The First Days of Winter

I am so woefully behind on my blog entries! I‘ll just start where we are and then can try to fill in the older stuff.

We finally arrived in Madrid about a week ago after traveling 30 hours from New Zealand – almost half way around the world (the longitude of New Zealand is about 174 E and that of Spain is 4 W). It was long but not as bad as we thought it would be. We have been flying on all sorts of cheap airlines where you have to pay extra for everything. For this trip with flew with Emirates and felt like kings when we actually got food and drinks, free movies and pillows and blankets!

Our first day here was the hardest – we were so tired. After checking into our hotel we decided that the best thing we could do was to walk around in the sun and try to stay awake as long as we could. The weather was beautiful when we arrived, just like a sunny Southern California winter day. We walked up to the Plaza Mayor and sat outside to snack on some tapas. All of us were tired but David was the most tired and we had to keep poking him to keep him awake.

Slowly we adjusted to not just the time difference, but Spanish time. We are eating lunch at 3pm and having a snack at 9pm. We went out one night for tapeo – going from one tapas bar to another. The kids were not as excited about it as we were, but they tolerated it for the chorizo.

Tapas y vino

It has been a change from New Zealand, where it felt like we were going to see nature like mountains and beaches, we are now back in the big city and seeing cultural and history sight seeing. The Prado was spectacular, particularly the Goyas. David was not a fan Goya and in fact refused to look at or listen to the audio guide about “Saturn Devouring His Children” because it was too scary. Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” was also cool to see in person because you can appreciate all of the freaky detail. We actually found that all of the freaky stuff seemed a little less strange after we saw much of the other art depicting the judgment day from the same era such as people with animal heads and winged demon creatures. While the kids liked seeing all of the art, they really enjoyed visiting the Royal Palace and seeing the opulence of the 18^th century.

We also had the chance to see Picasso’s “Guernica” at the Reina Sofia Museum. It was incredible to see it in person – it is so huge – 11 feet high and nearly 26 feet long. There was a series of photographs that illustrated how Picasso developed the painting including features that were later replaced or removed in the final painting. The collection of Dali paintings were also amazing, not so much because they were his most famous, but because they reflected so many different periods in his work, not just his surrealist works.

One day we took the train out to Toledo. It was a great contrast to Madrid. While Madrid feels very European, it doesn’t’ feel particularly Spanish. It looks more like Paris, which is not surprising since it was built in the mid-1500s by kings originally hailing from France. Toledo, on the other hand, feels very Spanish with wrought iron, red tile roofs, and narrow, winding cobblestone streets. We had fun trying to navigate the streets and make our way to the cathedral and the Santo Tome chapel to see the El Greco.

We had been really looking forward to visiting the Alcazar in Toledo – a castle built on the site of a Roman fort. It had been heavily bombed in the Spanish civil war when it was under siege and had been recently restored (more like remodeled) and opened. At the entry were the excavated Roman remains, including a well, after this point, we were totally lost in the most

The best view of the Alcazar

tedious military museum ever. To be fair, we were still jet lagged as we were trying our best to find our way around, but it seemed to be a huge place filled with lots of nothing that had long confusing explanations. I think we enjoyed it the most viewing it from the city walls below!

After a few days in Madrid, the warmth of what we took to be an early spring quickly disappeared (we optimistically thought we had managed to avoid winter). While the sun was still mostly out, the temperature went back to normal – around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Even with all of our clothes on, we were still cold. We finally indulged in a winter shopping spree of more socks and sweaters. This was a big adjustment from months of shorts and flops.

After our week in Madrid, we are ready to go on to explore more Spain. We’re starting off with a few days in Segovia (North of Madrid) and then heading south to hopefully warmer Andalucía (Cordoba, Granada, Ronda, and Sevilla). After that, we haven’t decided anything yet, but are getting tempted to visit Portugal.