley. The area was the site of a great deal of fighting during the Spanish Civil War, when a Francoist army came up from the south as part of a campaign to capture Madrid from Republican Loyalist forces that included International Brigade volunteers. During the fighting the hills were stripped of vegetation, but since then they have been reforested with Mediterranean pines. The area is now a reserve heavily used by cyclists and dog owners.
Part of the Jarama valley. The river is in the far background. The ponds in the foreground are old gravel quarries now flooded.Recent housing developments extend right to the border of the reserve.
After our walk we had appetizers and drinks by the pool. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, L served us up a lavish dinner of Cocido Madrileño, a traditional sort of stew with garbanzos flavored with salt pork and various meats and vegetables. L made a special effort to prepare this so that M could try it for the first time. E had eaten it years ago, but it was a much simpler version.
Monday February 6, 2023
We went the Corte Ingles department store in the Nuevos Ministerios neighborhood. We did a little shopping and then went up to the top floor cafeteria for a midday snack, just as E was wont to do back in the seventies, when she was a Madrileña. We were happy to see that despite the march of time and change, it was still a nice place to be.
Back at home we did some household chores: vacuumed, did laundry, cooked our own dinner. Wow. And then, having purchased a mat at Corte Ingles, E joined her Zoom Yoga class. 10:30 PM here, 1:30 PM back in Corvallis. It’s odd how seamless everything can be if you have a good internet connection. Stream Netflix? Sure. YouTube? Apple+? Banking? All pretty much the same. A little strange.
We have a slow leak in the left front tire of the Mazda. We took it to the tire shop, but they couldn’t find anything. That was weeks ago. So it’s still leaking and we keep on filling it back up. At least we have one of those new-fangled inflators right in our own garage. Not that we’re going to be driving much. We’re off to Cancun tomorrow, traveling by Uber, airport shuttle and Delta.
Friday, January 13, 2023
Our flight was at 7:00 PM, so we dutifully checked in at the Portland Airport around 5:00. The security check was our first opportunity to try out our newly purchased TSAPre status. Which did not work. We were rejected from the line of privilege despite what it said on our boarding passes. Plus M was selected for a random check even after he got through. Sigh. Is this what we get for traveling on Friday the 13th? But after that everything went well. We flew to LAX, then got onto the long flight to Cancun. M couldn’t sleep during the flight and ended up watching Triangle of Sadness, the Palme d’Or winning movie about a group of super rich folks on a luxury cruise. Was that a good thing to see while on one’s way to a full-service tropical resort? Maybe. Maybe not.
Saturday, January 14, 2023
We arrived in Cancun early in the morning. It took a little while, but eventually a hotel shuttle arrived and soon we found ourselves in a lovely room in the Solaris Grand Caribe.
The Caribe wing of the Solaris has space for 200 guests. The Royal wing beside it holds 300 and has much less interesting architecture.
The hotel strip in Cancun extends along 14 miles of a sand dune peninsula shaped like the number seven.
The blue colors on the right side are the Caribbean; the greens to the left are wetlands and lagoons that separate the hotel strip from the mainland. The hotels are all on the strip in the middle.
Here’s the view from the top of our hotel, which is located near the bottom of the seven. Cancun has strikingly beautiful colors.
Along with the Andees, our friends K and J had also come down. One of the nicest things about the trip was having a chance to visit with all of them.
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Wonderful day at the beach. Some areas of the beach were closed due to ocean conditions; others were open. Where we went the surf was just rough enough to be entertaining.
Monday, January 16, 2023
The Andees hired a car and took us all to Tulum, about an hour and a half away. Tulum is a Mayan city that was built around the year 900. The Mayans abandoned it soon after the Spaniards arrived in the 1500’s.
We had a wonderful guide, a Mayan himself, who had lots to tell us about Mayan history and culture. Along with much else, he taught us the Mayan number system and also told us a dramatic story about how the Mayan written language was deciphered. This last may be have been apocryphal.
Tuesday, January 16, 2023
We took a bus today up along the strip to a shopping area. We got some tee-shirts and some Mexican vanilla, the latter costing about the same price as it would in Corvallis, but never mind. Along the way we passed lots and lots of hotels. There were a few ugly square towers, but most of the architecture was impressive. And the sheer scale was awesome. There are more than 80 hotels along the 7-shaped strip, enough to accommodate many thousands of guests and to provide some thousands of jobs.
This was our first experience with an all-inclusive resort and it was pretty nice. It’s true that the free drinks weren’t very strong, but that’s actually a good thing because it means you can have many drinks with little ill effect. (And real drinks are also available, at the so-called Premium Bar.) The food was mostly good, which is to say, rarely great but very rarely bad. Day-long free food sounds dangerous; but when a buffet is free, there’s really less motivation to heap up your plate. There were also sit down dinner options, which were awesome because the portions were small! What a welcome change that was. Also, we never had to deal with a bill at the end of the meal. Very nice.
On our last evening there was a members only ‘gala dinner’ with live entertainment. Just before we went down to dinner, we took at last glance at the sunset.
Wednesday, January 17, 2023
Up at 4:30 to get an airport shuttle at 5:00. A long travel day, but all went well. All planes on time or early. Even our Portland to Corvallis shuttle found light traffic all the way.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
So now we’re home. The Mazda tire was way low again. We took it back to the tire shop and this time they fixed it. Okay! But wait, now we have to get Roto-Rooter to unplug the sewer lines. Geez! Shoulda stayed in Cancun.
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Okay, so maybe we can relax today. Not too much though because we have another, bigger trip coming up in a week or so…
The day has arrived for the belated birthday party for A and N. E’s plan was to start the proceedings with dinner at Kim Hoa’s Vietnamese, followed by a pavlova dessert at our place. She made the meringue early in the afternoon. A arrived from Vancouver at 5:00 and at around six we set off for the restaurant, picking up H on the way. N joined us there. By 7:00 or so we were back at our place and E started whipping cream and spreading berries. N opened a bottle of champagne and M found sparkling cider for H and some suitably fluted glasses. After candles and song, the pavlova was served. Vay, vay vay, as the Turks might say. It was good. There wasn’t much left at the end.
E had also gotten each honoree a confetti popper. They were spectacular, firing out masses of shiny, sliced up ribbon. Made almost entirely of hard plastic, they were about as environmentally unfriendly as you can get. Fun though.
The pink and green cylinder is a used party toy. The shiny debris on the floor is some of what flew out.
Friday, January 6, 2023
January 6 is a special day in Spain, the day the Wise Men arrive bearing gifts. Here there was a special event of another kind. There was a small gathering by the river to celebrate the birthday of Morris Walker, a recently deceased acquaintance. There was flute playing by a native American, memorial remarks and finally the tossing of a little bottle of ashes into the river. The amazing part about the bottle is that it was made of some sort of dissolvable salt that would not hurt the river.
Monday, January 9, 2023
M has been reading The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan, which is basically just an annotated list of sixty-six American popular songs from various eras and musical genres. Each entry shows the song’s title, the songwriter, the performer, and the date of release along with a number of photos that are related to the song’s time period or genre. And of course each song gets a few pages of text wherein Dylan shares some of his thoughts about it. Some of the songs are quite old–the oldest are from the 1920’s–and a few are from the early 21st century. The great majority, though, are from the years between 1945 and 1980.
Many of the songs are very well-known or at least somewhat familiar to people of a certain age, e.g., Blue Suede Shoes, On The Road Again, Strangers in the Night, Mack the Knife, On the Street Where You Live; but quite a few are decidedly lesser known. For M this latter group would include such titles as Nelly Was a Lady, The Little Cloud That Cried, Take Me from the Garden of Evil, and Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy. Part of the fun is to see how many of the songs you recognize. And then you’re curious to see what Bob Dylan has to say about them. What you find is that his response to each song–famous or not–will go off in all kinds of (mostly) interesting directions.
Inevitably, you’ll want to listen to each song when you read about it. Once Dylan lets you know, for example, that the harmonica part in a certain song was played by Stevie Wonder, how can you not want to hear that song? In the old days, finding and playing it might have been difficult. Now it’s just hey Siri, play Ball of Confusionby the Temptations…
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
We made a return visit to the Herbert Farm Natural Area. Went a little farther this time.
Just like last time, the route was a tad waterlogged right at the start.
But this is different. When we were here two weeks ago, this area looked like…
…this.The three legs of the triangle are big logs, but the top of the triangle is resting on the remains of a much larger one. How long have these pieces been here? How’d they get like this? We don’t think nature would do it. Most likely it was a Herbert with a Cat.
In the evening we had dinner with J, B and C at J and B’s house. A fine meal followed by peppermint pig smashing and a shortbread crust lemon tart. Hard to beat.
Wednesday, January 11
Today it’s back to work for E, who is trying desperately to finish sewing a beach cover-up for our upcoming mini-trip to Mexico with the ANDEES and friends. Oh boy!
Of course after yesterday’s indulgences, E is thinking she may have to enlarge the waistband on the beach skirt.
