New Year's with Family

The Sunday after Christmas, I woke up at 9:00am; all too late for my 8:45am train to Madrid. I frantically jumped out of bed reeling from the discovery that I had not actually set my alarm clock the night before. My Mom, sister and brother-in-law-to-be were set to arrive in Madrid in an hour and a half and I was a two and a half hour train ride from the city’s main station, to say nothing of the multiple Metro lines it would take to skip across town. As it so happened, I did not arrive all that late to Madrid (thank goodness for a country that had the good sense to invest in high-speed rail lines some years ago), though I did receive a frantic call somewhere within the tube of the Madrid Metro from a concerned sister and a very worried mother.

After hugs and hellos at the airport, we boarded the Metro into the city to deposit luggage a short distance from the Palacio Real on a side street flanking Plaza de Santo Domingo. Determined to catch the Museo del Prado before it closed for the day (not to reopen again until Tuesday morning). I dragged my weary guests across town to the Paseo del Prado, just in time to line up for the museum’s weekly free entry hours. My sister was determined to see the Prado if it was the one thing she did on the trip, even if it that meant standing in a line that quite literally wrapped around the length of the building, which it did.

Now my first memories of the Prado recall a very young sister who, both tired and overwhelmed by room upon room of historical paintings, came close to throwing a tantrum in the museum a distant summer day in 2001. What a change to note her admiration for the collection of the same paintings, albeit several years wiser and with a bachelor’s degree in art history to boot. Wow, did I feel old.

After the Prado, it took little effort for my mother to convince the group to try a small restaurant she spotted in Plaza de Santa Ana. Exhausted from a day of travel and curios to see what gifts lay in store, we were all in favor of an early return to the hotel to exchange gifts. A pile of shredded wrapping paper strewn about the floor of one hotel room, sleep soon followed.

In the morning, we braved the rain to visit the Royal Palace (Palacio Real del Oriente) with its pharmacy and armory. At lunch, I seem to have made a rather convincing defense of the claim that I’d try anything, at least once, in this case traditional Madrid-style callos (tripe with blood sausage). Delicious! After lunch, we went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia to see Picasso’s Guernica and then for a stroll along the Gran Vía as the sun went down and the holiday lights came to life overhead.

Tuesday morning, we trudged about in the rain once again to visit the Parque del Buen Retiro and the southern reach of Barrio Salamanca before rushing pack to the hotel in order to check-out and pick-up our luggage. A few minutes later we caught a train to Córdoba, a former Roman outpost and capital of Moorish Al-Andalus.

Sadly, the weather did not improve in Cordoba. As we made our way under the Roman archway leading to the 2,000 year-old bridge that connects old Córdoba to its hinterland to the south of the river, it started to pour. We were forced to take refuge in the southern tower of the bridge in order to wait out the storm that was already beginning to submerge buildings within sight further downstream.

Later that night we darted from shop to cafe in La Judería (the historic Jewish quarter) with umbrellas in various states of abuse. Thankfully a dinner of hearty salmorejo (Cordoban tomato and ham porridge), flamenquines (pork loin wrapped in cured strips of cured ham and then fried), and berenjenas fritas con miel (fried eggplant with honey) made up for the weather, if only slightly.

Wednesday morning we visited the famous synagogue of Córdoba (above, right), one of only a handful of surviving Jewish religious spaces dating to the period prior to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Of course, the most impressive sight in the city is La Mezquita, the immense Moorish mosque with its undulating forest of red and white archways. After some time in the former mosque, now also the Cathedral of Córdoba, we went to eat tapas, took a stroll by the restored Roman temple in the center of town and to enter the town’s small but impressive Museo Arqueológico. By the evening, another train had deposited our ragged bunch in Sevilla.

To be continued...

It's been a while...

Okay, okay! I know it's been a while. I'm still trying to get into the swing of things once again. The run up to my family's visit the week after Christmas was a hectic flurry of completing research projects, gift shopping, and trip planning. It's been an unusually rainy winter and I really struggling for a while to take picture of the city bedecked with lights. The array was really quite impressive at night if rather ugly during the day. In addition to the usual shopping booths set out in some of the city's more prominent plazas, two special shopping fairs also appeared for a matter of days. Around the Cathedral, a Feria de Navidad materialized in the two weeks before Christmas. This fair specialized in nativity scenes...of every size, sort, and design. One booth specialized in Mexican figurines and another in hand-carved pieces from the Andes. Should the shopper favor something a little more close to home, one vendor even made hand painted legs of ham and bundles of chorizo to hang in the manger. All in all, this fair was surprisingly fun. In addition to nativity scenes in the home, a number were erected around town. Of course every church had a sign directing parishioners to their local Belén (Bethlehem). The hermandades bought out unused office space to erect separate productions and nearly every corporation, bank branch, and private business had a nativity somewhere on-site, including city hall - how very different from the United States! However, my favorite was by far that placed in the window of Confitería la Campana made of marzipan, chocolate, and coconut. It looked good enough to eat, though I suppose that was not the point.

In the Plaza Nueva, a separate Feria de Artesanía ran from mid-December to January 5, the extended shopping time fell in line with the Spanish tradition of exchanging gifts to coincide with El Día de los Reyes Magos (The Day of the Three Wise Men) and not Christmas itself. In this fair, artisans offered handmade ceramics, leather work, and other goods using some of the oldest techniques possible. It was here that I was invited to visit the workshop of the city's finest tile maker, currently completing restoration work on the monumental Plaza de España in the Parque de Maria Luisa.

Christmas itself was rather quiet for me. I had a small dinner for La Nochebuena (New Year's Eve), went to La Misa del Gallo (Midnight Mass) in the Cathedral, and met a few friends for drinks afterwards. The next few weeks would more than make up for this momentary lull. Stay tuned...