First day in Madrid

Madrid is set exactly in the center of Spain, and is the point from which roads and transit emanate from. It was not a particularly important city in the days of the Castilian kings, but Henry of Castile's establishment of his El Pardo outside the walls put it on the map. The official entry of Ferdinand and Isabella into the city finally connected the often warring Castile and Aragon, helping to form Madrid into a coherent whole. The capital of Spain was transferred from Toledo to Madrid in 1561, fating Madrid to be the gigantic metropolis it is today. The Spanish Civil War hit Madrid hard: it was the first city to be bombed by airplanes with the intent of harming civilians in the history of warfare. Since that dark era, the Spanish capital has experienced a renaissance, and is now the third most populous city in Europe, serving as a powerful economic and cultural center for the entire Iberian peninsula. So that's enough about that.

We stayed at the Hilton near the airport, far outside of town. This was convenient for when we would get on our flight back to the USA, but a bit of a pain in the ass in the interim. Thankfully, Madrid has a fairly new and indisputably efficient underground system, which was capable of whisking me out of hot dry suburban hell into the city center. I left my parents to avail themselves of the Hilton's bar and headed into the city to have a looksee.

To be honest, Madrid isn't charismatic at first sight. The downtown is not incredibly distinctive, as cities go, with an appearance that struck me as a 1800's Spanish city on a very large scale, with a touch of New York thrown in for good measure. There are incredibly wide avenues and roads, large quantities of triumphal fountains and monuments, and hordes of pedestrians walking about as fast as Spaniards are capable of walking (which is not very). It is pleasant enough, but it does not possess the exotic starkness of some of Spain's smaller cities. It does, however, posess enough fine dining and shopping to keep anyone busy for an incredibly long time, if you fall in for that sort of thing.

With no real destination in mind, I pointed myself to the Palace, which I figured warranted a look. I headed to the Plaza Mayor first, which is certainly a pleasant sight: finished during the Hapsburg period, it has a distinctively old-Spanish appearance, and is a good place to sit and drink when the heat gets to its ugliest summertime point. It is full of tourists and features such attractions as the Museum of Ham, but is still worth a look. It has been the scene of soccer games, bullfights, public executions and Spanish Inquisition autos-de-fe, amongst other pleasant diversions.



Right outside the Plaza Mayor, you can jump on the Calle Mayor (go figure) and enjoy a straight shot to the Palace. The Palace is certainly an imposing pile, with a pleasingly subtle blue and white color scheme and a profusion of ornamental decorations. The square grows incredibly hot during the summer, so be forewarned. Juan Carlos and the royal family actually reside in the homier (apparently) Palacio de la Zarzuela, heading to the palace for official functions and other events where royal smiling-and-waving might be called for. It's the largest palace in Western Europe in terms of sheer size. You most likely can go in but on this Europe trip I reached my personal quotient of royal residencies long ago, and there are really only so many ornate tables and jewel encrusted water closets one can look at before going completely nuts, so I just took a few photos. I rested in the gardens outside the palace for a while, watching the Segway tours go by and Madrid's home-grown skater punks playing on the cement.



Directly across the square sits the aesthetically similar Almudena Cathedral. It is brand spanking new by Madrid standards, however, only being begun in 1879. Designed in a Gothic Revival style, construction ceased entirely during the Spanish Civil war for what should be obvious reasons, and was only resumed in the 1950s. It was not officially completed until 1993, when Pope John Paul II finally put in an appearance to sanctify it. If you watched the over-the-top ornate wedding of Felipe, Prince of Asturias to Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, you've seen the interior of the Cathedral.

I tired of gazing at royal residences and decided to walk back to the Plaza Mayor area, where I would meet my parents later in the evening. As I walked by, I noticed the Mercado de San Miguel, an absolutely alluring old market retrofitted into a modern farmer's market and eatery. Built along the same lines as the San Francisco Ferry Building, it's an excellent place to suck down some good sangria and sample the best of what Spain has to offer. Fish mongers, bakeries, meat shops, tapas joints, canned fish specialists, beer geeks, and wine sellers all have set up shop here, providing an excellent array of treats in one convenient location. I can imagine no better place to get blitzed and eat pinxtos in the area. I hung out there for a bit and took some photos. Namely of fish.


Some large flat fishes.


The horrifyingly frightening specter of the monkfish.


More terrifying monkfish, or "rape negro".


Some adorable little red fishes.


Sardines of many varietals. Lovely little quick creatures.


Dear lord, the aliens have come to roost.


Clams of various varieties.


You may guess I'm a bit taken with these monkfish mugs.


For dinner, we decided to do a tapas crawl, going off some tips I recieved on the ever-useful Chowhound and Egullet. The Calle de Cava Baja proved to be a great place to cruise for tapas and booze, well favored by locals and not entirely jacked up by dorky tourists like ourselves. Warning: if you're even vaguely bothered by smoke, avoid doing a Madrid tapas crawl, you are not going to be able to survive for long. Spain is one of Europe's last hold-outs when it comes to frenzied indoors smoking. I suggest you just work through the pain and eat tapas until your face hurts, but to each his own. Getting to Cava Baja is easy: just walk out the bottom of the plaza from the Calle Mayor, and keep going down the Calle Toledo. Make a right on Calle San Bruno and you'll be there.

Our first stop was Tempranillo on Calle Cava Baja. Most tapas joints are dual affairs: one part is stand up and the other is a more formal sit-down. We decided to stand up and order beer and house white wine. Most tapas around here are served on pieces of bread.


These two are duck with mushrooms and four cheese. Pretty tasty insofar as stuff on bread can go, but nothing particularly exciting.

Our second destination was the Taberna Juana La Loca, which can be reached by walking to the end of Calle de Cava Baja then walking into the Plaza Puerta de Moros. It's a super popular and atmospheric place, full of the young and hip of Madrid, who chain-smoke, gossip, and listen to darkly indie music over plates of excellent food. You can order pre-made food from behind the counter, which will be zapped and served quickly, or you can order off the more elaborate menu.


High quality Spanish anchovies served with pita points and a kind of rich red pepper hummus dip. This was a tasty combination that hadn't occurred to me before, and would be nice to recreate at home.


A simple serving of boneless pork chop, cheese, and Spanish pepper. This was tender and tasty, a bit like a stripped down version of a Philly cheesesteak.


A delicious tortilla, or Spanish potato omlette. This was gigantic and filled with deliciously flavorful caramelized onions - a real treat in the tortilla category.


A sort of duck ravioli wrapped in cheese and topped with bacon - how could this not be delicious? Juicy and flavorful in the interior. Nice stuff.

For dessert, we headed back over to the Mercado de San Miguel, where we perused the considerable gelato and sorbet selection. My mom chose a passion fruit and pineapple flavor. Which came with a parrot stuck in it. (It now lives in our potted plant).

And took the subway back and went to bed. We'd do the Prado and explore more of the city the next day, our last in Spain.

Avila, Storks, Snails!

Storks. Spain has lots of them. (You have to lock yourself inside your homes between 12:00 and 4:00 AM on Friday the 13th - on that dark and evil day, storks soar through quiet Spanish streets and reap the flesh of the innocent.)

We woke up early and loaded up the car - we were on our way to Ávila, Spain's most famous walled city. A UNESCO World Heritage Site (like 88% of things in Spain,) Avila boasts the best preserved mediaeval walls in the country, constructed of brown granite around 1090. The city also has a tremendous Gothic cathedral, various churches and monasteries, and a profusion of bakeries selling locally-themed cookies. Avila's other claim to fame is its status as the residence of St. Teresa of Avila, a mystic, nun, writer of the Reformation, and general holy heavy-hitter. It is very much worth a visit.

The drive took us up past Madrid and into the jurisdiction of Castile and Leon, an autonomous community produced from old Castile - the seat of the Spanish empire. Extremely dry and dusty, it's an arid and scrubby land with impressive rock formations, canyons and a completely insane number of castles. Castile and Leon possesses such a ridiculous quantity of castles for strategic reasons: when the Christians and the Moors hotly contested the land during the Crusades and the Reconquista, castles provided handy places to hunker down and efficiently protect their turf. Another fun fact: Castile and Leon used to be covered in a serviceable scrub forest, which was almost completely wiped out due to the cattle-raising customs of the Middle Ages. The land hasn't really recovered since. If only they had Al Gore.

We stopped in one of the many dusty and non-descript towns that line the highway from Madrid to Avila. Spain's two-bit roadside towns look almost exactly like those found in our desert Southwest, down to tumbleweeds, sweaty migrant laborers, and poorly air conditioned bars. Difference: even the most crumbly no-account-miserable town in Spain has a bullring (plaza de toros) and an extremely large cathedral. This particular town did possess a castle, which is probably written into the Castile and Leon constitution as a requirement for incorporation.

We wandered around trying not to die of heat stroke and walked into a place that billed itself as a rotisserie chicken emporium. Whoops: they were out of chicken. Out of other stuff too. Feeling too lazy to go elsewhere, we decided to stay put. Small, informal Spanish restaurants tend to pre-prepare their dishes and keep them up front, where you can point at them (a great thing for those of us whose Spanish is at the level of a 5th grade ignoramus). My dad and I managed to inadvertently order half the menu (which we didn't want) due to our lamentable Spanish, but, hey, at least it was cheap. Microwaving pre-prepared dishes is standard practice - at this place, the husband (who ran the front of the house) passed the food up via dumbwaiter to his wife, who heated it up and added the finishing touches. The food was perfectly acceptable, and primarily interesting for its Spanishness.


A variation on carcamusas, pork stew with tomato and paprika. This pork stew seems to be a favorite across Spain, and for good reason: it's very simple but quite good if the meat is cooked for a nice long time.


Green beans cooked with shrimp, mushrooms, and what seemed to be some egg. Another unusual dish but a pretty tasty one. This could have been a curious Spanish attempt at Chinese food as I look back on it. I did not try Chinese food in Spain's small towns but suspect they would find a way to work paprika into the Egg Foo Young. Spanish people love paprika.


Now here's Spanish soul food - caracoles (snails) in a bacon-paprika-red pepper sauce. These are little suckers treated rusticly, unlike those high-minded escargots most of us are used to. They're fairly tasty if you open your mind to them, though - they must be dug out of their shells with a toothpick. The extracted snail looks almost exactly like a plug of ear wax with antenna stuck on. Ignore the appearance and pop it in your mouth: the flavor is about the same as that of a clam. Further, they were cooked in bacon, and bacon has the ability to make pretty much anything edible.


Chicken in onion sauce. A pretty good and nicely fatty onion sauce - would like to figure out how to make this. Roast chicken in some sort of sauce seems to comprise a very large portion of the Spanish diet. Fine by me as roast chicken is one of God's perfect foods.



Square in downtown Avila. Was filled with about 50 bored looking American kids on on some sort of ghastly package tour when we arrived, but they cleared out. Thank St Jessup Jerome of the Oozing Pustule for that.

We arrived in Avila about when we were supposed to. Our hotel, Las Leyendas, was built directly below the castle walls and offered convenient access to the old town - a good thing, since you'd have to be criminally insane to want to drive there. It's a clean, modern, and fairly basic place, and it suited our purposes well (although they forgot to give me towels one day which is not cool.) As we were slightly bushed from the drive, we took a siesta like all sane organisms then reconvened to look around town and grab some tapas.


The iconic main entry of Avila's old city.

Avila really is beautiful - atmospheric, resolutely medieval, and pleasantly free of roving packs of tourists. The walls are singular and unusual, and especially amazing when approached from the freeway - it's easy to imagine yourself as some 11th century besieger, thumping up on a horse, seeing the walls, and thinking, "Oh fuck, we have to besiege that?"


A battlement. One needed battlements back in the day. I like to imagine boiling oil being poured off this thing upon some invaders. Does my heart good.

The walls are entirely intact and incredibly thick , and the residents have kept them up with some fierceness over the centuries - simply building their modern city around the perimeters of the ancient city. It is not as visually arresting as Toledo within the city walls, at least initially, but the ambience of the place quickly grows on you - tapas bars, wide open Baroque squares full of grandmas and bored teenagers, flights of swallows that nest in the city walls.


A perturbed looking (and old) statue of a pig near Avila's main gates. A pig statue was considered an essential and lucky accessory for one's medieval castle in these parts. My mom thinks we should start manufacturing yard-size versions of these for today's ancestral fortresses/McMansions. I am inclined to agree.


The walls of Avila at night.

We headed to a place called 3 Caracoles for early drinks and tapas (8:30 is early bird special time in Spain). Located right across from the fortress like Avila cathedral, it was a nice place to watch the sun go down. We were also treated to the sight of what appeared to be a mattress and kitchen appliance give-away for the elderly of Avila, who were brandishing walkers and congregating around a truck. Maybe they'd sat through a time-share pitch down South for the benefit of receiving bed-sore preventative mattresses - who knows. Old folks in Spain share with old folks in other Countries with Issues the assurance that they have been through things worse then you can ever imagine and survived. They must be treated with extreme respect. Or they will destroy you.



I ordered some mussels. I was hoping for the standard broth n' paprika treatment and was rather taken aback when they came out shelled and drizzled with olive oil, raw onion, and paprika. Not a great preparation. Makes me sad to see a mussel suffer so.



Next up was my usual: tuna belly with red pepper pistou. A good example of a classic Spanish dish. I have no idea why Americans tolerate tuna fish packed in water - the flavor of the stuff packed in olive oil is infinitely more delicious.



Spain is known for its migratory white storks, which can be seen almost everywhere in Castile and Leon. They are extremely large and ponderous and build landing-strip size nests - some very old. They now have too many storks in some parts of Spain. My guidebook had a great bit about how storks are coming in such immense numbers to some tiny bumfuck villages that they are invading the populace which just cracks me right up for understandable reasons. I mean, what the hell is an overabundance of storks really gonna do - carry away small children to their dark and bone-scattered lairs, shit on your John Deere dust-farming tractor, build fifteen nests upon the statue of St Jessup de Jerome Of the Sacred Oozing Chest Wound? How bad can it really get with storks?


Well, I guess they can do this.


Courtyard we had tapas in.

After these tapas, we walked a bit further down and came upon a more formal restaurant, the name of which I, uh, cannot remember. It did have a lovely courtyard right up against the walls - I enjoyed kicking off my shoes and squidging my toes around in the grass. We simply ordered a tortilla (omelet, not corn thing, remember that) and a salad, as well as some wine, and watched the swallows until it was time for bed.

Toledo: Cathedral, Hake, El Greco, and More

One of the castles viewable from Toledo. As we would discover, Spain is lousy with castle.

Toledo is one of Spain's most historically important cities. Geographically smack dab in the middle of the Iberian peninsula, it has been an important settlement since the time of the Romans, and was on several occasions capital of Castile and a place of paramount importance for the participants in the Reconquista. Toledo also served as a place of learning: Arab libraries were preserved here instead of burned when the Christians re-took the town, and for a time, Muslims, Jews, and Christians got along in relative peace in the already-old city. This of course couldn't last - the Jews and Muslims were expelled during the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, the court of Castile was moved away, and the city experienced a considerable decline in its importance. Today it's a beautiful, calm, and surprisingly un-touristed city, and it's difficult for the tourist to grasp its incredible importance in Spanish history from the face it presents today.



The sword of El Cid may be purchased in marzipan form.

Our first stop was the Santa Cruz Museum, located in the old Santa Cruz Hospital. The museum hosts a good collection of and exhibit on the work of El Greco, especially valuable since the actual El Greco museum is closed. It's located in a historic building that used to be (among other things) a nunnery and also features a killer view of the plains below the city. It's worth a look.


The Cathedral from the street.


Next we walked to Toledo Cathedral - a pleasant stroll through Toledo's impossibly narrow and cobblestoned streets, past hundreds of marzipan-shops and knife sellers, past t-shirt stands and extremely impressive cookie shops. I was surprised to see almost no tourists during our visit to Toledo - has the recession scared them away from Toledo specifically, does it not offer dancing dolphins and lobster buffets and paella feeds like the Costa Brava? Is it ever overrun entirely with tourists, do shipments of nuns come in from Chile or wherever, do companies hold sassy scavenger hunts in these eternal streets? You have to wonder. Come visit: you'll feel pleasantly alone.



Toledo Cathedral is an iconic structure in Spain, a region with a profusion (some might say embarassment) of cathedrals. The Mozarabic rite, instituted by Christians under Moorish rule, is still celebrated here, an interesting throwback from the days when the Moors decisively held the Peninsula. Begun in 1226 and finished in 1493, the Cathedral is considered the pinnacle of the Gothic style, and contains within its holding some astonishing works of art, antiques, and other valuables.



To be inside the church is in itself an experience - the lightly colored walls, the incredibly ornate ceiling, and the general aura of both light and incredible age within produce a potent combination. The weight of both ages and Spain's relationship with Catholicism can truly be felt here.





The Sacristy is perhaps the cathedral's biggest draw for the non-religious: the annex to the church contains incredible paintings and an interesting display of tapestries and priests vestments from *very* far back, including an Arab battle standard. El Greco, Van Dyck, Goya, Luis de Morales and other big-names are on display, in a rather sedate and delightfully faded environment as compared to some of the large museums.


The cathedral's Lion Door.


Another shot of same.

My favorite aspect of the cathedral is undoubtedly El Transparente, a Baroque altarpiece located in the relative middle of the cathdral. I never got the Jesus bug but this is an amazing piece of work - a host of writhing and life-like angles and cherubs rise up from the floor and towards the ceiling. A hole was cut here to allow light to pass onto the tabernacle and it's a hell of a spiritual effect - you stand in the exact right spot below the light, and look up, and you get the distinct sensation that you are looking into heaven. All this created to hide a skylight.

For lunch, we decided to return to La Abadia because the tapas had been so enjoyable. Since lunch is the main meal of the day in Spain, we opted to eat downstairs in the wine-cellar like interior room. In the powerful heat of a Toledo afternoon, it was an excellent place to be. One of the appeals of new Spanish cuisine to me is its daring and inventive nature. I enjoy Italian food and I appreciate the motive behind its passionate protection of its traditions. But Spanish food is less tied to the old school and old ways and is now praised around the world for its inventiveness - it's still the epicenter of molecular gastronomy and other incredible culinary innovations. Even small restaurants in small communities often feature extremely sophisticated food and plating choices in Spain, combined with excellent ingredients - the combination produces an incredible profusion of choices for the foodie traveler. Not to mention it's all a hell of a lot cheaper then Italy.



We started with the Degustación de Ensaladas (8.50). First salad was caesar with goat cheese and green tomato - delicious, slightly garlic-and-anchovy flavored. Liked the chewy strip of cheese on top as well. Second was octopus with mango, pomegranate, and citrus dressing - a nice and fresh example of Spain's long-term love affair with pulpo. Last was pulled chicken with sweet tomato confit over a bed of greens - not cloyingly sweet and very well done.



My main was the Lomo de Bacalo ($14.50), with confit of peppers and corn mash. Bacalo (cod) is Spain's fish of choice, consumed the country over and cooked in a dizzying variety of ways. Many Americans regard cod with suspicion - it being the favorite fish of nightmarish school canteens and fish-stick vendors - but cod is treated with respect and affection in Spain. The firm fish was cooked perfectly, and I particularly liked the tangle of blackened onions on top. The red pepper pistou was tasty as well, though I would have preferred more of it. The corn mush was non-descript.



My dad chose the the merluza (hake) al horno with clams (13.50), in a distinctive green onion sauce. A visually arresting dish, the flavor was also excellent - the combination of firm white fish, perfectly cooked little clams, and dense green onions was a pretty inspired one. A dish this green might be initially off-putting but the powerful onion flavor immediately justified (and made pleasing) the appearance.



My mom had a seafood skewer with squid and prawns (11.50), accompanied by house-made potato chips. This was delicious. Excellent Spanish prawns (the Spanish do a fiine prawn) with cleverly cooked squid - it was so tender that the standard and not always welcome squid chewiness had been eliminated. The seafood sauce was a nice and subtle accompaniment to the seafood. The house made chips were also excellent - Kettle Chips, watch your asses.

After lunch, we decided to visit the Torture Museum. The Inquisition,instituted during the reign of Isabella and Ferdinand, tormented and oppressed the entire peninsula under the standard of Catholicism, creating an aura of paranoia, scientific and intellectual stagnation, and terror - a collective disease that would not abate from the peninsula until modern times. Incidentally, the Inquisition also produced some bitching torture devices. The museum in Toledo seems to be set up in conjunction with Amnesty International, an international anti-torture organization, which is doubtless a good thing.



Some flails, for the always necessary utility of rending flesh from bones. These were of great utility when bringing order to seething prisons full of infidels, so the wall label told us.



A French iron maiden, or that is what they told us. The spikes are strategically placed to allow maximal access to the victims most sensitive regions. The Inquisition thought of everything!



Women inclined to talk too much would be fitted with these delightful iron masks, which would slowly starve the victim to death or kill them by infection - whatever came first. It's thought the masks also served as a healthy deterrent for uppity women - women with opinions weren't exactly popular in Inquisition era Spain (not that they were in most places, really, until the modern era).


Wrongdoers and/or Jews might be forced to wear this hood and cap, which would be marked with the particular details of their crime. They would be forced to wear the outfit until they died. Charming.


When they speak of Breaking Someone on the Wheel they are presumably talking about this beauty here. Insofar as I am aware the bones were not real.



The Inquisition was known for condemning someone and holding them for indefinite periods without telling them what they had done wrong. Imagine you are in that position: you are summoned from your hovel (kissing your children and goat goodbye,) appear before a stern and corpulent court, who stare you directly in the eye and consign you to punishment for something, you are led away - and they decide to slap you into one of these delightful hanging baskets, a sort of open-air decoration for horrendous medieval regimes. The baskets were brilliantly engineered to ensure the victim could never get any rest, for fear of falling through the bottom slats and smashing to death on the ground below - ensuring the condemned would remain entirely awake and conscious until vultures or starvation carried them off, all the while enduring the jeers and open-mouthed stares of the people who would pass below on their everyday (and free) activities. Almost enough to put me off my food. Well, almost.

We returned to the hotel and relaxed. Spain's heat is extremely similar to that of California: dry as hell, dusty as hell, and eminently reasonable when compared to the suicide and tropical-malaise inducing misery of, say, Rome or Mumbai. Spanish people take some pride in their hot summers and would occasionally comment to us, "It's so hot here, it's terribly hot, I bet you're not used to this." Wherein we would reply, with our own source of crappy-weather induced pride, "It gets hotter in Sacramento. " Which it does - of course, this kind of escalation of miserable weather can turn into the most asinine arguments known to man, can simply dive-bomb any sort of intellectual discussion - but that never happened. I suppose living in Mumbai, Yakutsk (Siberia) or Iraq might give you a healthy sense of comfort and pride in the reality that your weather truly *is* among the most horrid in the world.


For dinner, we decided to do tapas. Bar Ludena was supposed to have the best carcamusas in town but they were closed, the dogs, the disreputables (or they were taking advantage of Europe's incredibly humane vacation customs). We shrugged and decided to visit another tapas bar, the name of which I cannot recall at this time, but was strikingly decorated with paper-machie replicas of hams.



We ordered a smoked fish platter. Smoked fish is divine in Spain, as are most fish products if you get right down to it, and this was no exception - a sort of sashmi platter diluted through the Iberian peninsula. Great with plenty of dill, especially the salmon, always I love the salmon.



These are carcamusas, Toledo's typical pork-tomato-spices stew, and my is it good. Tender falling apart bits of pork in a piquant and resolutely Spanish sauce - gotta learn how to make this stuff. Order this a lot if you go to Toledo and you will be happy.




We shrugged and went to La Abadia one last time. Not too hungry - and hell, they gave us free tortilla anyway- we ordered one thing. Went for the table of ham and cheese, which in Spain is an involved and attractive affair. Iberian ham is butch, the flavor will knock you on your ass, it is not for everyone, but I happen to find it very appealing indeed, especially when served with the quince and saffron jelly that appears everywhere in Spain. Good manchego also can be a revelation (although so much crap manchego exists) - with marcon almonds, pig, and dried meat, divine. The tabla also had goat cheese with a crunchy caramelized crust and an uber rich sort of cheese soup- excellent bar snacks.


Town below Toledo's main hill at night.

Night time. We would drive to Avila the next day.