Spain, Part I

I am writing this on one of Spain’s impressive high-speed trains, leaving Barcelona for Seville at 275 kph. It is 9:52 AM CET. We are on the home stretch of our trip to Spain, having spent the first four days in Madrid and the next four in Barcelona. After this six-hour-long train trip we will have a few days in Seville before returning to Madrid for the night.

Spain has been a wonderful experience, in spite of our not really speaking the language. We’ve soaked up the culture and the sights and walked many kilometers around the streets of Madrid and Barcelona. Now we head to what many call the most beautiful, most Spanish city: Seville.

Our trip began midafternoon on 21 December when we arrived at RDU for our flight. A lengthy wait at the Delta counter was rewarded with all four of us getting TSA Pre-flight status and bypassing the long, holiday security lines. Soon we were seated on our Boeing 757-200S for the long trip across the Atlantic.

I had my reservations about being crammed into a 757 for such a long flight but there were two things in our favor. First, it was a red-eye flight so my body would be somewhat used to being still. Second, the family had four seats right next to each other (1+3, right side). Kelly said up-front that she didn’t want the middle seat so I volunteered for it. Surprisingly, it was very comfortable. I got up once to use the lavatory and then used my travel pillow to get a few winks in here and there. Before I knew it we were cruising over the dark, sleeping hills of Ireland on our way to Paris.

At Charles De Guille airport, we wound our way through the labyrinthine of corridors reserved for pre-customs travelers and had our passports stamped. We then wandered through the crowded airport on our way to our gate, where we watched our bags closely before boarding. The Air France flight to Madrid was on an Airbus, and we laughed when the flight attendant handed an open box of croissants to us to handle with our germy hands.

Finally at the Madrid airport, I was hyper-alert for pickpockets and thieves but did not see any. We effortlessly picked up our bags, hired a taxi, and headed to our apartment near the city center. Our cabbie spoke no English but said the name “Trump” and pretended to go into convulsions. We perfectly understood. Kind of sad that even if we leave the country we can’t get away from our cretin President-Elect.

Our apartment in Madrid was close to Puerto del Sol and within walking distance to nearly everything we could need. We took the stairwell-sized elevator (3 personas, max) up to the fourth floor (5 in American terms) and walked in. There was a decent-sized kitchen/common room. two bedrooms, and a small bathroom in-between. The bedroom with the queen bed was also one with a partition rather than a full wall, not giving much privacy. All windows had light-tight windows, making it difficult to know what time it was when they were closed. The bathroom contained a tiny shower so small that it was easy to bump the faucet while turning around and turn the water off (or turn it to a scalding temperature). Spain has top-notch Internet connectivity, though, and we made use of our apartment’s WiFi to plot our next moves.

Once our things were safely in the apartment we ventured out to get some lunch. Not finding (nor caring about) anything fancier, we sat down in the outdoor seating area of a pizzeria and attempted to order in Spanish.

We were seated in the middle of the restaurant’s tent, surrounded by a few families and groups of friends chattering in Spanish. As we chatted in English, I watched a nondescript man in a gray jacket and carrying a black laptop bag walk up to the seating area and began scanning it with his eyes. He then walked right up to an empty table on the perimeter right next to a seated couple lost in each other’s gaze. A group of women at the table next to me blocked my view but I saw the man sit down for no more than ten seconds, perhaps pretending to read the menu. He then stood up, cradling a red backpack in front of his laptop bag, shielded from the lovers’ view. With that, he went walking briskly away. I had just witnessed a theft, less than an hour of being in Spain. The lovers never knew what hit them and I was in disbelief about what I had seen. There would be little letting my guard down for the rest of our time in Spain.

With food in our bellies, we returned the kids to the apartment while Kelly and I went out to buy a Spanish SIM card for our phones. Buying SIM cards was one of the smartest things we’ve done on our trip. At the Vodafone store in Puerta del Sol we purchased two SIM cards for 15 Euro each that gave us 50 minutes of talk, unlimited SMS, and 3 GB of data. We now had Spanish phone numbers, but more importantly we now had the ability to use Google Maps to navigate the country, Google Translate to stumble our way through local interactions, and the ability to contact each other in case we were separated. Supposedly we can also call our family and friends in the U.S. but try as I might I could not get this to work.

What is Madrid like? It’s hard to say since it’s the Christmas holidays. We arrived on 22 December when many stores were closing for Christmas and most people were with their families. That meant we walked down streets lined with closed security doors, covered in graffiti. Occasional cars would roll down the narrow streets but many locals rode mopeds or motorcycles. Those lined the streets. Slick, slate sidewalks were separated from cobblestone streets by steel posts a foot tall. These were perfectly positioned to take out our shins should there be an unguarded moment but we avoided this fate (not that I didn’t worry about it). Most buildings are about 5 stories tall and sunlight filtered through only a few windows of our apartment. It reminded me a lot of the streets of Old San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Spain keeps a different schedule than many Western countries. Spain’s former dictator Francisco Franco not only sympathized with Germany’s Nazi and Italy’s fascist regimes, he put Spain into their time zone even though Spain is actually south of the U.K. This makes the sun rise later and set later than it otherwise would and the workforce responds appropriately. The tradition of a siesta is now falling out of favor but once provided a welcome afternoon break in a long day, when workers would go home to eat lunch and nap. Workers would then return to work at 3 PM to work until 8 PM. Now, many Spanish live too far from their workplace to make siestas practical so there’s some movement towards working a normal workday. Studies also show that the Spanish do not get as much sleep as other countries do, with one in four Spanish going to bed after midnight. It was thus difficult to find many places open between 2 PM and 8 PM.

After resting a bit at our apartment, we made a quick tour of the Christmas market in Plaza Mayor. Having had our fill, we walked back towards our apartment and sought out some food. The “City Kebab” place near our place served up an unsatisfying meal. Disappointed with the meal but happy to be in Spain, we went to bed around 10 PM.

Around our bedtime, the city streets were relatively quiet. They got rowdier around 2 AM (when the bars closed, I suppose) and our heads, which were still six hours behind, did not let us sleep. Kelly paged through Facebook on her phone while I fought unsuccessfully to continue sleeping. Eventually sleep came and I believe we all snoozed until after 9 AM. We could not sleep much longer, though, because a full, exciting day awaited us exploring Madrid!