Trip to Iberia #8. Toledo

The next day, we spent a marvelous morning at Reina Sofia.

We saw, among others:

- Oscar Dominguez's painting, Souvenir de Paris ( I think he got laid in Paris.)
- Dali's The Memory of the Woman Child (I think he had an intercourse with her.)
- Dali's Electro Sexual Sewing Machine (I think the title says enough.)

We also watched part of an excellent Buster Keaton film, called A Week.

And there was oh so wonderful exhibition involving two creatures that looked like half-bear and half-raccoon. I don't even know the name of the artist now. You enter a room with three screens on the walls, all showing said two creatures in a lavish room. In one of the screen, these creatures study two sleek columns in the middle of the room. In those columns made of dark glass, they find figures that looks exactly like themselves. But as they make their discovery, you also finds two sleek columns in the room with the screens! Inside those columns are of course the figures of those creatures.

By the time we got out, the sun was already sizzling. After some churro con chocolate, we headed to the train station to catch a high speed train to Toledo.

Plaza de Zocodover



Street of Toledo.

Had lunch in an random restaurant.

Toledo Cathedral.

Street.
Santo Tomé for El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.

Movie shooting.

Souvenirs.





Museo de la Santa Cruz




Beautiful view. Where was it? Abundance of Spanish green.


Spanish terrain as I imagined.


Plaza de Zocodover


While waiting for our train back to Madrid, we had early dinner at a bargen tapaz bar we found in one of those charming street.

When it was time to take a taxi back to the train station, we found all those taxis lining up at the taxi stop in Plaza de Zocodover disappeared. After a quite suspenseful amazing race moment, we made it to the station.

-Beautiful train station-

-Beautiful Toledo-

Trip to Iberia #8. Museums and Tapas

The second day in Madrid. Almost a month has passed since then. Let me slowly enter the already unfamiliar water of my memory of the day. I hope I float...

In our second day in Madrid, we get on the metro early in the morning for Museo del Prado, fearing a long line. We exit the subway station and emerge on a busy street as wide as an interstate highway, already lost. This can be stressful.

Once we find ourselves safely in the museum, we plunge into our day by having some (what else?) café con leche and pastry. By now, I am truly in love with café con leche, it's rounded robustness and almost caramel-like finish.

Prado is a colossal beast. We have to be strategic to experience as much as we can in one morning. Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Titian... Las Meninas, The Third of May 1808, Goya's many giant paintings, the clothed and unclothed Maja (which we learned were painted with a significant time gap in between)...

At the museum shop, we buy a small poster of The Dog by Goya. A small head of a dog wearily gazing up at the vast dark empty space. Certainly, he senses something ominous in the air? Poor dog.

After Prado, we refuel ourselves with some bocadillos and ensaladas rusa at a leisurely tapas bar nearby, and find our way to Museo Reina Sofía, only to learn, after a premature photo session in its courtyard featuring a cool black and white sculpture against the red wall (Spaniards do love red, don't they?), that Guernica is not showing the day.

Instant rescheduling of our itinerary. No choice. We head to the Royal Palace.


Sun burns the Southern front of the Royal Palace blinding white. A long line of people, stretched all the way across the wide plaza are all slow-cooking. We have no choice but to get in line to be grilled alive.

Oh, how long did we wait under the killer afternoon sun, I don't know. It felt like an hour, but I know we wouldn't have survived that long. So it must have been 30 minutes or so that we suffered, bearing the fatal solo-attack. The joke is this: At the box office, we learn admission is free to all European subjects on Wednesdays, and that's why the line was so long. Looking back, perhaps the paying Americans didn't even have to stand in that line...

We rehydrate ourselves with the museum-priced water and wait for our spirits to reboot before viewing the palace.

-I like this photo because it has an accidental soft glow.-
Rooms after rooms of extravagance, and a long walk. We return to the hotel with aching legs and burnt skin. I would be carcinogenic on consumption, like any overcooked animal.

After a good rest, Cava Baja is our destination for tapas crawling. Tapas bars in this area seem to be less touristy than the area we went to in the previous day (no photos of the dishes, no English menus, but excellent pantomime communication by the kindly bartender) and more sophisticated (evident modern twists).

What did we have? How did it taste? The specifics of that part of my memory now eludes me. But I remember bocadillos with vivid green paste (distinctively Spanish green) that had a very refreshing taste of condensed spinach. How unexpected!

-A tapas bar window: I know this is just food, but I still think it's wrong. Absolutely.-
The last stop of the day is our beloved Plaza Mayor. We take an outdoor table, and have sangria and Pimientos de Padrón in the cool evening air, gazing at the beautifully lit plaza and perfect cobalt blue sky. We sit there for a while, inebriated of the happiness that flows in abundance in the Plaza, among the cheery people on their short vacations in their long work year.

Trip to Iberia #7. Lisbon to Madrid

The next day, we have the whole morning to bid a long good-bye to Lisbon.

We spend an early hour in the ruins of Converto do Carmo, destroyed in the 1755 Earthquake.


Time stands still in this broken church forever froze in the two-and-a-half-century-old mourning.

After that, we ride the famous tourist tram #28 around the town to take one last glimpse of the city.




***
Realizing we missed a chance to taste the much anticipated caldo verde (kale and potato soup) in Lisbon, we order the dish at McDonald's at the airport. (Yeah, you heard me.) It turns out we've had better caldo verde in the States, but well, we just had to try.
***
About one hour's flight later, we are thrown into a completely different world altogether. The throbbing giant, sexy beast, center of a chaos. Sunny, busy, splash Madrid. About everything here seems to be making a statement, a claim, bold and proud. Majestic and prosperous, Madrid is yang to Lisbon's yin.

Our hotel was a hidden gem in the middle of Madrid's China Town. The location got me worried on the first impression, but turned out to be quite convenient (especially for Mandarin-speaking S.)

At dusk, we took our tour guide and ventured out.

-Street signs of Madrid contain pictures.-
-In olden days, rich convicts were able to pay money to stay in this luxury prison.-
-Plaza Mayor: The old theater for brutal execution of "heretics" and dissidents.-

-Plaza Mayor, stained with its gory past, fascinating and gorgeous.-
-At Plaza Mayor. Navigation is not my forte.-

We strolled all the way to the Royal Palace (which was closed for the day), and then....

...commenced our tapas crawling, not far from Plaza Mayor. I loved grilled pig ears from Oreja de Oro (nutty, gelatinous, and with bits of pleasant resistance to bite) and the mushrooms from Casa Toni (dense mushroom flavor, sealed within the perfectly browned surfaces of each slice).

-The highlight of the night: Grilled pig ear. Delicious.-
That was a good time...

-Yeah, you guessed it: Another black cat on our path-

Trip to Iberia #6. Lisbon Part 3 - The Night at Fado

I know, my dear imaginary reader. This segment is to be about fado. But before we get at that, please let me digress a little and make a little tribute to another very Portuguese art.

The Tiles of Lisbon

If the charming iron-railed balconies struck me as something distinctively Spanish, tiled walls, many of them old and peeled off, for me is a Lisbonean charm.

The tiles obviously are an influence from the Moors, but the Portuguese certainly made it something of their own.

-A typical pictorial work, seen in the monastery in Belem -

Old tile works, elaborate and beautifully aged, are quite marvelous.





Some of more recent tile works may be less appealing.

-From a metro station-
-Many buildings there look like this.-
-New tiles seen in Baixa.-
Below is a recent tile work but with a classical approach. Look at the giant rats on the floor. Amazing, considering that this was on the wall of a cafe in Alfama where we had our breakfast one day. (I didn't throw up).


In Alfama, we saw abundance of older tiles with their exquiete charms.








Souvenir Shops: The Good, the Bad, and the Silly

Here are some photos of souvenir shops in Lisbon. (Who needs to buy souvenirs when you can just photograph them?)






And finally...

A Night at Fado

The Bairro Alto neighborhood is populated with countless hole-in-the-wall fado restaurants. Adega do Ribatejo is one of them, and apparently, one of the first to start the nightly fair. When we arrive, it's all quiet on the fado front, but this one is in its full swing, spilling a singing voice and clapping sounds out of its little door into the darkening narrow street. We walk around the neighborhood and wait until the merriment subsides before entering the restaurant.

Taking a table at the crammed dining room, we order grilled octopus legs with potato (Excellent!) and another dish of chicken and clam with fried potato. Of course some vinho verde (young wine, typically white and famously Portuguese) as well. The performances resume, and a woman with an eerie resemblance to Susan Boyle sings. She's good really, but is it a smock she's wearing? I juggle, relishing my irresistible grilled octopus legs before they get cold, giving an impression that my full attention is politely directed to the singer, and enjoying the performance, all at the same time. Overall, it is quite a merry scene, with the happy patrons quietly cheering for the performer, and the attractive waitress singing along occasionally.

Upon finishing her third song, the lady walks straight to the kitchen, and puts on an apron. She is a cook there! Alrighty?! A convenient arrangement! But then, the oldly host, who introduced the singer to the audience and has been clumsily opening and closing the electricity control panel over S's head throughout the evening (almost hitting him on the head on several occasions), takes the floor and starts singing. Next, it is the waitress's turn.

She takes the makeshift stage at one side of the dining room next to the two guitar players. About forty or forty-five, with a large coiling metal bracelet and beauty like a sunset. No novice to pain and despair, and all the rest that life has to offer. She sings a mournful song, with a deep crying voice. About lost love, stabbing longings, or merciless fate, I wouldn't know. I can't understand a word. But her voice, the gut-wrenching wail distilled in a song, grabs me tight and giving me a desire to sob (but I refrain). There is something movingly primordial about an intense emotion conveyed from one person to another purely through the physical quality of an expression. To my defense, I had a little too much vinho verde to drink.

Like the other older singer, she also goes around hustling to sell her CDs, and I buy one. (Note to self: don't shop while drunk.) Strange to see the person behind such a lamenting voice so friendly and cheerful, but hey, this is real life.

In the days that follow, I try to revisit that night, the strange experience of emotion contagion and an infectious heartache. But by the next morning, the magic is gone, dispelled like thin smoke, as if the whole evening was just yet another incident of a far and distant dream.

-Adega do Ribatejo-
-Another black cat-