The Eurocup 2004 soccer tournament started June 12th. I left Portugal on the Lusitania, the unfortunately named Lisbon-Madrid night train, on June 8th. (Lusitania was the Roman name for part of the Iberian peninsula, but to me it's the passenger liner sunk by the Germans in 1915). It was a quiet train, and once it stopped swaying and clanking (the Spanish frontier, perhaps), I slept well. Later I watched a crowd of singing soccer fans board the Lisbon-bound Lusitania in Madrid's Chamertin station with a shudder.
Chamertin had all the amenities, and made Lisbon's Santa Appollonia station look tired and provincial. I eventually tracked down the Tourist Information booth (Information at train stations means train information, not tourist information, duh) to find they only had maps of Madrid, not of Toledo, my destination. Still, I would need that map later, and meanwhile the metro map on the back helped me get to the bus station. (The Madrid metro is large and sprawling, unfortunately, so are its interchanges.)
I tend to avoid festivals since I don't like crowds, but the Eurocup gave me a choice of more time in Madrid or the Corpus Christi celebrations in Toledo. Picking Toledo turned out to be a great decision. The festivities last for several days, but the high point is the procession on the ninth Thursday after Easter, which features the 10 foot high gold monstrance which is usually the main attraction in the cathedral treasury. The processional route is covered with strips of cloth against the sun, the road is strewn with thyme and rosemary, and the houses are decorated with banners, plaques and embroidered shawls. It seems that all of Toledo is in the procession - girls in white dresses, young men in white surplices, women draped in black lace mantillas, men in the robes of various societies, nurses and nuns, marching bands and marching regiments. And the prelates, of course, in gorgeous embroidered copes, escorting the monstrance on a flower-bedecked float. But some of Toledo lines the parade route, breaking into applause when the monstrance appears. Others fill reserved seats in Zocodover Square, where a second mini-service is conducted (mass at 10:00, procession begins at 11:00, finish up at the cathedral around 2:00).
I stood for two full hours, having snared a front-row place with a good line of sight next to the fixed bayonet of one of the soldiers lining the route. Then, after the procession passed, I followed three nearby nuns, who presumably knew the ropes, back to the cathedral, where I watched the end of the procession on wide-screen TV - on the Diocesan Channel, no less. Then I saw the remnants of the procession reenter the cathedral, to renewed applause. It took the six or eight sweating men in charge of the monstrance two tries before it moved up the ramp and back in front of the altar.
Although soldiers lined the route, this was mostly to define the border between parade and spectators, security was nonexistent. I wore a backpack throughout the procession, and back into the cathedral, and was close enough to touch the archbishop when he led the prelates out. As with Bom Jesus I didn't feel I derived any spiritual benefit from this religious exercise, but it was a great spectacle. However, the town itself seemed to radiate spirituality.
Being in Toledo the day before the parade also had benefits. For one, the immense cathedral was almost deserted, and only a few other people shared the three-tiered choir with me - one tier, wooden, with the Christians reconquering Spanish towns from the Muslims, one city per stall, and two alabaster tiers with Old Testament figures. Best of all, on the wooden tier, a complete set of misericords, the cheat-seat ledges that allowed the monks to half-sit during services. Since these were originally hidden, and in any case not considered sacred, the carvers could have fun with them. The cathedral easily made my short-list for best ever, and also owns a stunning collection of El Grecos, so good the other artists in the room look like amateurs.
Also generally hidden are the interior patios of Toledo's houses, which are built in Arab style, with plain facades pierced by small windows and forbidding doors. For the festival, some of these doors are opened, allowing visitors in to see the central courtyards with their flowers and fountains - a mini Parade of Homes.
I took the bus back to Madrid (the railway line is being rebuilt to take high speed trains) for one night. I would spend the next night on the Madrid-Algeciras Andalusian Express, getting off at Ronda, because when I planned this stage RENFE listed no daytime trains on this route for the next three days. It is one thing to take a night train in cool weather - Northern Europe in May, say - and quite another in hot weather in the south - and I had been enjoying (actually, suffering) hot weather since Coimbra.
Consider: you must check out of Hotel A in Town A by 12:00 if not earlier. You can't check into Hotel B in Town B until 12:00 if not later the next day. So, you are a street person for 24 hours (minus train time). Expensive first class berths on the 'train hotels' are rumored to have showers. Maybe one time I should splurge for one to see what it's like to shower on a swaying train. Some train stations have showers, but if you're traveling alone you still have to juggle your luggage. So the challenge is to stay relatively cool and clean while enjoying Town A.
In Madrid I did the hotter sightseeing - a walk to the Royal Palace - on Day One. Day Two I spent time in the air-conditioned Reina Sofia and Prado museums, and the shady Botanical Gardens, interspersed with lunch, coffee and dinner breaks, and arrived back at Chamartin to retrieve my luggage in relatively good order. (Yes, Spanish stations still let you store your luggage, although it has to go through Xray first.)
While the Royal Palace boasted a porcelain room (with walls covered in porcelain), the Reina Sofia has held Picasso's Guernica since Franco's demise (I found the display of Capa's Civil War photos more moving) and the Prado has no shortage of famous paintings (after having seen it I still don't understand why Velasquez' Las Meninas is considered the world's greatest painting), the highlight of my Madrid visit was the Nuevo Ballet Espanol's Concierto Flamenco. The lighting, the music and especially the dancing were riveting.
My doubts about the Andalusian Express were fully justified. The only good thing I can say about it is that I did get to lie down, although I shared my bunk with some form of insect life and collected an array of bites. The rolling stock looked like it dated from the Civil War, and it was much hotter inside the train than outside. Some airconditioning operated while the train was moving, but it never reached my top bunk. No taxis met the train at Ronda station, and my hotel (the otherwise excellent San Francisco) wouldn't let me check in early. While not one of my better mornings, freshly squeezed orange juice and espresso materially improved my outlook. (Have I mentioned that I have developed an addiction to European espresso? Tiny cups of dark brown ambrosia, maybe 5 or 6 sips, always served with sugar.)
Ronda itself helped, perched on both sides of a dramatic gorge, with an atmospheric old town and plenty of cafes with good views. The town is literally above the birds, graceful swooping swifts play below the cafes. I used Ronda for down time - a little sightseeing in the morning, a siesta in my air-conditioned room in the afternoon and a good meal in the evening. This was where I started wondering about all the people I saw courting heat stroke - choosing to eat in the sun, or consulting maps and guidebooks in the middle of the street when shade was available to the side. Maybe they are immune to heatstroke, not to mention cancer.
I visited the bullring in Ronda out of duty rather than desire, but was early enough to watch the horses being exercised. The 14th century Mondragon Palace was more my style, with two pretty courtyards and two gardens with ponds overlooking the gorge.
I reboarded the Andalusian Express after my Ronda rest-cure for a two hour trip south that took four. (Remember to board a train carrying food and water!) Just as we entered a tunnel through the scenic mountains, the train came to a sudden stop. And stayed stopped. Then word was passed along that we had hit a 'toro', no, two 'toros'. (More likely cows than bulls, but 'toro' plus signed horns facilitated communication). The delay was to allow inspection of the underside of the train. Eventually we moved, at good speed, to next station, only to have the inspection resumed. The British couple in the next compartment rescued me from boredom, and while I was in no particular hurry they had a plane to catch. We shared a taxi from San Roque to the border with Gibraltar, where I believe they just caught their flight.
Gibraltar is one of the last outposts of the empire on which the sun never set. Like the Falkland Islanders, its inhabitants are very happy being British, thank you. (A referendum as recently as 2002 reaffirmed their opinion.) The superstition is that the British will remain as long as the 'apes' (tailless monkeys properly called Barbary Macaques) remain. The day I was there few were in evidence, but maybe they were sensibly hanging out in the shade. Gibraltar is celebrating 300 years of British rule this year, according to the banners on the lampposts, but off the main shopping street the town looked to be in poor repair, and several shops on the main street had gone out of business.
The rock looks just like the pictures and is truly impressive up close. The day I was there I could just make out the other Pillar of Hercules, Jebel Musa, across the strait in Africa. The British influence predominates on the rock, although I heard plenty of Spanish spoken. I used up some left-over pounds, ate fish and chips for lunch and Indian for dinner, and indulged in a gin and tonic. However, I found it interesting that at Europa Point, the southernmost tip, the sequence of buildings is lighthouse, souvenir shop, and mosque, a 1997 gift from guess who - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Once a Muslim country, always a Muslim country, according to the faithful, and Spain including Gibraltar) was Muslim for 700 years.
The last Muslim outpost in Spain was the fortress-palace of the Alhambra, dominating Granada. Although it has suffered over the centuries, most obviously by having Charles V build a resolutely non-Islamic palace in the middle of it, the Alhambra is still an exquisite expression of the high Islamic culture of the Middle Ages, so beautiful I violated my non-souvenir rule and bought an illustrated guide book.
Two hotels share the Alhambra's rock, the very expensive parador in a 15th century convent, and the somewhat less expensive Hotel America, where I slept in a small but cute room over the flower-framed front door, with a view of the Sierra Nevada. I had reserved two tickets for the Alhambra - one for the evening, one for the next afternoon (allowing the morning for Granada's other sights, which pale in comparison). Although a daytime ticket is needed for the Generalife gardens, with their shade and water, the time to see the Palacios Nazaries, the heart of the Alhambra, is in the evening. No tour groups. Not many people at all. Mostly quiet people. At 10:00 pm when evening visits start, enough light remains to admire the reflections in the pool in the Court of the Myrtles, the lights are just coming on in the Albaycin across the valley, and artificial lamps highlight the tiles and sculptures that everywhere decorate the buildings. The quiet magic of the evening was totally absent in the afternoon, with a constant procession of tour groups and heat radiating from the stones.
The summer heat in Spain wasn't letting up, and the AC in my grimy Barcelona hotel room turned out to be a table fan and permanently open window - open onto an air shaft shared with several other rooms. After one night I moved half a block closer to the Ramblas and happily paid twice the price for AC and a bathroom at the Hotel Espana.
My memory of a previous visit to Barcelona mostly consisted of being chased off the beach by sand flies and I didn't fall in love with it this time, either. The Ramblas, the central pedestrian street that Rick Steves promotes seemed mostly an opportunity for one group of tourists to sip over-priced drinks while watching another group parading past. This did allow me to check out the current fashions, which seem to dictate bare midriffs for women, unfortunately a good idea for only a few (definitely not including me). Also, I had temporarily OD'ed on paintings in Madrid - how many Madonnas and martyrs can you take at one time? (And why is St. Sebastian, full of arrows, so popular with artists?)
On the plus side, I did discover a taste for the Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudi. Craftsmen are still working on his unique cathedral, the Sagrada Familia, and I especially enjoyed his Casa Batllo mansion, where everything, wood, glass, iron, curves sinuously. Too, the fountains and cascades at Montjuic must be one of the best free spectacles anywhere.
The night train from Granada to Barcelona was a step up from the Andalusian Express (let's not think about a step down) and I enjoyed a cool sleep, for half a night. At some point the train reversed, and my carriage went from first to last, beyond the reach of the AC. The resulting furnace didn't seem to faze the two Ohio college kids in the bottom bunks, on a school trip, who slept until the last possible moment. As on the Lusitania, the second-class sleeping compartments on this train included a cold-water sink in one corner. This relatively useless accessory meant that the compartments were installed on the diagonal, with one corner sticking out into the corridor. The resulting passageway was too narrow for me to navigate wearing my backpack and was an even bigger hazard for those with suitcases.
The more expensive Salvador Dali night train from Barcelona to Milan was correspondingly more comfortable, with a full size corridor and bigger compartments. I shared mine with two interesting women from Texas on a two month trip, our fourth passenger failing to show up. It was a good start on my next country.
I ate some very good meals in Southern Spain, rather too many of them 'menus' of three or more courses, no doubt the reason why all the exercise I'm getting isn't resulting in any loss of weight. (It seems that all the towns I've visited since Santiago have been built on one or more hills.) Oddly, I enjoyed the best paella of the trip in Bayonne (admittedly Basque country), but the gazpacho in Spain was well-flavored (and very welcome in the heat). The two parador dinners I indulged in were both worth the money, with wonderful olives and dry sherry in Ronda and a memorable appetizer of tiny broad (fava) beans and ham in Granada. The five course 'degustation' menu at Ronda's Restaurant Del Escudero beat them both - salad, divine lobster bisque, salmon with asparagus and aioli, rare duck breast and a light cake with cream, ice cream and raspberry sauce. I also have fond memories of a patisserie in the Eixample area of Barcelona, Mauri, where I ate lunch two days running, enjoying the gilt wallpaper and bottom-of-the-pond' glass ceiling in the upstairs dining room. (Shrimp mousse, rare roast beef with mayonnaise, salad with avocado and apple, steak, choice of delicious deserts - sweet without being cloying.) Note to North Carolinians - roast suckling pig was good, but not as good as NC barbecue.
Sent from Split, Croatia, 13 July, 2004
Site design and content Copyright 2001 - 2010, Wilhelm's Words
Contact: wilhelmswords.com
Home