Our week-long trip to Spain included visits to two cities: Madrid and Valencia. We had been to Madrid previously, in 1994, and in the ensuing 12 years, it really hadn’t changed all that much. Madrid is very much a European city in the classical sense. It has all the hustle and bustle of a big city, and yet also is loaded with sidewalk cafés, illustrating that Madrileños take time to “smell the roses”. We spent many hours doing the same, passing time in a café over a beer and some tapas.
One of my favorite places in the city is the Park of Madrid, also known as El Parque del Buen Retiro. Retiro is a beautiful leafy oasis, with all sorts of diversions to help one enjoy the outdoors. We even rented a rowboat on the pond there.
Valencia, on the other hand, is a city on the move, finding its way in blending the old with the new. It is actually Spain’s third-largest city, and yet has a small town feel. We spent the majority of our time in the “old town” area, surrounded by astoundingly beautiful architecture. In fact, the sidewalks around the main city plaza are paved with what we believed to be pink marble!
In 2007, Valencia is poised to become a higher-profile world-class city when it hosts the America’s Cup yachting races. There is much building and renovation in progress as they prepare for this event. One area that’s been completed is a museum campus designed by architect Santiago Calatrava. Parts of his design give the impression of a space ship that has landed in the middle of this city. Calatrava has already achieved much fame (or perhaps notoriety) here in the Midwest with his addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, as well as the Fordham Spire, a controversial yet-to-be-built skyscraper proposed for Chicago that resembles an enormous drill bit.
We spent a day at the Playa Malvarrosa beach in Valencia. My first thought was surprise at how deep the beach was: you had to walk a couple of hundred feet from where it began before reaching the water’s edge. Once in the water, you could walk out a few hundred more feet before it got to be even chest deep. Nothing at all like the beaches in the Caribbean that seem to come and go with the weather. Then again, I suppose the Mediterranean doesn’t get too many hurricanes!
If there’s any anti-American sentiment in Spain, it sure didn’t seem apparent to us. Could be because there aren’t all that many Americans there to begin with. In Madrid, we did encounter some other Americans, but next-to-none in Valencia. Spain’s primary tourist base comes from the UK.
Even with four years of high school Spanish, I had never reached a point I would call “conversational”. But, by the end of our week in Spain, it amazed me how much of the language I could speak and understand. Immersion is definitely the gateway to fluency! In Madrid, I’d say one could get by without really knowing any Spanish (except of course, for those “politeness” phrases I think all travelers should learn for any country they visit) but in Valencia, it would have made life difficult. By the end of the week, I impressed even myself with my ability to go into a store or café, place an order with the clerk and be able to understand and respond to any questions they posed. On our train ride to Valencia, they showed a movie and again, I surprised myself with how much of the dialog I actually understood. My secret wish is some day to live in a Spanish-speaking region for a year or two where I might even be able to achieve some level of fluency given enough time and practice.
As for the food in Spain, it tends to be heavy on the meat and starches. It would be a nightmare for anyone trying to keep kosher, as ham is a staple on every menu. There’s even a restaurant chain in Madrid called El Museo del Jamon (the Ham Museum) where every wall is covered with dozens of air-dried Serrano hams. Under each ham is a little cup to catch any grease that might drip. For many of our meals, we simply dined on tapas, ordering five or six of the little dishes to make a complete dinner. We also went to a Basque restaurant, which made for a memorable and tasty meal consisting of a tasting menu that even included traditional Basque cider, wonderful wine and after-dinner drinks – quite a feast! Even at home, we have a tendency to dine late, and that makes us well-suited for Spanish culture…the majority of restaurants there don’t open before 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. This time of year, sunset is quite late, at least to us Chicagoans, not setting till almost 9:30. This had a way of skewing our perception of time, so it was no problem to sit down to dinner even after 10:00. But, if one just simply can’t wait, the cafeterias are open early. Strike any idea of a chow line with trays and institutional food from your mind when you hear the word cafeteria: in Spain it refers to a style of restaurant we might call a diner or a coffee shop. The cafeteria proved to be our saving grace our first night in Madrid, when we had been awake for over 30 hours and felt a real need to get to bed by 9 p.m. (Yes, it felt strange going to bed before sunset!)
So were there any bad points to our trip? Well, a couple of days before our vacation began, I was hit with a bit of a virus. Fortunately, by the time we departed it had become nothing more than a drippy nose and an annoying cough that was mostly controlled by over-the-counter drugs. If I had been thinking, I would have stocked up on Sudafed in Spain, where you don’t have to sign sworn statements and be limited on quantity for fear of being marked a crystal-meth maker as here in the States. Unfortunately, this virus has since mutated into an eye infection, but I was VERY lucky that part of it didn’t affect me until the day after we returned home.
The other bad thing: John had his wallet pick-pocketed. Yes, he had a money belt and knew of all the potential dangers and precautions to take. But for whatever reason, he decided it would be okay to keep his wallet in a pocket with two buttons that seemed impervious to being lifted. Yeah, right…the buttons were no barrier at all to whatever urchin pinched the wallet on a crowded subway car. Fortunately, John was wise enough not to have anything more in it than a handful of Euros and an easily cancelled credit card. So, the incident was nothing more than an annoyance and not a trip-spoiler.
We also had a longer-than-expected trip home because we missed our connection in London. Not too big a deal because we were able to get on the very next flight out, less than three hours later. Getting home later than planned actually made it easier to force myself to stay awake till 10 p.m. (with my body thinking it was 5 a.m. the next morning), so overcoming jetlag and the 7-hour time zone difference was a lot easier.
So now that we’ve been to Spain twice, would we go again? Absolutely! It’s a lively and engaging country, with warm people who never seemed to mind us butchering their language. Quite the opposite, actually – many people seemed delighted to help us converse and liked the fact that we made the effort to speak Spanish. But, considering the long plane flight and 7-hour time change, it may be a few years before we get to España again. Hopefully not TOO many years, as Spain occupies a very warm place in my heart.
Jamie
