November: Spain

When we moved to Morocco I discovered that several European discount airlines flew in and out of Casablanca for something akin to bus fair...I went a little crazy.  In one night I bought tickets for both of us to Lisbon and Madrid...for about the price of two fancy dinners out.  Max stopped me just before I bought tickets to Milan, and it's a good thing.  Who knows where I would have stopped?  I was out of control.

But I do not regret my impulsive travel bargain shopping.

We loved Madrid for the following reasons:
 

The Spanish Royal Palace & Cathedral
The churches in Spain are pretty much like free art shows - with some extra pizazz...the Catholic kind, I guess.  The Royal Palace Cathedral has some beautiful stained glass and vibrantly painted ceilings.

The Royal Palace was nothing to sneeze at either.  It was a much welcomed honest-to-gosh blustery autumn day and we were glad to make our way through the line into the Palace after an hour or so.  One of the 2,000 plus rooms, the Stradivarious Room, contains the only matching Stradivarious quartet in the world (two violins, a viola, and a cello).  I sneaked a picture of one of them before being tsk tsked by an attendant.  Which, of course, made me very embarrassed.  I hate pushy tourists who think their picture of priceless art is more important than the preservation of said priceless art.  I was just swept up in the Stradivarious moment!

The Royal Palace

Art
 Outside of amazing free art in the Spanish churches we went to a few museums in Madrid that were terrific.  We stood in front of Picasso's Guernica for some time at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.  It is massive - about   137 inches by 305 inches.  Even better than seeing it in person was seeing it in Spain where the tragedy of Guernica actually happened - to read about the history, see part of the country in which it occurred, and then see the art it inspired added another level of appreciation for me.  ...and sometimes, let's be honest, adds the first level of appreciation.  I like art, but I'm not afraid to admit I don't always get it, you know?

El Greco!  El Greco was born in Greece (hence the name) but painted during the 16th century in Spain.  The wikipedia describes his style by saying  

El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school^. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.  

His religious figures are sinewy and sad and always painted as if part of this world and part of the next.  I didn't know much about him before this trip and we were lucky to see his work in several museums in Madrid and Toledo.      


Which brings me to Toledo!

Tagus River Surrounding Toledo on Three Sides

 We took a short 30 minute train ride from Madrid to Toledo and spent a few days wandering up hills (only uphill it seemed) into churches, and mosques and synagogues and having a generally wonderful time.  Toledo was once a haven of relative tolerance and co-mingling of Moors (Muslims from North Africa), Christians, and Jews alike.  We saw many remnants of Toledo's golden age including a Sephardic Synagogue and Museum (the name for Spanish Jews), a Muslim Mosque, and my favorite, the Cathedral of Toledo.  I think this may be my favorite church of the any I've seen in Europe.

The Cathedral of Toledo

Oh, hello.

Toledo's cathedral not only boasts a dozen El Greco's and a handful of Goyas depicting Christ and the Apostles, but also carved stucco in geometric patterns and muqarnes - both very traditional Muslim architectural arts found in Mosques all over the Middle East.  The sacristy contains tapestries and clothing of previous cardinals, including golden banners covered in Arabic writing.  No where else have I seen such a mixture of religious iconography.  Granted the choir seats in the nave of the church depict the violent recapturing of Granada and its surrounding cities during the Crusades, but there are still whispers of a moment where art and devotion were universally appreciated in Toledo regardless of faith. 

Is it wrong that after learning the tiny misericords in the choir (small benches what you lean on while praying) illustrate various naughty activities frowned upon by the Catholic church we tried to figure out what each of them was?  Surprisingly enough, the only one a little blush worthy was a man peeking on a nude bather.  Most of them depicted dragon fighting and animals playing cards together... Strange days, those Middle Ages.    

The amazing gold plated altar piece in the Toledo Cathedral

A peek into the courtyard of one of the monasteries we visited in Toledo.

Best Gargoyle Ever. 

The horseshoe door speaks to Toledo's Moorish past

Toledo at Night

Don Quioxte
Love me some Don Quioxte.  Toledo borders on Don Quioxte's region of windmills and you could find little statues of him everywhere.   When Max bopped into a local shop to ask the shopkeeper the name of Don Quioxte's trusted companion he looked a bit aghast and said "Sancho.  Of course!  This is very important here."  So there you go.  If you go to Spain you'd better know your Sancho.  

Food
I think I found my food heaven.  I am a plate sharer and I like to sample everything at the table.  Enter Tapas.  These tiny portions are usually ordered at bars and people will have a bite and a drink at one bar, mozy down the lane and eat another tiny plate and have another tiny glass of beer and so on. But the experience is equally as good for teetotalers like ourselves.  We prowled the streets looking for tasty menus and then popped in for small plates of sausages, cheese, jamon, grilled veggies or fried fish.

For the record, I had the best garlic shrimp of my life in Madrid.  I watched them dump a handful of shrimp in a small dish of olive oil and oodles of garlic and slowly heat it up until they were cooked.  Max had to stop me from tipping up the bowl of garlicky goodness and drinking it when we finished. We compromised on me sopping it up with a chunk of bread.

Other food highlights include copious amounts of Spanish ham called "Jamon Iberico" - think little four seasons piggies fed on acorns and other lovely things their whole life - spicy chorizo sausage (see a trend?), plates of Manchego cheese and perhaps the finest meal I have ever eaten.  After touring castles and walking up hills all day in Toledo we stopped for an early dinner at the base of the Castle.  After about three hours we had cleaned up a dish of partridge served with giant white beans, roasted red peppers with cured deer meat, roast suckling pig with mashed garlic potatoes and bacon wrapped fillet Mignon stuffed with a fig dressing (respectively).  We finished with a mango moose topped almond custard as well as a chocolate "St. Geronimo" cake.  Once a decade my friends.  I don't know if my waist line (or my wallet) could handle much more than that kind of excess.            

And the hot "chocolate" with dipping churros!  Best. Dessert. Ever.  On more occasions than a weekend really demanded we partook of hot chocolate - really more like pudding - and tiny churros for dipping into the pudding/chocolate.  I'm reliving my food coma just thinking about all the good food. 

On Speaking Arabic
Why would my Scottish looking American husband speak Arabic?

That must have been what our waiter at the Museum of Ham was thinking (Please note that the restaurant is really called The Museum of Ham).  When we struck up a conversation with our waiter and he learned that we were from America he said "Well, I am from Baghdad.  You know, things are hard here.  I work and I work and at the end the day I just don't quite have enough to make the ends meet"

Too bad for him said Scottish looking husband responded in modern standard Arabic "You are from Baghdad!  Well, it's nice to meet you.  How long have you been in Madrid" 

To which our waiter did not respond, so Max repeated it and then the waiter smiled nervously, ducked his head and walked away.

Liar! 

Playing on the sympathies of traveling Americans in regards to the war in Iraq.  Shame on you Mr. Spanish Man.  Shame on you.  But props to my Mr. Red Beard.

B'saha

I’m a swimmer.  But I don’t come from a family of swimmers.  We have kept our feet firmly on the ground for decades kicking soccer balls.   I estimate my sweet mother has sat through at least 1,000 soccer games in her life…that’s a lot of hooting and hollering.  But during the 2004 Athens Olympic games I became obsessed and started swimming in our local pool.  As my skills improved I purchased goggles and a cap – because I felt ridiculous doing the dog paddle in full gear. Overtime it became my go to for exercise.  To the point that high levels of chorine in the University pool ate away the backside of my swimming suit in college… I didn’t notice for some time.  Good thing it was my college bum and not my almost thirty bum.

When we got to Morocco I was very excited to start swimming again – between the move from Jerusalem, our temporary status in DC, and fertility injections that made me sick, it had been a long time.   Surprisingly enough I couldn’t find a lot of lap pools in the area!  There are pools along the ocean front corniche, but most of them are filled with ocean water and accessible only with expensive club memberships.  And really, like I want to swim laps in front of people wearing diamonds with their bathing suits.

Another, larger concern of mine in Morocco is interacting with actual Moroccans.  For my job I do a bit of it, but it’s always in a work capacity.  Max and I have come to realize it’s a lot harder to have regular conversations with people now than it was before as students.  We drive a car so we aren’t interacting with bus drivers and fellow passengers, we have a housekeeper who buys our groceries during the week so we only talk to people at the markets on the weekend, and we work with Americans all day long  (with the noted exception of locally employed staff who are awesome – thank goodness for them). 

When we set about looking for a gym we wanted three things 1) a gym with a pool 2) a gym with different floors for genders instead of different days like most places in Casa and 3) a local gym where we could engage with actual Moroccans.  Thanks to the help of my Moroccan office-mate we were able to accomplish all three. 

A few weeks ago we showed up for the first time on a women’s swim night – even though there are floors for men and women the pool is separated by gender each night.  I pulled my stuff out of our shared gym bag before Max disappeared into the men’s floor and I made my way down to the pool.  As I descended I heard crazy loud disco music and all manner of yelling and splashing.  To my delight, and a bit to my nervousness, I discovered a water aerobics class in session. 

“Venez! Venez!”  the drill instructor/aerobics teacher hollered from her position at the front of the pool.  Come, Come

I dutifully ducked into the changing room but when I unrolled my towel it revealed I had somehow packed only my tankini bottoms….  Bad news bears.  My options were to stick it out in the dressing room until Max was finished in an hour and try to explain myself in broken French to the class, or act like it was normal to wear a high wasted tankini bottom with a hot pink sports bra to water aerobics.   Some of these women were wearing knee length swimming suits and I already stuck out as the only non-Moroccan, but what’s living overseas really about if not feeling uncomfortable from time to time?

I tried to drop my towel and sneak into the water as inconspicuously as possible and it was well worth it.  They know how to work it out here!  When you think water aerobics you think of retirement home pools full of swimming-suit-skirted-empty-milk-jug-swinging 70 year olds, but at the risk of sounding cliché, this wasn’t your grandma’s water aerobics class.  A young Moroccan ran the length of the pool and back the entire time shouting for people to work harder and on occasion even reaching into the water to push someone’s head down, making water treading more challenging.   And she didn’t shy away from bossing me as the newcomer. 

“Plus Dur!  Plus Vite!”  work harder, work faster!  she yelled, squatting next to me in the pool. 

Somehow it wasn’t a confrontational kind of yelling, everyone was laughing and having a great time – kicking their legs about and yelling jokes back to the instructor.  Every once in a while she stopped for a small dance break and then got back to the pool.  It was awesome.  

In the locker room afterwards the 15 + women where having multiple conversations with each other in a web across the small space and passing dates back and forth to eat.  Most were sitting in wrapped towels telling stories and illustrating them with exaggerated hand movements.  At this point they had switched to Arabic and I had little idea of what they were saying, but it was nice to witness, if not be part of in a small way, the camaraderie and intimacy that happens with Arab women behind closed doors.   It is much stronger than I have ever experienced in an American women’s locker room where everyone faces the wall to change clothes and then bustles out before the sweat has dried on their foreheads.  I realized that my swimming suit bottom/sports bra combination didn’t matter a bit and what matters here is being together.

One particularly jovial woman handed me a date.  “B’saha” she smiled from behind her sopping wet hair.  To Your Health   

Morocco at the Met

Love This.

Our Time in Lisbon Comes to an End

We spent our last full Lisbon day in Belem checking out the "Age of Discovery" monuments in honor of Christopher Columbus - the founder of our 3 day weekend feast.  We hit the Monastery of St. Jerome - some of the most beautiful cloisters I've ever seen - oh to be a nun!  Reading, walking about, thinking...eating broth, staying single forever, waking up for prayers several times a night  ...wait, actually that sounds terrible.  Nun I shall not be, but cloister appreciator I shall.  The adjacent church actually houses the tomb of Vasco De Gama.  Vasco De Gama!

Monument to Discovery

Then we hit the "Monument To Discovery" (just what it sounds like) and sampled a very tasty treat called "Pastel de Nata" - a special custard cooked in a sweet filo dough type crust.  Divine.

For our last night we went to the Gulbankian Musuem where I accidentally bought an amazing book about all of the books from all over the world in the collection in Portuguese.  I was very sad indeed when I pulled it from my back pack and discovered "De Paris A Toquio" instead of "From Paris to Tokyo" like I thought I had purchased.  Not to worry, a sweet friend of ours in Portugal is going to swap it for us.

The museum, containing the late Mr. Gulbankian's personal collection, is really stunning.  My favorite section was the room comprising Persia, the Middle East, and Turkey.  At one point I looked up from a fabulous 3 x 5 yard, 400 year old Persian rug to see a small toddler making his way around the corner from the previous room.  He was running towards the rug from the opposite side of the rug I was on.  (If you see what's coming then hold your breath like I did.)  I waited for a few seconds to see who was with him and an old woman with moccasins and knee highs came toddling through the door, too many paces behind him.  Just then it dawned on me that she wasn't going to catch him in time.  I let out a pre-gasp gasp.   And then the small child jumped onto the platform, peddling across the 400 year old rug.  I must have let out a serious cry because Max ran to my side to ask what was the matter.  Not wanting to loose this fun game of cat and mouse the child ran a bit further (the threads!) and fell right down in the middle of the rug.  I didn't know I had such strong feelings for historical artifacts - but I guess I do.  The guards ushered both the child and the old woman out of the room and Max had me sit me down for a minute so I could get it together.

Perhaps that hidden (or not so hidden) compulsion to preserve cultural artifacts explains why I can't really talk about the looting of the Iraq National Library and Archive after the 2003 invasion without getting very sad.  Look it up.  Be very sad too.  Anyway, this particular rug did make it through the toddler invasion of 2011 and for that I am glad.

Tiles from the Gulbankian Museum

As we were packing up the next morning and recounting the many things we'd seen Max said to me "I thought this was going to be a relaxing trip" with a grin.

"But this was a relaxing trip!  This was me, low key planning." I said with a bit of panic.

To be honest, I'm a planning maniac.  I think we'll just see one thing today and spend the rest of the time milling about but then I realize that historical sites A, B, and C are all on the way so we should just stop there for a little while and this amazing church is only open for a few hours that afternoon so we should probably stop there too.  ooh, and wouldn't the perfect Brazilian dinner (which we ate at a place called Brasuca) be a great way to end our relaxing day?  And then! We'll walk down by the river front and see the ships come into port... you get the picture.

But I have promised, crossed my heart and hope to die, that our next trip will be a bit slower paced :)

Lisbon, Day II

Lisbon has a weekly flea market in the shadow of the 17^th century Church of Sao Vincente de Fora.   After exiting the rickety tram that wound us up through the Alfama the next morning we wandered towards the church.  We found our way by noting the increased number of University students lugging antique mirrors and carved side tables back to their apartments as we moved further down the hill.   The sprawling market has an eclectic mix of old world book sellers, hairy legged hippies making hemp bracelets, Guinean’s hawking African statues, antique furniture with navel carvings, and the usual ‘junk from my closet’ collections of television remotes, half sets of china, empty chipped frames, and old shoes rubber banded together all spread across an old bed sheet.  I bought several black and white postcards of Lisbon from the early 1900’s but I found my haggling skills much diminished in this non Middle-Eastern country and I’m sure I paid too much.

Many of the churches in the Alfama share a roving preacher and are closed to the public much of the time.  We were very fortunate to catch the Church of Sao Vincente de Fora open for a few minutes after the flea market.  One of the enclaves has a pretty gruesome statue depicting a man, hands shackled but outstretched, and his heart plucked out – blood gushing down his chest.  My training in Catholic saints in minimal so we asked the caretaker about it as she ushered us out the doors to close for the day.  She told us that Sao Joao Do Brito was a Portuguese Jesuit who preached in southern India during the 17^th century.  After a significant amount of success he was martyred – slayed through the heart.  My reading revealed that when he instructed a convert to divorce all but one of his wives one of the unhappy (an powerful) women began a campaign against Sao Joao Do Brito and he was later killed as he became increasingly unpopular among the upper class and religious Brahmin.  Funny though, in all my reading I couldn’t find anything about him being stabbed through the heart.  It’s a great story all the same.   I think that kind of history meets legend meets symbolism meets religious expression is what is so fascinating to me about religious iconography. 

After a lunch of pork chops – the first in months – and grilled sardines – which I’m slowly becoming obsessed with – we headed up to the Sao George Castle for a few hours.  This castle was first built by the Moors in the 12^th century.   We spent quite a bit of time taking in views of they city and reading up on Lisbon from a shady spot we found…down in the dry castle moat.   It was good to rest our feet, but we spent a considerably amount of time trying not to get busted by the grounds police and making jokes about the number of dead bodies/animals/garbage and sundry things that had no doubt made their way into the soil through the moat.

 After that we checked out the School of Portugese Decorative Arts --an awesome old house full of enough patterns, prints, tiles and carvings to make your head spin—ate a mediocre Indo-Portuguese Curry and, shame of my shame, caught an American movie in English.  In my defense, all of the movies in Casablanca are in French or Arabic and never subtitled in English.  For a few moments I felt like I was back home at Movies 8 with a purse full of smuggled in candy. 

I guess sometimes travel is as much about discovering home as it is about discovering new places.

A Rough Start, But...

It was a double puking.

I probably haven't seen someone throw up for 15 years when my younger brother threw up in the back seat of the minivan on the way to Grandma's.  My sisters both rolled the windows down and held their faces out, wailing the whole time that they too were going to be sick and how would they survive?

The flight from Casablanca to Lisbon is very short and the plane size is commensurate to the journey.   When the man behind us suddenly passed out and vomited into his shirt pocket I traveled back in time to the minivan's backseat.  I, however, didn't attempt to stick my head out of the window -  for the obvious reasons but also because I wanted to help.  Too bad I don't know anything about helping other humans in need of physical aid and I could only sit there holding my puke bag out lamely... in case he needed another one?  Note to self: take a first aid class for crying out loud.  

I'm not sure what actually happened, but after someone roused the cabin crew the man came to, changed his shirt and everyone went back to their Portuguese Sky Mall equivalents like nothing had happened.

Very strange. 

The second puking occurred on the church steps next to our guesthouse.  4:30 in the afternoon seemed a bit early for drunk street puking, but what do I know about Lisbon?  (And actually, I later learned that "street drinking" is a legal and popular activity in Lisbon.  It's just what it sounds like.  Yikes.) 

That's not a very good way to start off describing what was a wonderful trip we had in a wonderful place, but sometimes people get the idea that travel is all about leisure and glamor.  Sometimes you have to wade through a bit of street puke to get to the "leisure" part....and I'm not speaking metaphorically here people.

ANYWAY, all grossness aside, we arrived at our guesthouse overlooking the Tagus river at about 5:00 PM and were greeted by what sounded like a Brazilian dance party.  A retro jukebox blasted a mix of classic American Rock and rhythmic Brazilian Forro.   Pedro, our host, worked a juicer to the beat - churning out two tall glasses of orange juice for us.  Do you ever feel like you are the least cool person at the party?  That's certainly how I felt in my librarian sweater (it's a bonafide, honest to gosh librarian sweater we are talking about) and Rick Steves guide book sticking out of my camera bag.  But whatever.  If you worry about not being "cool enough" for the Europeans, or the Jet Set, or the World Travelers or whoever you'll never go anywhere.  Who cares.  Wear your librarian sweaters with pride I say!

Lisbon. Is. Beautiful.  We keep coming back to the adjective "easy".  It was easy to get to and from the airport, easy to walk in the streets at night, easy to find something cheap to eat, easy to ask people for help.  Our first night we took the quaint city tram (not unlike San Fran's) up to the top of the Alfama neighborhood - where sailors and salty sea characters of yesteryear once rousted.  This area was one of the few places in Lisbon not destroyed by the 1755 earthquake that leveled most of the city.

That night we wandered down the steep lanes and stopped at lookout points to take in sweeping views of the Atlantic as the sun set.  We sampled Lisbon's famous Bacalhau - fried salted cod fish - and the Pastel de Bacalhau - a kind of codfish cake with potatoes, parsley and eggs all fried together in a delicious ball of goodness.  The Bacalhau tasted a bit like beef jerky with breading - only made of fish..  In its defense, we did stop just before closing time when the Bacalhau had been sitting under a heat lamp all day.  Mea Culpa.

Bacalhau Shop

For our actual dinner we took a ferry across the river to the other side of the bay and dined on squid stew and a cod fish and cream dish.  Even though squid isn't at the top of my 'love it' list, I feel very strongly that you just have to eat the things the locals eat when you travel.  Have I ever gotten sick?  You'd better believe it.  But I have also discovered many new things I like - the stew was actually quite good and the squid very tender.  But the best moment of the night was when Max asked the waiter if they had anything with pork on the menu.  After months of pork-pravation in Casablanca when he brought out a large dish of mixed Chorizo with flames still licking up through the sausages we knew we were going to love Lisbon.