Extremadura & Lisbon

I've blogged about our time in Paris, but not about our other recent excursion to Extremadura and Lisbon.  We had a visit from Zoë's mother.  Long time readers of the blog may remember Susan from my Christmastime post which told of the delightful time she had being stranded in the UK by the incompetence of Heathrow Airport, for five days of her 10-day vacation.  Her disappointment at missing so much time in Spain was assuaged by immediately making plans to come visit us in the spring.  Finally, the time came.  She connected through New York instead of London, and arrived without incident.

We had a choice here.  Either the four of us could spend a week in Madrid, cramped into our 2-bedroom apartment, or we could all go on a fun trip.  Which would you have chosen?  We rented a car and headed for southwest Spain, or "Extremadura," a region that everyone had said to us we had to see, and then for Lisbon just a bit farther beyond.

View of Trujillo & countryside

The trip was a reminder of the fact that you cannot drive more than two hours in Spain without coming across something fabulous (and passing a lot of really nice things along the way to boot).  First stop, Trujillo, a town frozen in time, just over three hours driving from Madrid.  This was where Francisco Pizarro (conqueror of Peru) and Francisco de Orellana (discoverer of the Amazon River) hailed from.  They and their conquistador buddies came back from the New World with their bags full of gold, and used it to build fancy palaces in their hometown.  And then nothing else of note happened in their hometown for the next four-hundred years, making Trujillo a place frozen in time.  The town has a modern section, but it is not too large, so that the historic quarter is still prominent.  When you climb up to the moorish castle at the top, you look out over gorgeous Extremaduran countryside, rather than modern suburbs.

We spent the night in nearby Cáceres, another 45 minutes down the road.  This town also produced conquistadores who enriched the place with New World loot, and also has a beautifully preserved historic center full of buildings from the sixteenth century.  We spent two nights there on a lovely hotel right on the plaza mayor, and had fun wandering through its old cobbled streets.

Afterwards, it was on to Portugal, and a stop at Évora, a town not far from the Spanish-Portuguese frontier.  We had eaten well in Extremadura, but the first truly memorable meal of the trip was here, at a tiny restaurant down a narrow street where we had arroz con pato magret and cordero asado.  The highlight of the town was its beautifully preserved Roman temple, as well as its white-washed streets.

Street in Lisbon's Baixa

That same day, we headed into Lisbon, where we spent three nights.  I wish I could say I loved Lisbon, a city that many of my friends rave about, but I didn't, and neither did Zoë.  Lisbon is shabby, and people who love it find romance in that shabbiness.  We just found shabbiness.  The city feels much more Latin American than any other city we've seen in Europe, but you pay for everything in euros.  We wandered around some of its neighborhoods, saw the castle, the monastery of the Jerónimos, and the Torre de Belém.  I did get a kick, however, from seeing the new Museo de Oriente, a museum of Asian art that features a nice exhibit on Portuguese-Asian art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It's in an old cod factory next to the police station in an industrial wharf area.  And we ate well, too, particularly, in our hotel restaurant, where we had dinner once out of sheer exhaustion.  Turns out that the restaurant of the Hotel Aviz is an old establishment where celebrities used to dine.  The meal was spectacular, and included memorable desserts.

The Roman theater in Mérida, on arts day for the kids.

After Lisbon, it was back to Extremadura, and to the city of Mérida.  Unlike Cáceres and Trujillo, Mérida is not know for its general ambience, but for its Roman ruins.  I must admit I was skeptical, having just been to Rome last December, but I was proven wrong.  The ruins are spectacular, and in two cases better than their equivalents in Rome.  There is a very well-preserved  Roman theater, and one of the best preserved circuses in the old Roman world.  The theater was actually in use when we visited, by a group of schoolkids from all over Extremadura who had come in for a performing arts day.  We watched a skit and a dance number before the heat got to us.  The museum of Roman art is spectacular, both for its collection and its architecture.  Large, well-preserved Roman mosaics are hung on walls, where they are visible from Once again, we ate very well, this time at the parador.  Susan had very much wanted to stay in one, so we decided to stay in Mérida's, an eighteenth century convent with a lovely patio. At dinner, we had the best técula mécula of the trip, as well as a fantastic plate of local cheeses.  Técula mécula is an Extremaduran dessert, a sort of almond pie, and it's fabulous.

After Mérida, it was back to Madrid. Susan went back to Boston, this time via Miami rather than London, and we went back to school and to work.

15-M

I couldn't let the week go by without blogging about what's going on in the Puerta del Sol.  You've probably seen on the news that a popular social movement burst onto the Spanish scene on the 15th of May.  It involves the occupation of public squares by protesters eager for political and social change.  The biggest of these demonstrations is here in Madrid, where a group has been camping out in the Puerta del Sol for just shy of two weeks.

At first, I was quite cynical about this.  I swung by the square and saw a bunch of hippies camping out in a square that was plastered with signs expressing noble-sounding but vague ideas.  I sympathized with their plight.  Here were a bunch of young people who do not see a future for themselves, given the current economic crisis.  Unemployment in Spain is at 21%, but among the young it's at 45%.  They're angry with all sorts of institutions, the government, the banks, the schools, for having failed them.  But I did not have any confidence that much would come of this. There are a lot of calls for change and reform, but no real clear message about what shape those reforms should take.  Will the people in charge listen?  Will they feel compelled to make changes?  What changes would those be?  I could not imagine an outcome to all this, other than the protestors eventually going home, leaving the Puerta del Sol a mess.

But today I went by again, with Zoë, after a meeting at Santiago's school, and I found myself inspired.  These people aren't just camping out in the square: they've built a functioning village there.  Under the tarps  one finds a series of well-marked out enclosures.  One is a lending library, the other a day-care center.  One provides emergency medical assistance, and another dispenses donated food to participants. There are meeting areas where different groups discuss their concerns.  Animal rights.  Constitutional reform.  Educational reform.  There are signs everywhere protesting everything, although the stranglehold that Spanish banks have on debtors figures most prominently, I thought.  In Spain, if you default on your mortgage, they foreclose on you, but you still owe the mortgage.  Isn't that incredible?

One sign in particular caught my eye.  It was a series of instructions for how one should behave in the event that the police decided to clear the square.  The instructions urged people to adopt a nonviolent response, to sit down, stay quiet, and send out a text message saying "Sol is being cleared.  Come support us."

Police are all around, but they are clearly bored.  The protestors are orderly, respectful, and completely nonviolent, giving them nothing to do.  While we were there, a guy with a megaphone asked people to avoid using the bathrooms in adjoining businesses, and instead go to those of business farther from the plaza.  Apparently, the business owners immediately around Sol complained that their facilities were being taxed by all the extra use, so the protestors are doing their best to accommodate them.  They've already cleared the spaces in front of businesses, so that customers can get in and out unimpeded, at the request of the owners.

It's really remarkable that something so well-organized has sprung up from a movement that has no visible central leadership.  I hope that when they finally tear the campground apart and go home (this Sunday, they say), they will remain organized, remain nonviolent, and find a way to be effective.

No, We Have not Been Raptured

 Ah, dear readers, too long have I ignored you!  Many of you were probably wondering what had happened to us.  Were they still in Europe?  Or did they go somewhere else?  Were they raptured?  If so, can I have their car? 


No, my friends, we were not taken up into the heavens.  The rapture is not until tomorrow, although I doubt very seriously that it will affect me anyway. I don't think Catholics get raptured, and I'm pretty sure bad ones certainly don't.  Secular Jews?  Not a prayer.  I think everyone can count on Zoë's blog to continue without interruption.  The closest thing to being taken up into the heavens that has happened to us was our ascent of the Eiffel Tower.  

View from the Eiffel Tower.

"But wait!"you might say, "the Eiffel Tower is not in Spain!"  And you would be right to raise this doubt, for as schoolchildren all across America can tell you, it is in London, and has a big clock on it.  Sadly, they would be wrong.  Now, the faithful among you will have by now deduced that we have recently traveled to Paris, while the more cynical might suspect that we really were just in King's Dominion, a Virginia theme park where they have a 1/4 sized replica of the Eiffel Tower.  As proof that we were in the genuine Eiffel Tower, I offer the photo on the right, taken from atop.  As you can see, there is not a roller coaster, parking lot, or cotton candy stand anywhere in sight.  Only buildings and smog, as one might expect from one of the world's most beautiful cities.


Now, if ascending the Eiffel Tower is anything like the rapture, all those faithful souls are in for a rude awakening.  Because ascending the Eiffel Tower is sheer hell.  You wait in line for 2.5 hours to get a ticket, then 45 minutes to get an elevator to the lower level, and then another 45 minutes for the elevator to the top level.  But we had to do it.  Zoë and I had been before, but this was the Kid's first time in Paris, and we couldn't NOT take him to the Eiffel Tower. In the end, Zoë enjoyed this the most, since it gave her a chance to really find out just how arthritic her toes had become over the years.  See how her smile just glows in this picture of her that I took on the elevator ride to the top?  

Don't worry, she was smiling on the inside.

 Luckily, the rest of our time in Paris was nothing whatsoever like our afternoon at the Eiffel Tower.   One highlight was the time we spent with Helen, a friend of mine from H.S. with whom I had recently reconnected via Facebook.  Hi Helen!  Another was Versailles, which we visited on a gorgeous Saturday.  We were taken away by the Petite Trianon, its adjoining gardens, and Marie Antoinette's little hamlet.  We loved the Musée de Cluny, and we found the Sainte Chapelle to be one of those rapturous spaces that is so beautiful that you never want to leave it. The Louvre was wonderful in its overwhelming splendor.  We threw ourselves into the Mona Lisa mosh pit, but preferred by another Leanardo portrait out in the hall that was going unnoticed by the crowds.  We ate very well, at prices similar to those charged in Madrid, and particularly enjoyed the patisserie.  Breakfast every day consisted of treats from the pastry and bread shop on the ground floor of the apartment building where we had rented our tiny but stylish one-bedroom.  Just a few blocks from the Louvre. 


The surprise treat, however, was the Musée de la Musique.  We figured the Kid would enjoy this place, but were surprised to find out that we all loved it.  Five floors take you through the history of western music since 1500, and another gives you a very quick look at nonwestern music.  Each floor features collections of gorgeous musical instruments, but what makes the place really worth the trip is the audio guide, included in the admission.  Not only does it give you the explanations that one usually gets in museum audio guides, but it also gives you musical selections performed on the instruments in the cases.  The whole museum comes to life as you stroll around listening to a harpsichord here, a lute there.  You get rapturous selections from operas in front of dioramas of famous opera houses, and pieces by great composers in front of exhibits dedicated to them.  We kind of had to rush through, but Santiago made us promise that one day we would return to Paris with enough time to listen to each and every single selection in the entire museum.  I said yes, but secretly thought that might be an Eiffel Tower experience all over again.


There was one other Eiffel Tower experience, but I will have to leave it to Zoë to tell you about it.  Only she and the Kid suffered through it, while I gave a lecture at the "Centre Alexandre Koyré de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales et le Centre National de Recherche Scientifique." Some of you may know it better as the Centre Alexandre Koyré of the EHESS/CNRS.  Zoë and the Kid decided to push the physical limits of tourism, to their great regret, while I shared ideas with a rapt group of historians.


Those of you who'd like to know more about our time in Paris can poke around my Ricardo's Paris Google Map.  As for those of you expecting to get raptured tomorrow, wear comfy shoes.