Spain

[Drunk Monk]

You know, it's a weird artifact of this new forum.  After I'm a few paragraphs in, the response slows down.  I hit the keys and the letters come up much later.  So I post.  Then when I go back and edit, it speeds up again.

It's not like I'm at work and got called away or anything.  

Next: Sevilla

[Greg]

Excuses, excuses.

I must say, I like the quick reply feature of the new forum.

And the fact that I can access it is a big plus.

[Drunk Monk]

The quick reply function doesn't allow for 'post subject' and dm has to put his secret messages in there, mostly for cf as he likes to hover.

[Greg]

Ewww, to you and your secret messages.

[Drunk Monk]

Ewww, to you and your secret messages.

FTW!!!  






Next: Sevilla

[Greg]

No I don't.

[cranefly]

You just gotta love the hover.

[Drunk Monk]

If only the hover was iPhone friendly

[Drunk Monk]

I was saddened to leave Cadaques.  It was so magical.  The sunset light was glowing, ever changing and inspiring.  The Mediterranean sea glistened like milk from mother earth.  The air was sweet as a lover's breath.  I could feel Dali everywhere.  It would be wonderful to return someday, but it is very unlikely I ever will.  

The push to Sevilla was long - Bus>Commuter Train>Major Train.  Sevilla is the other side of Spain, the southwestern region.  It took us a whole day and the miles were catching up to us.  All of our AirBnB's boasted laundry machines but in Spain this only means washers.  No dryers.  And in winter, it's damp so nothing dries.  In Madrid, there was this odd heated rack that dried a few items at a time very slowly.  In Barcelona, we dried clothes over the space heater and with the hair dryer, regularly tripping the fuse box and cutting out all our power.  In Cadaques, we just gave up.  So we were delighted to get to Sevilla where we had a real hotel.  Well, sort of.  Actually, it was no better than any of the AirBnB.  And no laundry.  The first day, Stacy and I made a futile effort to find a laundromat.  We found it, hidden down an odd alley, but it only had two washers and never opened.  It was frustrating.  

It was also raining, not much, but it was the first weather we encountered.  I bought a cheap umbrella, like a kid's toy, just in case, but it never got used as it never got quite that wet.  Like Barcelona, there was a lot of shops, like a giant Euro mall, and we were a short stroll from the main Cathedral and the Alcazar, both of which were stunning examples of architecture.  We saw the Alcazar first, and spent a lot of time looking up at the complex geometry of the Alcazar's Islamic ceilings. And I got totally lost in there - it was so maze-like.  But stunning, OCD geometry from that you had to crane your neck to see.  The gardens were probably lovely but in the rain, we didn't venture out into them much.  We just gazed at them from the balconies.  

Sevilla is covered with ornamental orange trees and the orange juice is the best in the world (Valencia is very near - this is orange country).  I later learned that the ornamental trees are considered too sour for human consumption and all of that is exported.  Nevertheless, the fragrance was heavenly.  We found a nice French bakery again, but eating was tricky because of the New Year holiday schedule and the odd timing of Spanish eating.  Tara and I did some shopping, eventually finding her a Pimkie jacket that was all the fashion.  She had underpacked, and needed some sort of heavier jacket for the whole trip.  We finally got it and the damn snap cover broke right away.  But I managed to find the cover and fix it after we got home.  

For New Year's Eve, Tara and Stacy decided to stay at the Hotel and rest.  I went out on my own to the Plaza Nueva, which several locals and web resources said was the place to be for NYE in Sevilla.  The NYE custom is to have a big family meal that evening.  We were not hip to this, so it was really hard for us to find food because everything was reserved or closed.  We wound up grabbing odd snacks at a convenience store.  Then you are supposed to have 12 grapes, and eat one for every chime of the midnight from the Plaza Nueva clock tower.  So I bought 12 grapes for a euro, which was the most I've ever paid for grapes ever, and waited.  The Plaza was pretty empty until about 11:45.  Then it got packed.  Then the damn clock tower didn't chime, so no one really knew when to eat their grapes (I just ate mine when everyone else did).  Then everyone went back home by 12:15.  That was rather anticlimactic as I expect more from my NYEs.  

The next day was Flamenco day - the main reason we came to Sevilla.  It's renowned for Flamenco and bull fighting.  Given my family, that meant Flamenco.  We went to the Flamenco museum, which was a school and theater, with a museum.  There was one Dali there too - a poorly lit piece on Flamenco that I couldn't shoot but was delighted nonetheless. Then we went to a tourist Flamenco show, where we mis-ordered extra Sangria for everyone, which meant I had to drink a lot of sangria, but that was fine.  The Flamenco show was awesome - such a macho fusion of Ballet and Tap.  The best guy looked like Wil Ferrell, and that was really messing with me.  

Next: L'Alhambra.

[Drunk Monk]

On our 2nd to last day in Spain, we hopped a bus to Granada to see L'Alhambra, allegedly one of the greatest examples of Islamic architecture in Spain.  We got tickets online that promised hotel door pick-up, but it wasn't our hotel.  And it's a 3-hour ride from Sevilla to Granada, but the bus was a posh BMW luxury vehicle so it wasn't so bad.  I have never seen so many olive trees in my life.  The cute tour guide, who said her name was Carmen but she probably says that to all the tourists, said the region supplies 70+% of the world's olives, and that seemed possible after looking at 3 hours of mountains of olive trees.  

Unfortunately, we had come out of synch with Spain.  Our tour day was the anniversary of Islam surrendering Granada to Spain's Queen Isabella, and that happened at Alhambra so the place was packed to capacity.  We had a guided tour, which showed us the highlights (it's a massive complex) and got us around a lot of long lines.  It's another spectacular example of Islamic art, but I was more impressed by the Alcazar.  The Alcazar wasn't nearly as massive, nor set a top a spectacular hill, but it was tighter somehow, more concentrated in what it was trying to achieve artistically.  

After the tour, the bus let us out in downtown Granada where we were supposed to scavenge up our own lunch, but because of the anniversary, everything was closed.  We found an Italian place that did gluten free pasta, only to discover after waiting for way too long (gluten free is more time consuming to cook) that marinara in Spain means seafood, not just veg like here.  Stacy was extremely disappointed.  There wasn't much to see in Granada, at least not on that day where they dropped us off.


Then the long ride back to Sevilla for one more day, then one more travel day back to Madrid, where we were staying near the airport where there was nothing to see.

[Drunk Monk]

I've been putting off finishing this, mostly because I'm still clinging to the trip.  Somehow, ending this recount puts a closure on it that I don't really want.  But I finished posting pix on Facebook last week - time to move on.

Our last day was spent shopping in the great street mall that is Seville.  We made it into the cathedral.  A beggar at the door told us to just go in during a service, as it was free.  I tipped him.  So we admired the architecture, which was stunning, saw the grave of Christopher Columbus, and most of all, heard the organ play.  There is simply nothing like the sound of a gothic cathedral organ.  The whole building is designed to house this holy instrument.  The experience is inspirational.  After that, we wandered about town.  We saw the Plaza which had all of the provinces honored, and some street guitarist was playing Lennon tunes, just like one we heard on our first full day in front of the Royal Palace.  John bookended out trip.

Stacy couldn't stand dirty laundry any longer so we searched and searched until we found a tiny laundromat.  I was annoyed spending my last evening in Spain in a laundromat but I was grateful after on the flight home.  The next day was travel by rail back to Madrid, and a night spent in an airport hotel, which was shockingly Western, like a really expensive Denny's.  I watched 5 movies crossing the Atlantic.  At Ohare, T and I raced across the terminals to try and take a selfie by the dinosaur but we didn't make it and had to return a good terminal away.  I watched two more films until we got to SFO.

I love Spain.  The Dalinian Triangle and Toledo were dreams come true.  I would go back in a heartbeat, but there's so much more I want to see and the resources are ever dwindling.  I doubt I'll be able to circle back there, at least not in this lifetime.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

It sounded (and looked) like one of the best trips ever. Spain has been near the top of my list for a while and your travelogue put it up at #1. I really feel you about the "ever dwindling resources" though.

[Greg]

Dude, learn to drop off your laundry at the fluff and fold while on vacation.

[Drunk Monk]

That's partly my point. There are no such things in Spain. No laundry service at the cheap hotels, no dryers, nada.

I don't even know how to say 'fluff' en espanol. Fluffo?

[thatguy]

And to follow up and play off the Dali thread going in our book forum:

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/11/485580723/...rey-museum

Dalí Provides A Surrealist Shot In The Arm For A Fading Monterey Museum



Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí spent much of the 1940s in the U.S., avoiding World War II and its aftermath. He was a well-known fixture on the art scene in Monterey, Calif. — and that's where the largest collection of Dalí's work on the West Coast is now open to the public.

A week before opening day, everything was still in bubble wrap. But Dmitry Piterman knew where each piece was. The Ukrainian-born real estate developer has collected more than 570 etchings, lithographs, sculptures and tapestries, and he can speak with intimate detail about all of it, while ripping open one bubble-wrapped lithograph after another.

"Some of the brushes he used had only one hair," Piterman says. "So imagine the meticulousness with which he painted and created his art. That's when jokester Dalí kind of disappeared. But burning giraffes and elephants on their frail little legs, all that is part of his work and part of kind of the provoking Dalí." 

Piterman was a University of California, Berkeley undergraduate on a date one night about 30 years ago when he wandered into a San Francisco art gallery and encountered Dalí's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans.

He describes it as "strange, very surreal and very grotesque, even." Disjointed body parts clutch each other in a desperate wrestling match against a big, blue Catalonian sky with clouds settling in. The painting anticipates the onset of the Spanish Civil War. Dalí is best remembered for his silliness, but he tackled serious topics, too. "He was a provocateur, thinking outside the box, painting outside the box," Piterman says.

After college, Piterman made a fortune in real estate, and began collecting. He now owns the largest collection in the U.S. outside of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Now it's all going up in what used to be a history museum at the foot of Fisherman's Wharf. Monterey might seem a bizarre choice, but it's not. Dalí was a fixture on the local art scene in the 1940s. Even though here — as elsewhere — Dalí's outrageous eccentricities made more of a splash than his art did. Nearly everyone remembers his pointy mustache as much as they do The Persistence of Memory, his painting with the melting clocks.

A party at Monterey's elegant Hotel Del Monte was Dalí's most memorable local exploit; a Paramount newsreel captures celebrity guest Bob Hope's puzzlement as the fish course is served in satin slippers. He was a pop culture icon a half-century ago. He worked for Hitchcock and Disney, and he was a regular on the talk show circuit, too — in 1965 he told Merv Griffin that "Dalí dream in glorious Technicolor!"

Today, Surrealism may no longer be in vogue, but Dalí's Technicolor artwork has more chance of a drawing a crowd than what used to fill the museum run by the Monterey History and Art Association. President Larry Chavez says the museum operated at a loss in recent years, as public interest in its maritime collection faded. "We've been in existence since the 1930s. Our membership is getting a little older, and this is going to be a kick-starter to get new people involved."

The building is stuffed to the gills with Piterman's Dalí collection, which will stay here permanently. Piterman also has plans to host visiting Dalí exhibitions ... as well as Surrealist dinners that shock and delight the way the artist himself did back in the day.

--tg