Life in Southern Spain – Part 2

October 30, 2013 So, it seems the unusual has become customary and, therefore, there is nothing of much interest to report. Could that be a sign that it is time to move on? Well, that is just what we did after one last day of relaxation, shopping, and tasting the specialties of southern Spain. After eight nights in Andalucia, we loaded our backpacks and walked down the steep cobblestone streets of Arcos de la Frontera for the last time. It was 7:30 am according to our watches, the streets were dark and no one was stirring. George drove us to Toledo, a perfectly preserved walled city perched high on a mountain, about 100 km south of Madrid. We arrived in time to explore the old town, rest a bit, and then hike up to the old town again for a wonderful dinner. As an added bonus, the waiter was Filipino so he and Rey could exchange stories. We witnessed an unfortunate event but were unable to help much when a fellow traveler sitting next to us fell in the floor in excruciating pain. She was travelling with her family and another person that we believe was the nanny. The nanny, thank goodness, spoke Spanish, so the nanny accompanied her to the hospital while the Dad and the children remained in the hotel trying to make a plan. She suffered from back spasms and she had obviously had this problem before but it still doesn’t make for much of a vacation and the children were quite nervous. George and I, running late the next morning, called the Mendozas to say we’d be tardy for breakfast. In a bit of a panic, they responded, “Oh no, we never received our wake up call.” We agreed to meet in 45 minutes. We turned on the television for the first time and found it confusing that the time on their news channel was an hour earlier than our watches. We called the front desk. No answer. The Mendozas received their wake-up call at about that same time. I checked the internet and it seems, even in our global society, that we can’t agree to change to daylight savings on the same week. Spain changed a week ahead of the US. We spent two days, two entire days, not realizing that the time had changed. We were walking to our car at 6:30 am, eating meals and going to bed earlier than we realized. I guess time really doesn’t matter when you are having a good time—unless you have a bus to catch!

After breakfast, (what else besides bread, bread, and bread –makes gluten free impossible), we found our way to the bus station quite easily. We boarded a bus for the one hour ride into Madrid and spend the day there. Exiting the bus station in Madrid was the most difficult part of the day. There were no maps and no tourist information booths. There was a subway but it didn’t appear to go into the city center. We finally found a kind lady selling subway tickets that explained to us in Spanish (luckily, we understood), where to catch the city bus and we were on our way! With only one day, we decided to take the hop-on, hop-off bus tour. Watching the weather forecast for the day would have been a smart thing to do. Record cold temperatures and we were on the top of an open double-decker bus. Brrrrr. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the boring English tour we listened to through our earphones, or maybe it was us but we found Madrid just to be OK. Should we give it another shot at another time? I don’t know. Maybe you can tell us your thoughts. We did see some beautiful architecture and heard a lot about Spanish history. If I knew more Spanish history, perhaps it would have been more interesting. We are all about food, as I’m sure you have noticed, and we did find a great plaza for lunch. We walked a lot and returned to Toledo without a problem. Our drive to Barcelona covered a lot of barren land and we are thinking the Moroccan camels could live quite well there. We returned our KIA at the airport with 3,000 more km than when we acquired it, and plan to explore Barcelona by foot. Believe it or not, we have been looking for a large department store for some time. We read an ugly blog that Wal-Mart type stores don’t exist in Spain and they want to keep it that way. We will be in search of Corte Ingles, described as a Macy’s type store that sells everything imaginable. We are thinking we should pick up a few things to accent our hiking clothes on the cruise home!