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Our Trip to Spain - March 2003 Daily Travel Log 1 - Madrid->Seville->Frigiliana

The Plan: Arrive in  Madrid, stay one night in Hostal Barrerra. It's walking distance from the Atocha train station, as well as the Art Walk, where the big three art museums of Madrid are located: the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza  Museum and the  Reina  Sofia. Get to the hotel by noon, where we would meet up with our daughter Amber, on semester break from  her junior year abroad in Munich. Visit the Prado, visit tapas bars in the evening.

Weather: absolutely gorgeous!  Sunny and warm, about 21 Centigrade (70F).

The airplane trip on bankrupt airline US Airways went by without a hitch, except that the overseas leg of the flight was completely full (where plane trips are concerned, the optimistic point of view is "half-empty" rather than "half-full"). Unfortunately, we made the mistake of taking the bus from the airport to our hotel. In retrospect, we should have taken the Metro, or better yet, a taxi. But we located the bus first, and it seemed to be both convenient and inexpensive, so we hopped aboard. I had instructions for getting to our hotel by bus, but when we were dropped in the Plaza Colon in downtown Madrid, we had no idea where to catch bus #27. However, it was an unexpectedly beautiful day in Madrid, so we didn't mind strolling around a bit. We walked completely around the Plaza Colon before we found the bus stop we were looking for, pulling our rolling luggage. Quite a long walk, but it's a very attractive little park with fountains and immense cyclopean sculptures and monuments, so this was pleasant enough.

Our problems began when our bus arrived. When we started to get on the bus with our luggage (one rolling backpack each), the driver glared at us and unleashed an angry torrent of Spanish. He seemed to be upset about the luggage, but we couldn't understand what he was saying with our primitive grasp of tourist Spanish. I pointed at the bags and asked, "Si or no?" He unleashed another torrent of Spanish, then took our money (glared again when he saw that he needed to make change), then gestured toward the back of the bus. Hardly a pleasant introduction to Madrid. We climbed on the bus and hauled our bags to the back, where there was actually an area that appeared to be set aside for luggage (or possibly wheelchairs or bikes). Anyway, there was plenty of room for the bags without inconveniencing anyone. I have no idea why the driver was so hostile. The bus was by no means full, but it seemed like the passengers (downtown business types) were all glaring at us too. I can only surmise that they felt that travelers with luggage did not belong on their downtown bus route.

Things continued to get worse as we realized that cities in Spain do not have street signs of the sort that Americans are used to, so we had no idea where we were. We missed our stop and got out at the end of the bus route (giving the driver one more opportunity to yell at us when we didn't get off immediately), and found ourselves in a somewhat dubious part of town. As we stood staring at a large transit map and trying to orient ourselves, a helpful passerby stopped to ask if we needed directions (in Spanish, of course, but I knew enough to handle that). After a little conversation he directed us down into the nearby Metro station. We stepped onto the escalator. A few seconds later the crowded escalator lurched to a halt, causing everybody to bump into each other. Strangely enough, our new friend was right behind us, offering to help carry our bags down. We said no and he ran off. It wasn't until we got to the bottom of the escalator that Richard discovered that his wallet was missing. *sigh*   When we looked back we saw that the escalator was running again. Clearly it hadn't broken - someone (guess who) had pushed the stop button. Fortunately, Richard's passport and cash card were not in his wallet, but he lost his driver's license and all the cash he had on him, and was in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

We have now reached the absolute low point of the day. We're exhausted, lost, and the only person who has been nice to us since we arrived in Spain was planning to rob us. We studied the subway map, figured out  what subway line we wanted, and I asked the lady in the ticket booth how to get there. She not only gave us directions in patient pidgin Spanish, she came out of her booth to show us how to use the subway tickets and to open a little side gate to make it easier to get our bags through. Okay, now a second person has been nice to us, and she did not rip us off. Things are looking up. Turns out that the Madrid Metro is very good. We used it for all our transportation needs after that, and never had to wait longer than 3 minutes for a train. Trains are fast, quiet, reasonably clean, and (surprisingly, in smoke-friendly Spain) non-smoking. We got to our subway stop fairly quickly, then had to guess which direction to go from there. As usual, we guessed wrong. Eventually I got up my nerve to ask a passerby "Donde esta Hostal Barrera?" and he was nice to us too. Better yet, he pointed us in the right direction.

We finally arrived at our hotel about 90 minutes late. Amber was waiting for us anxiously, having put the time to good use making friends with the manager, a nice woman named something like Luciana.  Amber's Spanish is not nearly as good as her German, but she seemed to be doing a fine job of communicating with Luciana. She had explained that her parents spoke no Spanish, were not terribly bright, and were almost certainly lost, so everybody in the little lobby greeted us with great warmth and excitement when we finally showed up. I performed an impassioned rendition of our recent adventures using a combination of pantomime and fractured turista Spanish. We learned that the Spanish word for pickpocket is "carterista," and Amber was much impressed with my grasp of Spanish, all of which had been learned from tourist phrasebooks and LearnSpanish.com during the months before the trip.

We were very happy with the Hostal Barrera, which I had found on the Internet (Eurocheapo.com). It was about 60 Euros for a triple (double room with rollaway). The room was a little small for 3 people but pretty, with a private bath, plenty of hot water, and a window onto a relatively quiet alley. It was indeed within easy walking distance of the Atocha train station and the Big Three art museums. I would recommend it, with the following caveats: it did not have air conditioning, which didn't matter at all in March but would be pretty important in the summer months. And, like most of the hostals we stayed in, nobody spoke English.

The evening was lovely. We walked down to the Prado and managed to see about half of it. The museum itself is just what a museum should be - a stately cathedral of a building with cool, quiet rooms, perfect lighting, and massive wooden benches where you can rest your feet while you contemplate the artwork surrounding you. In the European tradition, art students had set up easels in many of the rooms and were industriously copying the famous paintings. The El Greco collection is stunning. No matter how many El Greco paintings you have seen in books, it doesn't prepare you for the impact of a room completely lined with the 12-foot-tall originals. I'm not sure I really LIKE El Greco - the dead-looking flesh, distorted limbs, and tortured expressions start to get to you after a couple dozen paintings. But it sure is impressive. After the cumulative effect of the El Greco rooms, the Valesquez collection was a breath of fresh air. I hadn't known much about his painting before the Prado - now he is one of my favorites. His paintings range from mannered portraits and religious art to funny, bawdy story paintings, but all of them vibrate with life. I was also very taken with two paintings by Jose Ribera, an artist I had never even heard of. Both were huge paintings of tortured gods or demi-gods, rendered as profoundly human. Oddly enough, I didn't find these paintings anywhere near as depressing as the El Grecos. We were disappointed by the first few rooms of Goyas, which struck as as poorly drawn and grotesquely ugly, so we went back to the Renaissance. I think we hit Goya's "black paintings" first, which may have been a mistake. After looking at more Goya online, I think I might have liked his earlier work better, before he got old and bitter and deaf. Or maybe I had just had my fill for the day of the fascination with torture, suffering and bloody conflict that runs through pretty much everything in the Spanish aesthetic. Don't get me wrong - I like Dark - but enough is enough.

After the Prado we stopped for a quick tapas supper at a completely undistinguished local bar/restaurant. The food wasn't particularly good, but it was too early for many locals to be eating, which made it quick and easy to get service without smoke or crowds. I think this is where we discovered the first great secret of eating out in Spain - the house wine. For about 1 Euro a glass ("una copa de vino"), you get wine that would cost at least $7 a glass back home. We usually ordered "vino blanco" and got a different local wine each time. By this time (about 7pm, I think), the little shops were opening back up for their evening hours, so we set out looking for Spanish decks of cards. I had looked up the Spanish for "deck of cards" beforehand, and it was a good thing, since we encountered only one English-speaker during our little tour of local shops. We did eventually acquire two card decks with distinctive Spanish art and Spanish suits (Cups, Swords, Hearts and Clubs. Not cloverleafs, big ugly clubs): one "French deck" (52 cards) and one "Spanish deck" (40 cards). The shops were small and the clerks were friendly, so this was fun. Then back to the hotel where we did our best to sleep off the jet lag. Other than the pickpocket incident and the nasty bus driver, it was a good day.

Friday, March 14 - From Madrid to Seville  -   Seville Image Gallery

The Plan: take the bullet train to Seville, spend the afternoon seeing the Cathedral and riding around in the horse-drawn carriages, then spend the evening tapas-crawling;  maybe catch some Flamenco.

Weather: still gorgeous - partly sunny and about 21C.

Breakfast was great. We took the Metro to the Puerta del Sol, a big beautiful plaza ringed with historic buildings, tacky tourist shops, and outdoor cafes. Had breakfast at the Cafe Europa, a slightly overpriced but very pleasant outdoor cafe located a few yards off the main square on an attractive walking mall. I think this was where we discovered the second great joy of Spanish cuisine, cafe con leche, which is kind of like capuccino without the extra foam. I usually don't add sugar to my coffee, but this stuff is so strong that sugar is a necessity. The result is a delicious, highly efficient caffeine delivery system. The weather was still glorious, and we enjoyed the view of the plaza and the peculiar Bear-in-Honey-Tree statue that is apparently the symbol of Madrid.

We Metro-ed back to our hotel, checked out and meandered down to the Atocha train station, intending to catch the AVE bullet train to Seville. Here we encountered an unpleasant surprise that not one of the  guidebooks I had read had warned us about. The trains to Seville were completely sold out for the rest of the day. We learned later that this is a common occurrence on the weekends -  apparently everybody in Madrid would rather be in Seville on their days off. About the only thing we could have done about that was to have gotten up very early and bought our tickets first thing in the morning. You can't buy tickets a day ahead on the Spanish rail system - you just have to be first in line. And the lines are long, smoky and generally unpleasant. The train station seemed really cool when we first got there, with its antique exterior, 3-story vaulted glass roof and the huge tropical garden in the middle. However, after 3 hours waiting in lines and trying to get information from Spanish-only information desks, it wasn't that much fun anymore. We considered trying to take the bus, but there appeared to be no way to find out if the buses were also sold out except to go to the bus station (wherever that was) and wait in line to find out. So we gave up and rented a car for the day, a procedure that seemed to have an inordinate number of steps and took almost an hour.

Driving out of Madrid was nightmarish, especially since I hadn't had time to get used to the car (a 6-speed Nissan) before being immersed in frantic traffic and unfamiliar traffic signs. However, once out of Madrid it was clear sailing. Spanish highways are excellent, and Spanish drivers behave perfectly reasonably, much better than I had expected from my preconceptions about European driving. The car was surprisingly peppy, and the 6 gears kept me entertained throughout what turned out to be about a 6 hour drive. I drove the whole thing, since Richard had lost his driver's license in Madrid, and we had the idea that Amber was not supposed to drive the rental car, being only 20. The scenery was pretty dreary for the first hour, then became moderately scenic once we were clear of the surprisingly extensive urban blight around Madrid. Mostly high plains with mountains at the edge.

Stopped for lunch at a pleasant little bar/restaurant in the middle of nowhere. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, and enjoyed an inexpensive meal of soup and salad, both of which were excellent. The salad was like a good antipasto, with wonderful local olives. The young Brazilian waiter was extremely friendly, and seemed excited about practicing his English (which was actually quite good good). We bought a couple of kinds of homemade cookie-like items to munch on during the trip. They were tasty, but both varieties turned out to be very crumbly, disintegrating in the bag and all over the car when we ate them.

It was dark long before we got to Seville, and we didn't have a place to stay. Fortunately, I had a list of moderately priced hotels that I had researched on the Internet, and Amber had her cell phone. The first place she  called had vacancies. Amber did a great job of negotiating the phone call (like almost all the hostals we dealt with, the clerk spoke no English), but she panicked a little when he asked for a credit card to make a reservation and we didn't have one handy, and she was convinced he had gotten mad and hung up on her. We had a little trouble figuring out how to return the car at the Seville airport. The signage regarding rental cars was sparse and confusing. We followed a Hertz sign into a parking lot, then could find no sign of a car return. We parked the car in an empty Hertz slot (which turned out to be the correct thing to do), then went back to the entrance looking for some help. Amber, our intrepid translator, was getting a little tired so she asked the first employee-like individual that we encountered "Habla Ingles?" He answered, "Nein, Allemagne," and Amber's face lit up. When she answered him in German, his face lit up too and they had a happy reunion of German-speakers. He directed us (in German) to the well-concealed Hertz office, and we eventually disposed of the car. After our unfortunate experience with public transportation in Madrid, we opted for a taxi this time, but almost changed our minds when we saw the length of the taxi line! Fortunately, it moved faster than we expected, and within 20 minutes we had a cab-- with a remarkably surly driver. Amber, however, hopped into the front seat and proceeded to make  the most of her rusty 2nd-year Spanish and her charming smile. By the time we got to our hotel the two of them were chattering away like old friends.

The Hostal Arias turned out to be an excellent choice, right in the old Santa Cruz quarter. The lobby and stairsteps were covered with attractive Spanish tile, and the room was simple but comfortable. The desk clerk was nice enough - certainly not mad at us. For 55 Euros we got 3 beds, a private bath (with a balcony!), and even a small television. We ventured out into the charming, twisty little streets to sample the much-vaunted nightlife of Sevilla, but we were too tired to stay up late enough to see much of it (night life in Spain doesn't really get going until midnight). We had a good time wandering around, and sampled some very tasty tapas and excellent vino blanco. The weather was still warm enough to eat at the outdoor tables, and since we were out early (about 9:30), the crowds were light (which suits us just fine). Back at the hotel we amused ourselves by flipping through the channels and trying to decipher what looked like a really funny claymation-style Spanish political satire.

Saturday, March 15 - From Seville to Frigiliana

The Plan: train to Malaga, pick up our rental car and drive to Frigiliana.

After all the problems in Madrid we were apprehensive about getting a train, but this time there was no problem except for an idiotic wait-in-line-twice system of ticket-purchasing and an unusually mean ticket clerk. Once we had our tickets we scrounged up a little breakfast: dry ham sandwiches and coffee con leche. At 11:30 am in a major train station, no other food was available. This train was the mid-range TALGO (fast but not a bullet train), but it was surprisingly comfortable and quiet. They even had no-smoking cars. Spaniards are irrepressible public smokers, so this was a pleasant surprise. Towards the end of the trip somebody opened the door to an adjoining smoking car and our car quickly filled up with smoke - I don't think I would have survived a trip in the smoking car! The trip took between 2 and 3 hours, and the scenery ranged from pleasant to spectacular. The trip through the final mountain range was amazing - tunnels and steep valleys, sometimes with surprising little towns hidden in the interior of the range. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Richard, unfortunately, was coming down with a bad cold, so it wasn't as much fun for him.

The airport in Malaga, where we had to pick up our car, turned out to be an easy trip by train. It took an awful lot of searching to find the rental car desk, however. As in Seville, there weren't any signs at all. Richard stayed with the luggage, while Amber and I located the Avis desk. This involved hiking across a parking lot, into a large unmarked building, walking to the far side of a cavernous parking ramp and into an unmarked hallway. There we were questioned by a security guard, who, as usual, spoke no English. He checked our passports, asked to see proof of our car reservation, and put us through a metal detector. What was on the other side of this remarkable security? Nothing but an airport ticketing level and a bunch of rental car desks. Go figure. Fortunately, Amber and I were feeling fine and enjoyed the adventure, but we were glad we weren't dragging an increasingly sick husband/father along with us at this point. We finally found the Avis desk and finished the car paperwork with no problem. The clerks at Hertz and Avis were among the few service personnel we encountered in Spain who DID consistently speak English. While Amber and I were prepared to muddle through in Spanish, it was always a relief to be able to handle things like this in a familiar language. Amusingly enough, when we walked back through the security station to the garage to pick up our car, the guard was nowhere to be seen. After all that high-security foofaraw on the way in, he apparently just walked away from his station whenever he needed a break!

Called Steve and Sarah, the villa managers in Frigiliana, for directions. It was only about 50 kilometers from Malaga to Frigiliana, but it took an hour because of the nasty congestion on the freeway around Malaga. (Later in the week, we would run into similar 10-km-long traffic jams around Malaga at completely different times of day on our trip to Gibraltar). It was also getting dark and starting to rain a little, which put a damper on what had been a perfectly pleasant day up to that point. By the time we got to Frigiliana I was exhausted (I was still doing all the driving) and seriously spacey from low blood sugar (remember, we had nothing to eat all day except half a sandwich each), and Richard was really sick. Sarah negotiated our car up a "street" that looked more like a 45-degree sidewalk, but we still  had to haul our luggage up a lot of steps and over a rocky little path to get to the villa. Richard  collapsed on a bed when we got to the villa, leaving me and Amber to get the car back down to the bottom of the hill, buy some groceries before the stores closed for the rest of the weekend (nothing open on Sundays), and then hike all the way back up. For a while this seemed like an insurmountable task, until we stopped at the first store we saw and bought a giant Nestle's chocolate almond bar. This restored me amazingly. Not enough, however, for me to remember any of my shaky Spanish. I did okay in Spanish most of the time, but when I was tired I couldn't remember a word. Fortunately, Amber was able to manage the shopping, and proceeded to whip up a nice little supper of eggs and potatoes when we finally got back to the villa. It was really nice to see our wonderful, capable daughter taking care of her tired old parents so competently.

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