Introducing Eleanor!

I've had Eleanor for about two months now, but have yet to share what I know about her history and how I got her.

I heard of Eleanor at the very beginning of October - I had been traveling to different adoption events, and this particular Sunday, my friend Alisa was on hand to drive me to one in Fairfax with the Lost Dog and Cat Rescue. While there, I met a couple dogs, but none that met my criteria:

• Less than 20lbs, so I could carry on a plane or bus
• Older, so I wouldn't have to worry about not giving it enough attention while I'm working
• Not yappy or annoying
• Furry

However, I met Barb, who told me she was fostering a dog who was weaning her puppies and needed a vet check, then would be ready for adoption. She showed me a video of her dancing in a circle, and I fell in love.

Barb would probably say I was annoying for the next week. I checked in multiple times to see if she cleared a vet check, then wanted to know which adoption event she would be at so I could get there and see her first.

I had planned on having people over on Friday, but Friday evening was the night "Sugar Momma" (her foster name, because her puppies were Ben and Jerry) was ready for adoption. So, I gave my friend Matt a key to the apartment to let people in while Mat (my roommate) and Kelly (his girlfriend) drove out to Fairfax.

Poor Eleanor was a bedraggled, wet, shivering, and shy little thing when we showed up on the dark and stormy night. We spent over an hour with her - walking her, petting her, and, eventually, she crawled into Mat's lap and sealed the deal.

We brought her home, and she got quite the welcoming. My friends started coming over, and she was passed around, happy to be held by everyone and anyone. The storm picked up and our power went out, but she was a trooper until the end.

A few days later, I settled on the name Eleanor, after Eleanor Roosevelt. She's got this cute old lady face (with a bit of a beard), and human names for dogs are just funny.

Her history is a bit of a mystery. After having her for a month, she needed one correction then was perfectly potty-trained. She walks on a leash just fine, except for when her cataracts cause her to step off or bump into curbs. (She's familiar with the area now, so that hasn't happened for a while.)

She was put into foster care after she was rescued by the Humane Society in Arkansas at an animal hoarder's property with over 90 other cats and dogs. These two videos tell it best:

• "More Than 90 Animals Rescued from Arkansas": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7RK-yNu_w
• "Rescued Arkansas Dogs Start New Lives": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jpZeVREr5M

I'm so excited to have her now though! We are off to Washington State to visit my family. Here she is helping me pack:

Finishing up in Madrid: Sun., Sept. 1, 2013

I definitely sleep much better when we go to bed at 5am than when we go to bed at midnight. Still, 9am is much more bearable after 9 hours of sleep. 

Our flight wasn't until 5:30pm, and our AirBnB host didn't have guests after us, so we packed our stuff up (including all the bottles of wine left) and left it for the morning. 

Of course, chocolate con churros. That was a given for our last day in Madrid. 

Sunday is market day, and cute old men have their stamps, coins, and bottle caps in Plaza Mayor. If you continue down the road, you start running into stalls and crowds (and pickpockets - something we managed to thoroughly avoid in Spain!) We wandered through for a few blocks, using up some of our last euros and picking up some of the final souvenirs. 

The major attraction of Madrid we hadn't seen yet (beside the gardens behind the Prado - next visit) was the Palacio Real. I finally understood was "Real Madrid" stood for the other day when I realized "real" is Spanish for royal.

Ranked third (by Rick) for fancy palaces after Versailles and the Schönbrunn in Vienna, we definitely got a taste of the sumptuousness.

We asked a couple to take our photo, starting in Spanish, like we always do ("Un foto, por favor?") then lapsing into English to find that they are English-speaking tourists too.

The palace has 2,800 rooms. Crazy! We only saw 24 or so, starting was a regal, slow (because of the shallow steps) walk up the Grand Staircase. A tour group was hot on our heels (half in English, half in Spanish), but we started by sneaking past them to some rooms where important things happened, like Middle East treaties and joining the European Union. 

And frescos. Giambattista Tiepolo and his two sons worked for four years on the frescoed ceilings of the palace. The wooden fort that was originally here had burnt down in the 1600s, making this ripe for the Baroque and Rococo styles of massive ornamentation and curlicues. The king at that time, Philip V, was actually born in Versailles, so he knew what he was up against. His son, Charles III, grew up in Italy and added that style. 

The inside was ornate and marvelous. The king's dressing room (for the public affair that it was, back in the day) was floor-to-ceiling designed with carpets, furniture, wallpaper, curtains, and a frescoed ceiling to match. 

The current king and queen (Juan Carlos and Sofia) have their throne room, and their own thrones (new royalty get new chairs). They don't live in the palace (instead in a mansion a few miles away), but still host functions there. 

Also, the Spanish royal family collects clocks! Some were more accurate than others - apparently they all get wound and set once a week.

So, when the big clock in the courtyard said 12:45, we knew we had time for a early tapas lunch crawl. 

We were definitely early, with all of the bars deserted when we started. First was just some cheese - great, but not quite what we needed for lunch before a long plane ride. Next was more appropriate, suggesting a hake sandwich (we finally tried it! It was a fried white fish) and a cheese and meat (probably some loin of something) sandwich. We ordered chorizo, since we hadn't explicitly had it, but it was pretty salami-like, so I'm not sure I could tell the different between that and salmonchico.

And salmonchico (salami) is exactly what we had at the next bar. It was definitely starting to get livelier, but we weren't tempted by anything except the free and deliciously warm nuts of an unidentified variety.

I didn't want to end there (and who ever really wants to end a tapas crawl), so we went to one, final, bustling place and Rosie found me some gulas (those yummy fake baby eels) on bread. Done. The perfect end to Madrid.

Of course, there was the whole adventure of actually leaving Madrid. We metroed to the Atocha train station, where there was supposedly a bus. There is also a commuter train, which ended up taking.

That train lands you in Terminal 4, the furthest flung of the terminals. We confirmed our flight wasn't out of there (I was kind of assuming) then hopped a bus, asking the driver for which terminal he thought we should be at. He said Terminal 2.

So out we get at Terminal 2, and can't find our flight on the board. We backtrack to the info desk, where they tell us Terminal 1. We finally check-in (we still had 90 minutes before the flight!) and are off to gate area A, the farthest flung of the gates. 

Right before we get into the roped-off area on what is now the entirely opposite side of the airport from where we started, we get pulled aside for a random security check. It was a fun ten minutes of looking through all the pockets of our bags before getting in line to board the plane. We were efficient - didn't even have to find a place to sit before our seats on the plane!

Sadly, the sound on our entertainment systems was faulty and we got halfway through Iron Man 3 before it cut out for good. So, it was books, blogging, and chatting with our fun young seatmates to while the time away until we land in New York. Nueva York, I'm so ready for 3G and telephone and pizza and unpacking my bags at home!

I have a 3pm bus back to DC tomorrow, so really I have one more night away from home. But - America. 

Pleasantries in Madrid: Aug. 31, 2013

Churros con chocolate. I read the passage Rick Steves wrote about them at the very beginning of this trip, not realizing just how tough they would be to get a hold of. 

That all changed when we got to Madrid. Chocolatería San Ginés, open 24-7 (or practically) was steps down a pedestrian street right by our apartment. So clearly the breakfast choice (at noon) was obvious. Our eyes were a bit bigger than our stomaches, however, when we had two orders of the hot chocolate (a bit thicker, though less chocolate-y than we expected) with six churros apiece.

And with that, the day started on a very sugar-y note. The Centro de Arte Reina Sofía was free after 2:30. I'm a big advocate for free art, so of course I would go support that! It was the same walk to the Prado, then just a bit south along the Paseo de Prado to get to the hulking concrete building. 

I found out later that I'm pretty sure I went in the wrong way, but no one ever asked for a ticket, and I knew it was free anyway, so in I went.

Rick had a guided tour that took art starting with WWI and continuing through the end of WWII. Sadly, all of the Dalí had been taken out as part of a temporary exhibit that 1) you had to pay for and 2) all the tickets were sold out.

So it was cubism next - Picasso at all stages was all over this museum, with other Spanish artists such as Braque, Léger, and Gris about. I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I have heard of and seen prints of "Guernica," Picasso's anti-war piece, before. But the story - Picasso in Paris, Franco authorizing the bombing, the painting (and artist) in exile until the end of the dictator - wasn't something I was familiar with. It still baffles me that Spain was under a dictator in recent history.

I wrapped up my tour of the museum to meet back up with Rosie (and having a Brie and ham sandwich from Pans and Company, the Subway of Spain) and have a bit of a siesta. We arose again at 6, and I was starving. So it was off for a bite - which really just turned into a banana and some froyo. When we realized the Reina Sofía was open until 9pm, we headed back that way. 

My art style is modern, geometric, installation, using typography, found objects, math - pretty much the antithesis of the Prado and not really done until after the 50s. So while Rosie was off exploring the Picasso's I had seen in the afternoon, I was on to the Nouvel Wing, with a permanent exhibit on the '60s to the '80s and an awesome temporary exhibit on "concrete art in South America and its influences", or something of the sort. 

All I know is I was perfectly happy wandering through there for an hour and a half. There were psychedelic shimmering cubes, tricks with walls and mirrors and paint, installations of minimalism and escapism (at least, that's what I'll call the room that had parrots and a sand floor in it). 

I miss my Mattress Factory back in Pittsburgh, and I need to visit the East Wing of the National Museum of Art again. And maybe I need to invest in a piece of modern art of my own. 

As the last night in Spain, it was clearly tapas time. We headed to Calle Jésus for some Yelp (and Rick) suggestions. 

First was a hole-in-the-wall tavern down a side street with the best free tapa we've gotten - fried yucca . Then it was ribs (beef this time, with a yummy broth we soaked up with bread) and "cochocellas" - snails! Their were only five of us in the bar, including a woman from Florida and a kid with a yo-yo. But it was superb. 

Next was a "dive bar" - super friendly, English-speaking proprietor who told us to sit, gave us some salami a crunchy crackers which could be called "breadsticks" and then we got "pisto" (green peppers in a tomato sauce) to finish up there.

Cheery bartenders met us at our next stop, where we had our typical glasses of red and our typical tapa, something on bread.

At the Galacian Taberna Maciera, we were told "no Rioja - Gallacian wines only!" We got a delicious little dish of octopus with some chickpeas but moved on because it was more of a restaurant and we were getting full. 

100 Montaditos - with another location we saw nearer to us later - was our place to finish up the night. Sitting on the terrace, beer with límon in hand, watching the beautifully dressed people emerging from the hotel in front of us, we were actually getting a bit chilly. That, and the uphill in front of us, were reason enough to take the cab the mile and a half home. 

As we got in the cab, I mentioned that a con of taking a taxi was not being able to wonder past an ice cream shop. Well, the cab couldn't go on the pedestrianized final block to our place, and their just so happened to be a gelateria on that block, so me and my chocolate and my strachetelli powered me up those six flights of stairs. 

Action-packed in Sevilla and Madrid: Aug. 30, 2013

We were thankfully up and bustling about packing at 10am when Miguel came by to clean the apartment. Whoops. Our train wasn't until 11:45, so we just hung out at cupcake land, getting our Internet fix, until it was time to take our high-speed train to Madrid. 

I watched "The Heist" on the English sound channel while Rosie slept. We shot through a lot of fields with hay and cows, including one bunch that looked like they were herding themselves along a dirt road. Picturesque Spain. 

We were meeting our AirBnB host at the apartment, which was 6a. I was really hoping 6a didn't mean the sixth floor with no elevator - but it meant exactly that. I lt is even the European sixth floor, so the ground floor is 0, not 1.

The good news is, that is the last set of stairs we'll have to drag our luggage up. The bad news is that this is the last place we are staying before we go home.

So we decided to jump right in. First was a vegetarian restaurant with a pre fixe lunch. Breaking our typical rules, we both got white wine, the baba ghanoush, and the mixed platter (with spinach egg casserole, paella-type mixed rice, peppers with tomato sauce, and - my favorite - a buffalo mozzarella "panini" that was just fried cheese. Yum.) I got the cheesecake (again, a bit more savory that typical cheesecakes) and Rosie was crazy and got watermelon. For dessert. No wonder she wanted ice cream on our way to the Prado. 

We stopped by a tourist info place to get a map and ask about zarzuela, but the comedic Spanish opera isn't playing right now. The information place was on the Plaza Mayor, an "inside out" palace. It was very empty when we walked in at 4:30, but bustling after we spent 30 minutes on the Internet kiosks researching restaurants.

With it being nearly 6, and the Prado opening for free after 6, we headed that direction, with a stop to actually look around Puerta del Sol, where the metro station that we rode into the city center was.

It is big and bustling as well, though with a lot of dressed up characters instead of just people. The governor's house is there, as is "kilometer zero" where Spain starts. From there, it was also an easy mile walk to the Prado and the giant (but moving) line to get in the museum. 

The two hours before it closed flew by. We were following the tour in Rick's book, but then one of the pieces had been moved to a special exhibit, so we went through that gallery and saw Rubens, Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, and Bosch. 

We hadn't seen some of the major pieces in the tour though, so we circled back for a quick attempt at the tour. We were a bit too late - the side rooms were being shut down and people were being ushered outside. 

We didn't quite have a plan after that, so we wandered up the street to see an arch and a building that might have a viewing floor (we are going to try to get to it tomorrow - it was closed today).

No plan, of course, always turns into food. So we began our tapas crawl at a dark, wood bar with a free tapa with our drinks - some tortilla with lettuce and tomato in it, like a sandwich. Next, we moved to a brighter, more sterile bar that had a free patatas bravas and some delicious fried eggplant. So thin, so crispy, so good. 

We had to go to the place for "gambas" (shrimp), so a boiling bowl full of those, oil, and garlic, and we were pretty happy campers. 

There was a microbrewery down the street, so we popped in for a baby beer. After we paid, we brought it up front to people watch, and I got enough liquid courage to ask the group of guys next to us where to go dancing.

They said they didn't know, but their friend would, so just stick around. So we did, hanging out with Michael, Dommy, and David until two more friends came by. We stuck around at that bar, then at another one (with some ribs, tortilla, and salchicon on bread fueling the moves). Dommy introduced us to calemocho - coke and red wine. It sounds weird, but it is a very refreshing way to drink it. 

So, our new friend Paula was chatting in the streets with some of the club promoters, and we got stamps for a club in the future before going to a bar with dancing first. There, a cute married couple (with the wife's arm in a sling) talked about the wedding they were all going to tomorrow (which is why all these college friends were in town) and then their own wedding.

We did eventually get to the club, and dance, and have some sickly sweet mojitos and vodka-límons. However, eventually it was time to go, and that's when we realized it was five o'clock in the morning.

Savoring in Sevilla: Thurs., Aug. 29

Sevilla is about experiencing, not really site-seeing, but there were two sites that were on our list: the Alcázar (a palace) and the cathedral and Giraldi bell tower. 

We had a lazy enough morning, with an alarm that was more of a suggestion and long, hot showers that still didn't completely remove the grime from our feet. Our apartment, as cute as it is, doesn't have any WIFI, so it was off to the cupcake shop a block away for some breakfast and Internet and to plan our day.

CUPCAKE & GO is all pink and sugar and the proprietor went along with our attempts at Spanish. Tostadas, which was a tomato sauce for me and ham (Rosie just learned that "jamón" was ham and not salmon) for Rosie, were the main breakfast fare, with cupcakes (Rosie looking up, then butchering "what is the best" using Google Translate) for dessert. Because vacation. Mine was a cutesy Minnie Mouse-themed chocolate one (with another flavor that might have been orange) and Rosie's was toffee (which the guy said was the best).

After we left the shop, as we headed toward the cathedral, we had a bit of a conversation of gay versus European. The typical "clues" (well-dressed, drinking fruity drinks, hugging and kissing for greetings) don't translate well. The lisp that is often attributed to gay men in the US is a part of the Spanish accent! "Gracias" is pronounced "grathias." I guess unless we went to that gay bar in Córdoba, we would have no idea. (Oh, except for the ones that clearly wanted to dance with us. I'm guessing they were all straight.)

Anyway, history and architecture and stuff. The cathedral was built on the site of a mosque, though completely demolishing the mosque, unlike Córdoba, and keeping just the minaret to turn into a bell tower.

It wasn't enough just to demolish the mosque though. They had to build the biggest Gothic church ever. Which they did, by volume, recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records. 

The massive altarpiece is still undergoing renovations, so we got confused when we sat down facing the choir area instead of the main altar and started our Rick-guided tour. We figured it out, and saw on the massive photo over the construction the 44 scenes from Jesus' life. 

I do my best to educate Rosie on what stuff means when we visit cathedral and churches and the like so she can at least be entertained by my slight butchering of Bible stories. Here was no different, and baptism (spurred by a picture of John the Baptist by Murillo, a famous Spanish religious painter) was the topic of the day.

To be fair, as we were climbing up the bell tower I learned about Hebrew names and how Rosie got hers, so I was learning as well. 

As I mentioned before, the first 2/3rds of the bell tower were the former minaret. The floor was sloped - great for going up, awful for going down - because the muezzins doing the call to prayer rode up on horses! Lazy bums - we walked. 

There was some bell ringing right when we got there, and some great views on the old parts of the city. The statue on the top of the tower (supposedly a weathervane, though it looks too big to move) is the highest a building can be in Sevilla, so we were looking down on everything. 

Besides the tower and its size, the cathedral is also known for housing the remains of Christopher Columbus. He has been buried in Spain, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and now in the mausoleum in cathedral. His remains were verified in 2006 - definitely Columbus. He's right next to a mural of St. Christopher and a clock from 1788.

There is also a fancy crown, Spain's most valuable, with the world's largest pearl shaped into an angel body. Don't I look good with it on?

With the cathedral fully wandered through, we decided to take Rick's walking tour of the Barrio Santa Cruz, the old Jewish ghetto that turned into residential streets of old town. We saw some painters' houses, some plazas, some sculptures (including one of the original sex addict-atheist Don Juan), and some tiny, cute streets. 

We were ready for the palace. It was 1pm and amazingly still cool outside, though sunny, so we still had time for another site before lunch. 

I think the palace amazed us both with how different it was and how much we liked it. It is of the Mudejar style, mixing Christian and Islamic elements, just the way it was built. King Pedro I took it from the caliphs when he conquered Sevilla, but merely expanded it in the same style. Many generations have expanded it, but all have kept the general gist, if adding the trappings of their time. The current king and queen still use the palace as one of their residences today!

It is cool, literally and figuratively, built around pools, tile, and patios. When Pedro moved in after the renovations to the caliph's palace, he brought his mistress along instead of his wife. 

But the moldings and the mosaics and the marble floors are stunning. So many tessellations of colors and textures. The rooms are mostly bare. One exception is a tapestry room, with one being a map of the Mediterranean oriented south - makes you feel like you are on your head!

There are gardens outside, with a bath underneath the palace (named in honor of the mistress). They were pretty, but our stomaches were rumbling.

Rick led us to a restaurant a few blocks away, but away from the tourist crowds. The wooden accents, and large adobe jugs, were old world at its best. And the tapas - a little of a "taco" (which might have been misordered as tuna - delicious regardless), a little "mini hamburguesa" (I'm missing home a bit), some "pisto" (mix of veggies that tasted curry-like), some sausage called salchicá, and two orders (one on purpose, one a happy accident) of "espinacas con garbanzos" (spinach and garbanzo beans). And some of the best and cheapest house white wine we've had. One euro to wash down the first few tapas, and one more euro for good measure (to make sure our walk to the park for siesta was nice, of course).

Near to the bench where we read and napped was the Plaza de Espanya (hope you can figure that one out). Besides and adorable canal that ran around the edges, there were cities from across Spain as painted tile mosaics and benches. We took pictures with the ones we've been to, but San Sebastián, Seville, and most of the cities in the Rioja didn't make the cut. Maybe they are just the capitals?

Rosie was set on going to Eslava (a restaurant a guy eating an avocado on the roof of the Córdoba hostel recommended), but we hadn't figured out exactly where it was. With both of us on 5% or less battery on our phones (all that park blogging), we found Internet fast at McDonalds. We stood outside for the three minutes it took to locate the restaurant, then crossed the bridge into Triana, a hip part of town with great views.

Due to the dead phones, this is the last picture we captured:

Now, I'll just have to describe to you the green and stone along the opposite bank, the walls of Alcázar and the bell tower of the cathedral, all in a tableau facing the setting sun, giving extra saturation to a river shore filled with color. The runners, bikers, skateboarders and strollers (both those with wheels and those people without) were out enjoying the coolness of "paseo" (the evening walk).

There were some kayaks in the water, playing around, and a group playing a game with a ball. And then there was us, posted up on a bench on the riverside, where Rosie beat me again at Rummy 500.

With dusk firmly settled in, we made our way to Eslava, and weren't disappointed. We had a zucchini pastry and the cutest scallops with a delicious sauce. This was with our glasses of Verdejo - because now that I've discovered this white wine, I won't complain about not liking whites again.

At this point our table was ready. Just with no stools, so we were standing up anyway. It was for the ambience we were outside anyway, not the comfort.

Everything was adorably mini. We got some winner of some tapas prize, a slow-cooked egg with other stuff called "huevo sober bázcocho boleius y vino dulce." Super yum, and different than tapas we've had before. With the came the "cigarro para becquer" - some dark mush deliciously wrapped up in maybe seaweed paper? Regardless, it and the ribs (the suggestion of the waitress) were delicious. 

We had been unabashedly staring at other plates as they came out of the kitchen, and we were both entranced by the baby clams. They were so cute! And so delicious - olive oil and garlic bath and teeny tastes of delicious. 

The reason Rosie wanted to come to this restaurant was because of the cheese ice cream. I was delectably different - not quite savory, not quite sweet, a little like cheesecake filling and also like goat cheese. As we were walking the winding streets (with very small walkways) back to the apartment, we discussed how we would bring it back to the US.  

Rhythm in Córdoba and Sevilla: Wed., Aug 28, 2013

The 8am wake up came too soon this morning. The air-conditioning was lovely, the bed was lovely, but the sights were waiting to be seen (and seen for free!)

We grabbed some cereal on our rush out the door. The Mezquita was free until 9:30, when the morning mass started, and then 8€ after, so we were happy to get there at 9am. 

The gist of the building is that it is a mosque that was converted into a cathedral, then found to be on top of ruins of a Visigoth Christian church, so it is ok for them to not convert it back into a mosque since it was originally a Christian site. 

As almost everything in Córdoba, there was a beautiful courtyard, with the orange trees in rows evoking the columns inside the Mezquita.

We had a little Rick Steves tour to guide us around the inside. First was the mosaics from the Visigoth church, visible through a glass panel in the floor. Next was the mihrab, the mosque's altar, which was facing south (not east to Mecca) because the Córdoban Muslims had their roots in Syria, where Mecca is south. 

The cathedral that is built in the center of the building, however, points east, to Jerusalem. It is a church within a mosque, with the ornate gold and paintings and plush one would expect. However, when it was built in 1523, King Charles V ordered it done, then realized (according to legend) that he had made a huge mistake. 

When the Muslims had built the mosque, they had done so using bits and pieces from their conquerees buildings, scraping off faces so that "Christian" turned "art" and it was acceptable to re-use. 

Around the walls of the Mezquita are galleries which I think are of patrons of the church - probably for family tombs? There are more tombs on the floor and a final royal chapel with tombs for kings that is closed to the public (but you can see the ceiling from the mosque and it is pretty sweet).

With that, it was 9:20, and the ushers were herding out the mere tourists to clear the way for the parishioners. When we got outside, we got to hear the 9:30 bells for Mass in what used to be the minaret and call to prayer. 

Next was the fortress, the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos - the castle of the Christian monarchs. Rick Steves wasn't a huge fan, but I enjoyed the ornamental gardens, and who doesn't like a good climb to the top of a tower? It was built along old Roman walls and used for the Inquisition, but doesn't have much more interesting history besides that. 

We were near where there were stables and a patio "museum", but both didn't open until 11 and 10:30, respectively, and it was only 10:15. So we went to the Jewish quarter. 

Along the way to the synagogue, one of three still standing in Spain and the only one in Córdoba, we wandered into the artisan market. I got myself a silver ring as an early birthday present. Isn't having a job and traveling grand?

The synagogue was a small building. It had been used as a "hospital for hydrophiles" (I first read it at homophobes, then as hydrophobes... I'm still not sure what the information panel meant). Plastered over, the Arabic-influenced decorations of passages from the Torah remained until they were discovered after the persecution of Jews had passed. 

Our check-out at the hostel was at noon, so we headed back for some bread and jam (and olive oil - it's the new butter) and fresh squeezed orange juice. And a shower - my hair looked mad greasy. 

We were back out and wandering the Jewish Quarter before noon, probably. The temperate day was waning, giving way to temperatures of 95 degrees in the shade. We lunched (at a completely unacceptable Spanish time of noon) on oxtail and salmorejo - a creamier gazpacho. 

We went back to the stables, where we saw clips of a performance and a horse being trained to rear.

We went back to the patio "museum", which was actually just a commercialized patio, potentially with a restaurant we got a brochure for on the way in? All you really need to know is that there was a terrier named Elvis with mysterious eyes that loved us. (Ask Rosie for that picture.)

Then it was to the postcard-perfect flower street (disappointing) and the group-picture-perfect "tiny street" that is only two shoulder-widths wide. 

(We had done a bit of shopping in the awakened Jewish Quarter after lunch - much different than 10am this morning!)

The Roman bridge was fun to bike across last night, so we decided doing it on foot during the hottest part of the day would be just as nice! (Note the sarcasm.)

Regardless, it was on our list, so we checked it off with sweat dripping from our brows. And some pretty scenery too, I guess. 

After that, I was ready to call it time for a siesta (with a scoop of ice cream to get me to the hostel). Jose, from the hostel, had kindly offered to keep our bags and let us use the common areas during the day as well, so Rosie did some napping, blogging, and networking on the roof while I did some reading, napping, and blogging on a bean bag in the common room.

Post-siesta, Rosie wanted her share of sweet, cold things, so she got medium frozen yogurt while I got the "second half" of my ice cream from earlier. If it was just a continuation, then we don't have to count my two scoops in four hours.

Walking to the train station was a breeze, so we actually had to wait on the platform for ten minutes before it came. What wasted time!

Manuel, our AirBnB host from Sevilla, met us at the train station and walked us to our complete apartment that we had rented. It's a cute studio that's in a bit of a alley, but is big and comfortable and has air conditioning. All those, and the fact that our bags are heavy, were reasons to open a bottle of wine we bought (a young crianza from Campo Viejo but under a different label).

Manuel had given us directions to a flamenco performance, and Rick Steves had offered a suggestion for a tapas place on the way. We had stuffed artichoke (it, and the two accompanying slices of pepper, were deep-fried) and seafood meatballs (too salty). Service wasn't as good as this afternoon when both waiters were only watching us (as their only customers) and the speed reflected that. Rosie had a cup of gazpacho and I had a "cervesa", my first of the trip. It's light, more taste than most light beers though.

Maybe it was the beer that caused me to knock over the water-filled ashtray all over the table and the menus. Rosie is convinced I'm clumsy. I'm convinced that everyone is clumsy. 

We thought we had time for one more tapa at a different place, but by the time the check came around, it was 8:50 and the performance started at 9. So we headed along a street without storefronts until we found a bar through one of the large wooden doors. 

Students were playing flamenco guitar and piano as we walked in, so we weren't quite sure if that we where the performance was. A group (that looked like they had a much better idea of what was going on than us and the guy who wandered in with us) moved to a second, tented room which was "beer garden-like," with a low stage up front that we missed until we asked the bartender. 

We sipped at our pitcher of sangria, played some rummy, and waited for the performance to start.

The three musicians came in and sat down, starting slow - first the guitar, then the soft, rhythmic clapping, then the thrilling voice of the male singer. Then, a few songs in, the dancer stood up. 

Everyone (the room full of tourists) perked  up at that. She moved her arms and body with great precision and started using her feet as instruments too.

Rosie, a tap dancer by training, was focused on her feet the whole show. The different between tap and flamenco, she told me on the way home, after the intermission (with more rummy) and a second performance, is that the dancer uses her heels more than her toes. 

Perfect timing in San Sebastián, Logroño, and Cordoba: Tues., Aug. 27

Like I mentioned, we had a 6:15 alarm to head to the car by 6:45 to be on the road by 7. We made it out the door, but navigating the one-way streets around the apartment was tricky, so it was more like 7:15 by the time we grabbed the bags and toast and left the apartment. 

I had looked up the route on my phone and corroborated it was the route on the GPS, and things looked right. It went south, curving to the east a bit before avoiding a town and then going west to get to Logroño.

It was only after about thirty minutes of driving, when Rosie asked if we were on track, that I confidently said yes, we were headed to Pamplona, only to be informed the GPS directions had veered us off that path and on to another highway. 

So I looked a bit closer. I had set the GPS to no tollroads (they had seemed easily avoidable before) and it put us up and over a mountain in a national park to avoid going near Pamplona and what must be a tollroads. My iPhone map confirmed (Google maps caches, so it is easy to scroll around and store a map while online to access offline - as long as you are online at some point). Well, we had deviated too far from taking the toll route anyway, so up and over the mountain it was.

I'm so impressed with Rosie. I could tell she was stressed, since our ETA was slowly increasing to 9:30 (with our train at 10) while we were creeping over the mountain. And there was fog, and narrow roads, and cows. I was freaked out that we weren't going to make it, and I was just a passenger.

After what felt like forever, we started descending, and after another forever, we made it back onto a highway. We were at 9:35 ETA now and still had to do a gas fill-up. 

There was a gas station a few miles before the town, and right off the road, so we pulled over, and, using the skills we had learned at our fill-up two days ago, twisted the gas cap open with the car key and filled it up. 

We found the train station pretty easily, but the parking lot had a separate entrance. We pulled into a spot (all of the Avis ones were taken) and grabbed our stuff to take it into the office. 

If one thing hadn't worked - finding the entrance, the man in front of us taking a minute longer, the inspection finding something, really, anything - we wouldn't have made the train. As it was, I had sent Rosie ahead so she could stand in the doorway as I was trying to finish up the transaction. We still aren't sure who's credit card ultimately got charged - it had to be reserved with Rosie's, but we wanted to switch to mine since it was in euros - because I bolted out of the office while it was still processing. I raced down the escalator and into the closest open door, waving at Rosie a few doors down to jump in. 

We hiked all the way to the front of the train, where our seats were the ones right behind the conductor. And with that, hearts beating rapidly from the stress and the exertion, we sank into our cool, mechanized chairs to fall asleep for a few hours. 

Rosie ate the cucumber, I ate the carrot, after I had super vivid dreams of eating cheese puffs. (Hey Dan, interpret that dream.) We had been stopped for a while, with an alarm going off and men in safety vests wandering the train (which I easily incorporated into my dream and slept through), so I wasn't sure if we'd be on time for our station at Córdoba, but indeed, we were even a few minutes early. Maybe it was the 199 km/hr the train was going!

At the station, we bought our tickets for tomorrow (Córdoba to Sevilla) and for Friday (Sevilla to Madrid). Then it was an easy, though hot and sweaty, walk to our hostel. 

It is called Córdoba Bed and Be, with the "be" also standing for bicycle. And it is great. José (who I thought was Hussein when I first heard it) greeted us, gave us an orientation on a map, helped us carry our slightly lighter load up the stairs (we accidentally left the two bottles we bought from the Spanish-only wine tour we did on the train - they were basically bought just to pay for the tastings we did anyway). All in all, great intro to the city. He even told us a place to get some savory snacks for lunch after we freshened up, even though we were right in the middle of siesta. 

At La Tortuga ("The Turtle"), I was trying to ask when "nuece" was in English and ended up ordering the "Roquefort y nuece" pastry, which we deliciously shared. It's walnuts!

We both scouted the map and Rick Steves. This map is a cool concept - called "Use-It", it is sponsored by the EU and three students helped make it for Córdoba, the first city in Spain to have it. We've been loving it so far!

One of things on the map was a bike tapas tour, so we had to be back at the hostel at 9pm for that. Since we would be around the Old City and Jewish Quarter tomorrow, I proposed we head northwest to Palacio de Viana. 

We wound our way on the streets, stopping at a few plazas and buildings to read about them. When we got to the Palacio, it was closed for siesta and would reopen at seven, in one hour. 

So we started by wandering. We checked out a garden with a sculpture dedicated to the beautiful women of Córdoba. My theory is that non-beautiful women get turned into white pigeons, since I've seen more here than all other cities combined!

When we sat down to do some recon, we found a recommended shop with some more unique items (not just the standard stamped and painted in China stuff in other shops). I found great posters of patios to hang in my bathroom!

As we read and heard, Córdoba is known for their patios and their patios festival in May to pick the most picturesque. The Palacio has twelve connecting patios, and I think I took a picture of Rosie in basically all of them, when we got there at a bit past seven. 

Some were themed after a specific plant (the Patio of the Orange Trees), some after sculptures (the Patio of the Madama), and some just had sweet walls or pots or hedges or really anything fresh and green. 

All of them had great posing opportunities.

And Rosie's dress looked great among the foliage. 

We wound our way through the cute residential streets, only getting stuck in one dead end. But we made it back to our street (José Cruz, but we call it José Cuervo) and the cremeria that was there to fill a very persistent need. 

We made it to the hostel just in time for the bike tour. Javiér, our guide, introduced us to the Old City, which was great to see via bike. 

He only took us to two tapas places. The first was the markers of the largest (thickest) "tortilla" - potato and egg omelette, which we had with salmorejo, their delicious and creamier version of gazpacho. I love it. That and the wine with a lemon soda in it to make it slightly like a wine spritzer/cooler thing. And we drank it right out the mesquites. 

Chatting with the people on the tour, two were French-Canadian and two were economics students from Germany that are staying in the hostel until they can find a place to live. All were nice, and we shared some good cultural and life stories. 

Next was in the Jewish corridor, a place called Bicyclette. Sangrias and cheese for the North Americans, just sangria for the Germans. 

While we were noshing on our cheese plate, we talked through siesta and what that means for schools, etc. We some how made it onto the the topic of reality television shows after we had gotten some good advice on Sevilla. 

It was simply a ride back to the hostel and a group picture with us doing "nose goes" (something I had subconsciously done with the last of the cheese plate and had to explain) that'll be posted on Córdoba Bed and Be. Might even be there now!

Getting wet in San Sebastián: Mon., Aug. 26

After staying out until 4, it was easy to sleep until 11. (You see why when we sleep at midnight, I am still jetlagged.)

I made breakfast, eggs and ham on toast this morning, and Rosie got out of the shower and put on her bathing suit right as it started to rain. 

So instead of straight to the beach, hot drinks sounded good, so we started back at our cafe from yesterday. I had some "menta" (mint) tea and Rosie had her typical café (espresso) con leche (with milk). The cafe gave out little chocolate wafers with each drink, so that alone was worth getting one (or just stealing some extra, like I might have done yesterday...)

We took our hot drinks on a stroll toward lunch. The Conneticut couple we met Marqués de Riscal had given us a restaurant recommendation for lunch. I knew (or thought I knew) what street it was on based on my google search. We walked the length of 31 Agosto Calle, couldn't find it, asked a shopkeeper, and found closed doors. Not open Mondays. We looked to Rick for a recommendation - with the footnote being "not open Mondays." So then it was as easy as "this one has people in it - lunchtime!"

We sat at a table in the back, so ordered real food off a real menu. No tapas here! Our appetizer was peppers stuffed with crab (I really need to get a hold of these canned peppers - you can eat them with anything!) and then we had the three tastes of cod for our entree. 

I was interested in trying "pil-pil", a sauce made from the skin of salted cod. I'm so glad the waitress steered us toward the sampler, since the pil-pil was this buttery, fake, sweetly plastic taste that was pretty awful. The waitress clearly likes it, because she was surprised when we preferred the brown and white sauces to the whitish pil-pil sauce. The cod was also just a bit rubbery as well. 

However, we were finished with lunch, so had our next adventure/recommendation - kayaking. We went to the tourist information center to ask about it and other suggestions, and then made our way to the shop under the boardwalk. 

Neither of us were completely prepared for kayaking, but I was especially unprepared. I wasn't wearing mg swimsuit, but decided today's skivvies were good enough. I walked out from changing with my shirt on, and the guy kindly offered us rash guards (surf shirts) to wear under our life jackets. 

We dragged our double kayak out to the surf, then waded in. We let the kayak get parallel  to the waves, and it flipped before we climbed in. The waves were crashing around us and over the boat, so we waited for a bit of calm to jump in and start frantically paddling. 

It took us a good while to get the kayak away from the breakers and headed toward Santa Clara island.

San Sebastián has an interesting shape. There's a peninsula, which is where Monte Urgill is topped with a Jesus statue (more about that later). Dividing this peninsula from the "surfer beach" and the area of Gros is the river Urumea. The peninsula shelters a beach in a bay, and in the center of this bay is Santa Clara Island. 

We paddled out; I splashed myself with seawater so much I hardly noticed when it started spritzing on us. We reached the small beach on the island and began to climb uphill in our bare feet. 

We saw one couple during our complete tour of the island. Maybe it was siesta, maybe it was the rain, but it was almost lonely walking past unused picnic tables and some building at the top of the island. My feet clearly have been in shoes too much as we gingerly stepped on rocks to get to the great overlooks. 

I started to get a bit concerned as the rain dropped a little harder, but our rash guards and life vests were insulating enough that our half hour poking around wasn't chilly. There were some birds on the island - a juvenile seagull and a chittering mini-bird among the interesting ones.

We circled the island to try to get back to our beached kayak, but ended up just walking a ring around the top before taking the same stone steps down the steep hill. 

We paddled in, and as we got closer and closer to shore, Rosie got more nervous about riding the breakers in to the beach. I figured we'd either hit it right and be washed up on the beach, or hit it wrong and be swimming anyway, so why jump out and swim?

We hit it right! We surfed in with a wave, then were swept sideways and still managed to not flip! Our attempt to jump out and swim the kayak out to do it again failed with the kayak being swept back by a wave without us in it, but we still have that one grand show. 

We washed off the kayak, then ourselves. Neither of us had towels, so I sacrificed one of my layers to dry myself off. Given that I had been swimming and fully dunked in my underwear and didn't want to get my one pair of jeans wet from the inside out... Well, you can fill in how I got back to the apartment without being naked (on the outside, at least).

We switched into different clothes to hike up Monte Urgill, the hill with the Jesus statue on the east side of the bay. We took a bottle of the fondo (since we bought six of those) and the dark chocolate we bought at the fair yesterday. We couldn't find a corkscrew on the first look through the kitchen, so I attempted to use a screw and pliers (since we found some of those). The pliers ripped the screw out of the cork, sadly (I really wanted to be MacGuyver in this situation), but Nat's daughter peeked out of her room and she pointed us to a hidden drawer, which held a corkscrew.

We were hungry yet again, and found a bar near the bottom of the hill in Old Town that had an appetizing display of tapas. I had a seafood salad in a pepper on bread, a little pastry with beef and peppers in it, and a smoked salmon seafood salad on bread, while Rosie had a bacon-eggplant topping on bread and Brie with jam and ham and walnuts on bread. (Almost all pintxos are on bread. I don't mind a bit.)

Our hike up the hill was still cloudy and grey, but had some great vistas. We found a bench nearly at the top and sat and ate and read and drank. Funnily enough, the guy that we had asked for tapas suggestions (the one that knew English in the bar with anchovies) was walking by with his friends! What a small little city.

It was perfectly timed - we had two glasses (or plastic cups, since that was a really what we were drinking out of) of wine left when it started sprinkling, then raining. We hid under a tree and in the doorway of some stone wall until it passed, then decided to actually get to the top of the hill to get closer to Jesus. 

We found the museum, cups still in hand, and peeked in to see if we could walk in. There was a sign that clearly said no food or drink (using symbols, which is why I say clearly), so I walked outside again. However, the nice receptionist just asked if we wanted to get to the top and gestured us through the museum. 

I would appreciate museums more if I could always have a glass of wine while walking through them.

We made it the two floors up to the balcony, and it was an even better view. A giant statue of Jesus looming over only made it better of course.

Another museum employee came over to us and asked what was in our cups - coffee? wine? We fessed up that it was wine and he told us no alcoholic beverages. So we had our final few sips and put the cups away to enjoy our slight tipsiness and the captivating views. 

The museum was closing in a few minutes, so we headed down the stairs. On our way out, we asked the supervisor man about a bathroom. He told us it was closed. When we got the reception and asked again, so told us it was around and outside. It is clear who our favorite employee of this museum was. 

Well, "out and around" weren't quite clear enough directions, so we ended up outside the museum gates without finding a bathroom - I guess you win, evil museum employee. Let's also just say "out and around" is where we ended up peeing anyway. 

It was a lovely walk down - no more rain, there were people out and about, and the sun was setting over the Atlantic. While it wasn't the beach days we wanted, it was still lovely beach days.

We grabbed some pintxos on our way back to the apartment, after we figured out we'd have to be up and leaving the apartment at 6:45am tomorrow morning. Some of our typical favorites were closed, but we stopped at a new one by the harbor that had "patatas bravas" and "calamari bravas" - I'm guessing "bravas" means smothered with a delicious cream sauce and decorated with a yummy spicy sauce. I cleaned the plate with bread with that one (like I normally do, actually - they give it to you and charge you for it for a reason!) Then it was a shrimp kebob - gotta have one that was our tried and true staple.

Instead of ice cream, we wandered home with a bit of frozen yogurt. Mine was a strawberry and natural yogurt mix with a kinda gross aftertaste, but I got to try these flat M&M candies that were delicious and reminded me of my mom (Hi Mom!)

The surfer beach was empty except for a group with a metal detector, and we still had packing to do. Nine bottles of wine don't just disappear into carry-on bags without a bit of effort. We'll keep trying to lighten our load before heading back to the US, don't you worry. 

Meeting friends in San Sebastián and Uharte-Arakil: Sun., Aug. 25th

Rosie's boyfriend (and my friend) Dan has an aunt that lives in Madrid. Rosie has been emailing her, and she told us about a cheese festival her friend was judging in a city near Pamplona, so about an hour away from here. We have a car, so might as well use it!

Breakfast was self-serve, so Rosie made us egg sandwiches that we ate on our balcony. Last night we went on a wander to make sure we could find the garage where the car was parked (I also had a forgettable mushroom pintxo on the way), and she told me about the puzzle it was to get the car in the garage. 

I said yesterday, I stayed at the apartment while Nat went with Rosie. We are renting a spot in a garage from Nat's friend, so they went to get him. Our tiny car only fits two, so now this guy is riding with Rosie, who has just been double- parked in the middle of the street for ten minutes with cars swerving around her. The garage itself is a funny affair, with a door that takes forever to swing open. Then it is "right, right, right" down to the car. 

 We plugged the city into our GPS (Kelly, have I mentioned how grateful I am for letting us borrow it?) and were off.

The countryside we've been driving through has been very different from the Rioja out to San Sebastián. The Rioja had two mountain ranges on either side, with the Ebro River running through the middle, but the land was rolling hills with vineyards in the clay-like soil. They had had a wet spring, but it was drier than I expected, not a lush green.

On our way to San Sebastián, we had gone over the mountains (in second gear - oh, tiny cars) and landed in a much lusher area, with a lot of forests and fields. That had continued until outside San Sebastián when the hills got steeper and rockier right before we got spit out into the tree-lined city.

Now, on our way to Uhare-Arakil, we went through tunnels, a dozen of them, and only saw trees on the mountain hillsides until the pasturelands in the valley the town was in. 

The exit we were supposed to take was closed off by the fair organizers, but the next exit led is efficiently into a pasture to park, then walk to an entrance table where everyone (including the dogs) got a sticker. We were told to look for Nancy at the cheese table, so off we went. 

On the way to this fair, I found out about the lack of experience Rosie has had with state fairs. Nancy had described this as a 4H fair - had to tell Rosie about the 4H club. Next I mentioned the prizes and how you "show" animals and vegetables and such, then some of it gets auctioned off. And, the smaller county fairs all build up to a state fair. The only experience she had was our trip to the Strawberry Festival when we went to Virginia Beach over Memorial Day. 

Now that Rosie had been prepped, first were the stalls of the random junk that's at every fair - squeaky dogs that walk, colorful bracelets, earrings, scarves, wood-working, and other knick-knacks. 

Next, though came the cheese. Not just one cheese table, but a dozen in a crowded square. With free samples. It was of two types - a hard, sheep's milk cheese called "Idiazabal" and a soft, spreadable one that I'm assuming is also sheep's milk.

I might be assuming this because this was a fair "pasture" and the sticker had a sheepdog looking over a herd of sheep on it. But it proved even more true when we got to the pens of sheep. The "adultas" were in one area, while younger, though sadly not baby sheep, we in another area. 

We found Nancy by the judging stations - turns out she got wrangled into actually being a judge. So she was sampling even more cheese than we were! We said our brief hellos, then went to wander the next alley. 

A campfire smell brought us to a demonstration on cheese making. A pot, which could have been over the fire earlier (it was hot, so probably) was filled with a mash that was molded, put in cheesecloth, and pressed with a wooden head "powered" by boulders. 

This fair took over the main square of the town, and off another branch we heard a microphone and a countdown. We edged our way over to find a sheep shearing competition! Four guys, with cut-off sleeves and more piercings and tattoos that I would expect, grabbed a sheep, flipped it, trapped its head between their legs, and sheared away. 

The competition went on for over five minutes, as sheep after sheep was let out of the pen. Luis won at the end, ahead of the final place by nearly a whole sheep. It was impressive. 

We wandered down the next alley of sweets, eventually trying a chocolate magdelene, which was basically a muffin with some chocolate in the middle, but was a little too dry to be enjoyable. 

The food that was enjoyable, though, was the talo. A cornmeal dough was patted into circles, then cooked on a big griddle and filled with delicious options like cheese (of course), pancetta, and a mini-sausage called txistorra.

They were amazing, and a delicious lunch. Fairs always have good food. 

Also, there were dogs. We were in the foothills of the Pyrenees, so there was what might have been a Pyrenees mountain dog (though it looked a little more Burmese). There were some other cute breeds. And puppies. 

 

It was beautiful and sunny, so we decided to go back and hit the beach.

Sadly, those mountains I mentioned changed the weather significantly. It was grey and maybe 80 degrees when we got back to San Sebastián. But, gosh darnit, we were going to go to the beach!

We put swimsuits on, but I never took my dress off. Rosie made a valiant effort and was down to her suit, but after an hour of sleeping and reading on the sand, the wind was getting chilly and the skies were just as grey as when we started. So we called it quits. 

Rosie was ready for her post-siesta espresso, and I was open to a pastry for my afternoon treat. We walk into a cafe and find it - churros and chocolate!

I had been (probably wrongly) informed that churros and chocolate were a post-bar snack, but we haven't been able to find it except when we don't want it. Now, now was the perfect opportunity. And I was so happy. 

Going to say, the chocolate was a rich, milky chocolate, not the melted chocolate I was expecting. (They had just filled the machine was milk but not chocolate when we walked in.) But the experience was had and I am hoping that next time it is even better. If there is a next time. 

It had started to rain, so we went back to Nat's to ask for an umbrella and a place to go out and meet people. She ended up inviting us out with her and her friends for some drinks! We met them at the bar - watching a bit of soccer and sipping our sangria while we waited. Augustine and Maria, her two friends, were great, and Augustine knew English pretty well, so we were able to chat as well.

Rosie asked about dancing, and it turns out the bar we were in turns into a club in Sunday nights. (Potentially every night, but that part was lost in translation.) We had a few hours before that, so we decided to grab some pintxos before changing and meeting them back out.

We basically followed the same trail as last night - shrimp kebabs and spider crab dip, switching up mushrooms and a seafood tartlet instead of anchovy tempura, beef cheeks instead of risotto, and maybe another dish we've lost the memory of. The trick of asking for "un crianza" instead of "tinto vino" has given us much better wine to sip as we eat. 

So back to the house, changed into dancing clothes, then waiting until around 11 when we were supposed to leave and head to the bar, with Nat following us shortly thereafter.

We got some "vodka y límon"s (a carbonated lemon drink) and sat while the bar got more and more club-y, and people slowly trickled in. Nat showed up, took us to her friends, and then we all went back to dance. 

It was a great night - the bar was full of chefs and other service workers on their night off. A certain Santiago took a liking to me (and could speak English), so I had a dancing partner whenever I wanted.

We had decided to finish our night in a discotheque Augustine knew down the street, but they were charging cover. So it was back to the bar, where her friend the bartender wrote us a note to get in for free! I should've taken a picture of it, but it was something like "Hello. Please let these three ladies in. Thank you." But it worked and we finished the night off dancing in a basement club in San Sebastián. Not bad for a cloudy, rainy beach day.