Trivial Pursuits

The Economics of Driving in Europe

In this day of skyrocketing oil prices, some of you may be interested in the cost of driving in Europe. The fuel usage for highway driving in “Valeriu,” our 2002 VW Passat, is supposed to be 4 liters per 100 km or, put in US terms, about 59 miles per gallon. In addition, Valeriu uses diesel fuel, which is cheaper than gasoline in the great majority of European countries. However, the lowest price we have paid for fuel so far is 1.00 euro per liter, or about $4.75 per gallon, and we have been charged as much as 20 percent more. Added to this are tolls on the autobahnen/autostrade/autoroutes/autopistas, which are much higher than on tollways in the United States although we can’t give you an average figure. The final blow is the cost of parking, which ran $15 per day in the long-term lot at the Barcelona airport, to give a mild example. Our bottom line: American motorists should count their blessings, even without Senator Frist’s gas tax rebate.

English for Continental Europeans

We were intrigued by the electronic billboard shown below, which was in evidence in all the Spanish cities we have visited so far. Clearly, there is interest in learning English—or at least in selling the teaching of English—but equally clearly, there are still a few things to be learned. Our favorite examples so far were a menu item in an Avila restaurant with an English translation that read “Grilled Avila Big Veal Chop,” a plastic laundry bag in a Barcelona hotel that advised guests to “ramble your dirty clothes to the chambermaid,” and a Granada restaurant menu listing “Stew’s Day,” apparently not a salute to Todd but a reference to the stew of the day.



Spanish Religious Art

Religious art has always occupied an important place in Spanish culture. Recently, however, it seems to have taken some unusual turns as exemplified by the following picture from the hallway of our hotel in Cordoba. Pax vobiscum.

"The Rock"

Gibraltar, May 18


The Rock

Like Carcassonne, Gibraltar was a place Todd had always wanted to see so we swung down to the Spanish coast for a visit. We had booked a room at “The Rock” hotel, much posher than our usual hostelry with a wonderful salt water swimming pool and a fine restaurant, where we ate excellent Moroccan food. The view from our balcony included the harbor and the Spanish city of Algeciras across the bay.


Our hotel

The colony has less than 30,000 inhabitants, but new construction was visible everywhere and, to judge from the main street, tourism is booming. The only hang-up was the border, which took about half an hour to cross although there was no visible animosity between the Spanish and British officials as had existed in earlier periods. Visually, the colony is totally British with signs in English, war memorials (including the Trafalgar Cemetery, where two casualties of the battle are buried), and the requisite quaint touches—e.g., the governor’s residence is called The Convent as it had been a Franciscan convent before Britain won Gibraltar in 1728. However, one hears considerable Spanish on the street.


Main shopping street


The Convent

While Georgia sensibly spent the afternoon by the pool, Todd decided to climb to the colony’s peak. (Okay, at 426 meters it wasn’t Bald Mountain, but how many Barbary apes does Baldy have?) En route, Todd was intrigued by iron rings, about 10 inches in diameter, attached to the rock face; a sign later explained that they had been used by gun crews before the 20th Century to hall their cannons up the cliff. The only disappointment in his excursion was the limited view from the top, for Africa was hidden behind a sea mist. Fortunately, the mist lifted the following morning to bring the Moroccan mountains into view from the balcony of our hotel room.


View from the top of Gibraltar


Barbary apes


View of African coast from our hotel balcony

Tales of the Alhambra . . . and the Mezquita

Southern Spain was HOT. The Cordoba newspaper reported temperatures in the mid-30s, supposedly about 15 degrees above normal, and a street thermometer in Granada registered 40--about 104 degrees if you’re working in Fahrenheit.

Cordoba, May 14-15

We entered Cordoba on a Sunday afternoon, when most attractions and stores are shut tight, but we were able to take in the last day of the annual patio festival, when Cordobeses compete for the honor of having the city’s most beautiful patio. Despite the heat, therefore, we visited several of the entrants as evidenced by the photos below. Clearly most competitors, and probably the judges, subscribed to Mae West’s maxim that “too much of a good thing is just wonderful.”


Córdoba patio competition


Córdoba patio competition

Our sightseeing in Cordoba centered on the Mezquita, the only large mosque left in Spain from the days of the Moors, when Cordoba had at one point more than one million inhabitants. The others were either demolished or converted into churches with accompanying artistic depredations. The Mezquita was spared because Charles V decided to build a large cathedral in its center. However, the horizontal extent of the mosque is so great that it swallows the cathedral, which is almost invisible through the forest of columns from the mosque’s entry. Bordering the Mezquita is the Alcázar, the Moorish and then Christian palace with the loveliest gardens we have seen in Spain to date.


Mezquita interior


Mezquita: Torre del Alminar


Mezquita: Capilla Real


Alcázar gardens (Córdoba)

We had our first tapas experience in Cordoba at a venerable bar off the tourist route. As we were standing at the bar, Georgia was able to chat up the bartenders and learn the recipe for the house sangria. She also saw that some Cordobeses were ordering cold red wine and soda water, a sort of red wine spritzer known as “vino tinto de verano,” according to the bartenders. We recommend it.

Granada, May 16-17

After a short drive from Cordoba, we found Granada swathed in a steamy brown haze that looked to Todd’s California eye a great deal like smog. The setting was bizarre, for through the haze we could catch glimpses of the Sierra Nevada with snow-covered peaks approaching 3500 meters. Ski runs were visible, but the lifts didn’t seem to be operating.

After visiting the cathedral and paying our respects to Ferdinand and Isabella, who are interred there, we turned our attention to the Alhambra and the neighboring Generalife, which form perhaps the finest attraction in Spain. These palaces, built in the last 200-300 years of Moorish rule, initially attracted the attention of Charles V, who started to build his own palace on the site in the 16th Century but lost interest. As succeeding Spanish monarchs had no interest to begin with, the Moorish buildings were left to decay rather than to suffer alterations to match the tastes of subsequent eras. The site was “rediscovered” in the 1820s by Washington Irving, then an American diplomat in Madrid, whose “Tales of the Alhambra” became an international best seller and a spur to the refurbishment of the palaces.

We will let the following pictures tell the story of our magical visit, which lasted some five hours despite the heat. However, we were badly in need of drinks and lunch when we dragged ourselves at 3:00 into the patio restaurant of the Parador de Granada, which is located within the walls of the Alhambra.


Alhambra: Torre de Armas


Alhambra: Puerta del Vino


Generalife


Alhambra from Generalife


Alhambra: Patio de Arrayanes


Alhambra: Patio de los Leones

Madrid and Vicinity

Madrid, El Escorial and Toledo, May 10-13

We had made advance reservations for Madrid at a very reasonably priced “Travelodge” (its relationship to the US chain was unclear) outside the city center but on a major urban bus route and near a freeway interchange for trips outside the city. The choice proved sound, although we were limited to dinner in the neighborhood unless we wanted to take a bus downtown when the restaurants opened at 9:00 p.m.—and we certainly didn’t.

Despite the closeness of the freeway interchange, driving in Madrid proved at least as challenging as in Rome and Florence with heavy traffic, erratically parked vehicles, and badly marked streets. We hit upon a winning formula, however, with Georgia driving and Todd navigating. After our excursions we were always able to find free on-street parking near our hotel—a minor miracle in a major European capital.


"Our" Madrid freeway interchange

Our first foray outside the city was to El Escorial, the palace/mausoleum/monastery/school built in the 16th Century by King Philip II, inter alia, to inter his father, the Emperor Charles V, himself, and almost all subsequent Spanish monarchs and their wives, plus numerous non-ruling offspring, legitimate and otherwise. Todd had been to El Escorial some thirty years before and knew what to expect, but Georgia was blown away by its scale and grandeur, which reflects the extraordinary wealth that the Spanish crown was receiving from the New World. Photography was generally not permitted inside the building, but the following pictures of Benvenuto Cellini’s “Cruxificion” and the library will give you some idea of the treasures we saw. However, along with the magnificent royal basilica, they contrast with the building’s dour exterior, reflecting Philip’s personality, some say, and the rather cramped apartments (by royal standards, at least) for the king and queen.


El Escorial


Library at El Escorial


Cellini sculpture at El Escorial

Our second excursion was south to Toledo, a city that prides itself on the fact that it served as Charles V’s capital—to the extent he had one—as double-headed imperial eagles were everywhere in evidence. To our great regret, the Alcazar, which served as the emperor’s palace, was closed for yet another renovation, but we made an extended visit to the cathedral, seat of Spain’s primate. The sacristy holds an extraordinary collection of El Grecos (although we saw his masterpiece, “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz,” in another church), but the interior of the church is equally magnificent, featuring the “Transparente,” a Baroque tunnel of light adorned with painting and sculpture harmoniously joined. A happy surprise was the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes, founded by Ferdinand and Isabella following a victory over the Moors, which was a beautiful 15th Century blend of religion and politics with the Catholic Monarchs’ insignias everywhere to be seen in the mudejar-inspired carvings.


Another "View of Toledo"


Ceiling decorations at San Juan de los Reyes (Toledo)


We spent two days in Madrid itself but barely scratched the surface. One day was devoted to the Prado, where our favorites were the Goyas and Velazquezes, especially the late “black paintings” of the former and the latter’s “Las Meninas,” which was particularly interesting as we had seen Picasso’s “copies” of the painting at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. (One could devote an entire art course to Velazquez, Picasso and “Las Meninas.”) However, we were also intrigued by the detailed phantasmagorical paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, especially “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” which Phillip II liked so much (just possibly because Bosch’s representations of sin were sexually explicit) that he had it copied into a tapestry at El Escorial.

Our second day we split up with Georgia heading for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which, she discovered, deserved a great deal more time than she had allowed for her visit. The Thyssen collection, which illustrates the history of Western art from the 14th to the 20th Century, proved to be a magnificent recapitulation of artists, from Titian to Beckmann, whom we had previously seen in our travels as well as much more. Meanwhile, Todd visited the 18th Century Palacio Real, where the Bourbon kings unsuccessfully attempted to outdo their royal cousins in other parts of Western Europe. The palace is kept in immaculate condition, however, as its reception rooms, which dwarf those in the White House, are used for state occasions by Juan Carlos. Both of us visited the Plaza Mayor, the old center of Madrid, and strolled past other sites in this unarguably magnificent city, including the Palace Hotel, where Georgia got her long-awaited haircut and came away delighted with the result.


Palacio Real (Madrid)


Plaza Mayor (Madrid)


Plaza de Cibeles (Madrid)

Spain is celebrating the 400th anniversary of “Don Quixote,” and to mark the event, Madrid has adorned its streets with quotations from the novel. We particularly liked this one outside the Prado.


Quixote quote (Paseo del Prado, Madrid)