November 22nd Thanksgiving day in Spain

 

Although they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Spain they did show a small video of Obama pardoning the Turkey.  Since we don’t want to cook a big meal we decided to do a quick trip to a small museum, the Museo of Decorative Arts, which features exhibits of things related to life in the Spanish houses from the 16^th to the 19^th century.  So we were seeing things like decorative pottery, glass, tableware, furniture, etc.  We spent about an hour and a half and saw many lovely things.   We wanted to make sure we got to a restaurant for our Thanksgiving lunch in time to assure us a table, so took a short detour through the park Retiro and caught the bus (it was another clown car situation on the bus) back to our neighborhood.

 

 

 

 

 We got to the restaurant La Cuadrilla around 3:00 and got a nice table right at the window.   This is a restaurant suggested by Norm and it’s just down the street a few doors from his apartment.   He told us that it was very good and thought we would enjoy eating there.   We’ve had no meal in Spain that has been superior to this one.  We’ve had very few meals that were disappointing but this one was surpassing good.    Deb has given a description in her post so I won’t elaborate.   We spent a quiet evening at home afterwards.

Pablo & Mercedes our hosts

  Boletus & Fois Gras sauteed in Sherry

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends in Denver and the U.S.   A more formal post will follow as I have to relate our dinner/lunch to you all.   But for now we wish you all a wonderful and happy day

We’ve been following the news and trying to figure out what is happening in the Middle East and Spain, mostly we have a reasonable ideal of what is happening even if we lack the minor detail.   However there are a few things that still get lost in translation.  For instance; we been seeing references to consideration of a law that seemed to indicate that Spain was going to limit the purchase of dwellings by non-Spanish to either less than or greater than 160,000 Euros but we could not for the life of us figure out why.  So each time it appeared on TV for a few days we speculated on why.  We guessed that perhaps they were trying to minimize speculation by foreigners on lower priced housing to keep prices down.  But it turned out to be even more interesting than that.  When we read the story in English it seems that they are thinking about granting automatic Spanish residency status to any foreigner buying a residence costing greater than 160,000 euros.  So now we know that perhaps we can circumvent the Schengen agreement for around 210,000 dollars; what a deal!   There are around 700,000 units available right now and 90% of them are down on the Costa Brava.   It’s like the south coast of England down there right now so if you are prone to culture shock you could avoid it completely, of course you might miss a more Spanish experience.

Tonight I walked in to our bakery to buy bread and there was one person at the counter buying bread, so as I do in the U.S. I stood behind them waiting for my turn to be served.   Another two people walked in and moved right up to the display case; it appeared to me that the person who came in after me was ignoring me so I moved up to the case also.   When the person in front of me finished I started to order as the clerk clearly asked me what I wanted, but the fellow next to me butted in and when I turned to look at him he wagged his finger at me and indicated that he was next in line and proceeded to order.  I looked at the woman behind him and we both shrugged; because it was clear to her that I was there before they arrived.  Anyway I learned about the cultural expectation so I will crowd up to the counter as well instead of giving the person in front of me a little privacy and space to see what is being offered for sale; at least until one of them turns on me and wags a finger.  (~8

November 21st Getting on with in Madrid

Yesterday was primarily a market day but we did go to our library to update the blog and catch up on our email.
Today however we wanted to make sure that we got our museum fix so we headed down to Plaza de Cibeles which is the bus stop for both the Prado and Reina Sofia museums.  The last few days have been quite cloudy and cool but no rain so we dress accordingly.  A wool jacket and cotton shirt for Deb and a leather jacket over a shirt for me seems to be enough.   We got to Reina Sofia and spent a couple hours going through the art relating to the Spanish Civil War; the greatest of which is considered to be Guernica by Picasso.  It was quite a graphic experience and very brutal, many of the works descried the Nazis as early as 1936-7 and showed how the church was in lockstep with fascism at the time.  That period of time still affects the Spanish society today but I suspect the exhibition of these paintings could not even have happened until many years after Franco’s death.   We decided it was time for lunch so we left the museum and headed into the back streets away from the main tourist haunts. 


Several blocks away we came to few little bar/restaurants, and finally decided on a little place called, ‘Taberna El Alembique’.  What a fortunate choice for us, the menu del dia included Cocido which is one of the main dishes I wanted to try in Madrid.  It comes in two courses, the first of which is the broth used to cook the main dish.  It is separated from the solids and has pasta much like spaghetti, called Fideo, added.  The second course is the meat and vegetables that were simmered in the broth of the first course and what a feast it is.  The plate is heaped with cabbage, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, corned beef, ham, chorizo, chicken, and morcilla (blood sausage), the whole of which was smothered in garbanzo beans.  It sounds like a lot and it is; but I acquitted myself with honor and finished it.  It won’t be the last by any means.   After lunch we went to the Prado to continue our explorations and this trip was focused mostly on Poussin, Lorraine, Ribera, and Zurbaran.  We both thought that many of the Poussin paintings suffered from overzealous cleaning sometime in the past.  So much has been cleaned off that in some cases they look almost like paint by numbers, compared to the ones that have been carefully restored.  I’m sure most of this has happened quite a long time ago because the Prado is so careful and very open about things that have taken place in the past where they know about it.  Be that as it may, the vast majority of the paintings looked wonderful and I gained a new appreciation of Zurbaran.  I feel that so many of his paintings are so dark or if you will ‘muted in palette’, as to be practically opaque; but many today were quite lovely.   We had our Spanish class in the evening which is always fun for us.

Our host at El Alambigque

November 20th Get those Knockers Up

These interested me so you get to look at them too.

November 19th Going back to Madrid

Working on Spanish verbs

 Today we made the 3 hour trip back to Madrid on the high speed train, sorry no pics.  At 180 mph by the time you seem something to photograph it's gone.   Anyway we got back just before noon and since the day was bright and fine did laundry to get all our travelling clothes washed.   We leave for Granada and Seville next Monday so we need to be set for that trip too.  We had a nice lunch at another small restaurant in the neighborhood then had to do our preparation for our spanish class this evening.   Our Spanish is so rudimentary that we make little stories up each time to tell Norm and then have him correct our verb tenses, which happens nearly everytime on at least one sentence.

12th century carving of a king, fantastic

November 18th Last day in Barcelona

Today we planned to see the Picasso Museum here since it is one of the top attractions for Barcelona and it was open today when the museums we saw yesterday are not.   I was looking at our map of the area we’re in and figured that we could just walk to the museum in a few minutes as it’s very close.  We started out in that direction but narrow winding streets got us totally turned around and we wound up down at the seafront when we should have been paralleling it several blocks in.   Since it was sunny we made a snap decision to walk along the beach for a while and enjoy being near the Mediterranean since this is to be our only chance.   So we walked over to where the Olympic village and the water sports took place for the 92 games then went inland and walked through a park to get us in the vicinity of the Picasso museum.   I’m here to tell you, that it took us 2 or 3 tries to actually find it as it’s on one of the medieval lanes housed in 5 townhouses.   We did get there as it was starting to rain so thanks to our earlier purchase of special passes we were able to bypass the line that headed down the street for a few hundred feet and to right in.  Of course it took us a couple tries to find the interior ticket window but we made it and had a great time seeing the all the Picasso paintings and prints.  Particularly interesting were his studies and interpretations of Velasquez’ Las Meninas, in the mid-50’s he painted over 50 works that basically deconstructed Velasquez most famous painting and let him play with putting it together in different compositions.  Of course he didn’t do literal copying of the subjects but did them in his abstracted manner and they are very provocative and appealing.   In addition we saw over 40 of the ceramic vessels he created and painted that was there for a temporary exhibition.   I think that this museum should be combined with the Picasso museum in Paris to get the full scope of his work.   Tomorrow we journey back to Madrid and pick up our lives again in that town.