The Texas Times Volume 26

Welcome to Volume 26 of The Texas Times! Yes, we're halfway through our third year in Kansas but old habits (traditions) die hard (not at all). This year wasn't the least bit interesting, but needs must ... so sit back, hold on, and try to stay awake.

Kids
Reagan is still living in Austin. His company has gone through a bunch of downsizing but he's still hanging on, doing his software engineering thing. If you're in Austin and looking for someone with three years of tip-top experience, though, please do let me know. He got a dog this year, so I'm including her picture here (as our first grandkid). Her name is Lola and she's paralyzed from the mid-section down. They have been very good for each other. She's the cover dog for a handicapped pet calendar for 2020 and you can follow her on Instagram here.

Hunter moved to Austin in spring -- after doing some serious snowman-building in Kansas -- to go through UT-Austin's Coding Bootcamp. He and Reagan live in the same apartment complex and it's good to know that they can at least hang out when they want. Hunter doesn't have a handicapped dog, but he has two (non-handicapped) guinea pigs. He's still looking for work in the web developer space so if you have leads I'd be verrrrrry happy to hear about them (as would he).

Hadley is a senior at A&M. She's a Communication major and a Business minor, and is graduating in May. She would love to work for the Association of Former Students (like a billion other people, I'm sure). She's been working for a PR company for the last several months, which seems to have been a good experience for her. I won't specifically beg you to hire her, but if you're in College Station or central Texas in general and need somebody who is good with people, I definitely can set you up with a terrific candidate!

Hollis turned 16 this year, so I now have the luxury  (for the first time since 1993) of never having to drive anyone anywhere. The highlight of his year probably was making All-State Chorus. He'll be going on some college visits this spring, and I suspect he'll end up back in Texas somewhere. He's a very bright dude and no trouble at all (knock on wood), and I'm not real fond of the idea of him leaving home. But of course it was the same with all of the other kids. Ah well. I've almost stopped wandering around the house thinking that I'm supposed to be doing something for somebody. Not entirely, but almost. It is a weird feeling for sure.

Paige and I are doing well. She has been getting up at 5 a.m. (!!!!!) to work out (!!!!!) every morning for the last six months or so. Those of you who know her will assume -- perhaps correctly -- that aliens have invaded her body. As of December 16, we've been married 30 years. Among other things, it's crazy to think that we're old enough to have been married for that long. I tell my students that the late 80s really weren't that long ago and of course they look at me like I have three heads. After all, Al Gore hadn't even invented the Internet back then. It's also crazy how easy the whole marriage thing has been. We almost had a bit of a crisis last month when I thought Paige said that she liked Jimmy Buffett, but thankfully I just mis-heard. (Seriously, just take a few seconds and imagine how you would feel if you found that out about your partner.) Anyway, things are still going well for us here at KU. Paige likes the people she works with a lot -- her administrative assistant and main fundraising sidekick are featured below -- and she has gotten a bunch done during her time as Dean. My research program has emerged from the black hole created by the Trinity Administrative Years and I'm enjoying being a regular faculty member again. My 5th-year PhD student just took a position at Oklahoma, my 2nd year student is awesome, and I'm having a very good time (of course) with the MAcc students.

Travel, Entertainment, and Other Random Stuff

Paige, Hollis, and I went to Spain in May / June. This is the first time we've taken anybody to Europe with us, but we cleared it with the other kids and they at least pretended not to mind. Because he did the Spanish immersion thing in Texas from Kindergarten on, Hollis is fluent and his accent is killer. So it was super-handy having him around. Spain had never been a big draw for me, but I have to say that I really enjoyed our time in Seville, Granada (my favorite), and Toledo (view of the cathedral from our apartment, below). Madrid was good, but the three smaller places were absolutely fabulous. If you missed my blog entries and wanna see what all we did, you can check the sidebar to the right (or elsewhere if they don't show up over there). Not sure what we'll do in 2020. Usually I've got it all worked out by now, but I truly have no idea. We shall see.

On the music front, 2019's biggest find is a literal hidden gem. No, I'm not talking about the guy playing guitar by himself in the Albayzin area of Granada (although he was quite good and quite hidden). I'm talking about Hannah Markley. She sings at our church. Paige talked Hannah into putting together a quick-and-dirty CD for our 30th anniversary, and it's one of the best gifts I've ever gotten. You can hear one of the tracks on my SoundCloud channel here. I'm hoping that she will be "discovered" at some point, because the world needs to hear this young lady sing. In terms of people you can actually find, all that I have to recommend this year are Mandolin Orange (here) and Phoebe Bridgers (here). I spent most of 2019 either listening to artists you already know about or hanging out at the UK 1940s Radio Network. One of my students stopped by one afternoon and commented "Wowwww ... that music is kinda old." Indeed it is. And you can get off my lawn, too.

Books ... well, I re-read a lot of early-to-mid 20th century stuff this year but the top new (to me) selections were All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, The Things They Carried, Stephen Ambrose's gigantic D-Day book, The Alhambra (by Washington Irving, mainly useful after you have visited the place), and everything Cormac McCarthy has written in the past 30 or so years. McCarthy is one of Reagan's favorite authors, so I thought I would give him a whirl. Good decision. Most of his stuff is rather dark but the writing is fantastic ... sort of like a less spare Hemingway (who is my favorite author) or a more accessible Faulkner (who I find borderline unreadable). I recommend you begin with All the Pretty Horses and proceed from there. The Book of the Year award, however, goes to David Martyn Lloyd-Jones's Studies on the Sermon on the Mount. The book contains 60 sermons the author delivered in the 1950s (I believe). Each of the sermons is about ten pages long, and the book is the single best thing I have ever read. Hands down. Period. The End. Shout out to Charles Leary for recommending it.

While we're on the topic of books, if you are looking for a children's gift book, you should pick up a copy of The Lost Words (which you can find here). I was just going to limit my reference to a hyperlink, but the concept of the book is so good -- and the book itself is so well-done -- that I decided to paste some info from the Amazon description below:

"In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary ― widely used in schools around the world ― was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these “lost words” included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions ― the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual ― became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. 

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a “spell book” that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book ― a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America."

The (over-sized) book is appropriate for kids of all ages. I've gone through it twice myself. Highly recommended.

Speaking of Lost Words, you may recall that last year I started a Prohibited Words List. The Prohibited Words List features words (1) that seem to have lost their meaning; and/or (2) that I find super-annoying. To quote last year's blog,

"The entries for 2019 are craft (breweries and distilleries), disruptive (as in disruptive business models), literally (which either means literally or not at all literally), and artisanal (as in artisanal literally everything)."

The entries for this year? I'm glad you asked. The first is "dialogue," which is anything involving a discussion where the party in charge is going to pretend to listen to what you have to say. Next is "optics." Apparently it is really sexy to say "I'm concerned about the optics" instead of "I wonder what people would think about this." Why? I don't know. Finally, I'm banning "myself." Almost nobody uses this word properly [Note: if it's not immediately following a preposition, there's a really good chance it's wrong]. As such, I think it's safest if we just eliminate the word from the language entirely. So ... to review ... if you're tempted to say something like "The optics of the dialogue really concerned John and myself," just please don't.

To close, I'm starting a new category for 2020 - Meme of the Year. I don't do social media (shocking) so I'm not exposed to many of these things. But we have a family chat that is ... well ... crazy active, and I also get things passed on to me from various other people. Anyway, my favorite for this year is inserted below. It's rather timely, given that we're in Christmas card season.

Annnnnd that's all for now. From our family to yours, I (we) hope that you have a happy Christmas, a terrific Hanukkah, a fabulous whatever else, and a safe and productive 2020.

God Bless,
Mike and Paige
mw0705@gmail.com
lpaigefields@gmail.com
1118 Brynwood Court
Lawrence, KS 66049

Granada and Toledo

On Day 7, we headed from Seville to Granada. Trains don’t run to Granada (which is completely bizarre, given the popularity of the Alhambra) and we didn’t really want to go by bus, so I hired a private driver. Traveling direct, it’s about a 3 ½ hour drive but we made two stops along the way. Our first stop was Ronda, which is the largest of the various small “white hill towns” in southern Spain. Ronda’s main claim to fame is its bridge, but it is also home to Spain’s first bullring and a cool church with access to the roof.

As another side trip, I also scheduled a stop at the El Refugio del Burrito. Although you might think this is a Mexican restaurant it’s actually Spain’s donkey sanctuary. If this stop surprises you, I’ll put you in the Doesn’t Know Paige Very Well box. I tried to enroll her as a Protector of her favorite donkey (Dante) last night, but their website is wonky … so at least at present, they are missing out. I’ll have to try to find a workaround in the near future. Anyway, the Donkey Sanctuary has probably 150 rescued animals on site and they met the primary Paige criteria of smelling like horses (donkeys) and being willing (many of them) to be petted.

We reached Granada in late afternoon. While Paige and Hollis hung out, I headed off to explore the Albaicin – the old Moorish area of town. Albaicin is Arabic for “bring bread crumbs if you want to make it out alive.” Honestly, this area makes Seville’s Jewish quarter seem like it is laid out on a grid. I have a good sense of direction, but I don’t know how one would navigate the Albaicin without a cell phone and Google maps. At 4 in the afternoon the lanes (one certainly can’t call them streets) were largely deserted but about half of the people I did come across had paper maps that they were turning in various directions trying to figure out where the heck they were. It’s a fascinating part of the city but I definitely understand why it is not recommended to fly solo there late at night. The picture below, which is one of my favorites, captures the quaint vibe as opposed to the edgy vibe. For dinner, we ate at a Moroccan place called Restaurant Arranyes (thanks, Laura) which bypassed the Mexican place in Seville for top restaurant honors on the trip.

The following morning, we went to the Granada Cathedral and the adjoining Royal Chapel. Although it’s nowhere near as imposing, I actually preferred the Granada Cathedral to the Seville Cathedral. Queen Isabella made Granada the capitol of Spain sometime after agreeing to sponsor Columbus (if I am remembering correctly), and she donated some impressive stuff to the cathedral. She and Ferdinand are buried in the Royal Chapel.

In the afternoon, we trekked up the hill to the Alhambra. The Alhambra is, I believe, the top attraction in all of Spain. It was home to Moorish sultans and such until the Reconquista, at which point Isabella and Ferdinand moved in. The Alhambra certainly lives up to its billing. The interior is very hard to get across in pictures and even harder to get across in words, so I would just say that if you come to Spain you definitely should come to Granada and see it. It was the inspiration for probably the most well-known piece of Spanish guitar music – Tarrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” – and Washington Irving (of Headless Horseman fame) crashed here for a while and wrote “Tales of the Alhambra” based on his experiences. I’m looking forward to reading it this summer. One final note on the Alhambra – if you plan to visit during tourist season, you need advance tickets. I got ours in February and when I checked (out of curiosity) in early April, they were sold out through mid-June.

On Day 9 we had another private car drive us the 3 ½ hours from Granada to Toledo. I had debated stopping in Consuegra (Don Quixote country, about 40 miles outside of Toledo) to see the castle and windmills, but didn’t think we would have enough to time to do that as well as the stuff I wanted to do in Toledo. The highway passes pretty close to the main photo-op, though, so we at least got a quick glimpse. Rather than taking a blurry picture from the car, I decided to just rely on the internet. While I’m thinking about it, our experience with the private driver company was very good. I think they operate in many different countries so you might give them a look if train service isn’t an option and if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of renting a car and driving in unfamiliar places. Driving outside of cities in Europe would be totally fine but dealing with in-town stuff in a lot of places would be a bit of a nightmare.

The main attraction of Toledo is the Toledo Cathedral. It’s an imposing hodgepodge of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles with a truly spectacular interior. Or at least that’s what I’m told. When I passed by on my initial recon of the city there were dozens upon dozens of official priest-looking people hanging around at the entrance wearing black robes and making merry. Then the camera went to slow-motion and drifted toward the sign at the ticket booth that read, “The Cathedral currently is closed to the public for liturgical acts. We apologize for the inconvenience.” No joke. I’m not entirely sure what these acts entailed, but I’m hoping it was like the NFL Combine or at least some type of field day thing. I looked for a bouncy castle where you could place bets on the shuttle run, egg walk, and potato sack races (one old, one young priest per sack), but had no luck. Seems like a wasted opportunity to raise money for the poor, but what do I know? Ah well. Although we were, indeed, “inconvenienced,” the view of the cathedral from the window of our apartment is not shabby at all.

After bouncing back from being inconvenienced, we did manage to spend a good bit of time exploring the city in addition to visiting the Visigoth Museum (small, virtually empty, and interesting) and the San Juan de los Reyes Monastery. The monastery was fabulous (because it’s a monastery), but now that I think about it, we were inconvenienced there as well. We saw the courtyard but the chapel was closed for a wedding. And then when we got to the Transito Synagogue and Jewish Museum, they had randomly decided to close early for the day. So that was pretty inconvenient. So I guess all in all, Toledo gets a D-minus for convenience. But it has a distinctly medieval flair to it and Paige said that she liked the town itself better than any other place we visited. I agree that it’s a charming place. Of course I also now wish that we had stopped in Consuegra.

So … that’s a wrap on our action-packed, exhausting (see Hollis above) 2019 summer trip. In addition to having a variety of new cultural experiences in a country we had never visited (and letting Hollis practice his Spanish for real), I also learned at least three new things. First, if you want coffee before work in Spain you either have to find a Starbucks with a total whip-cracking owner or get really lucky with a local shop. I found a couple of people that managed to drag themselves out of bed to get things rolling by 8:00, but the vast majority don’t open until at least 9:00 (!!!). Second, when most Americans think olive oil, most Americans think Italy. And most Americans are wrong. Spain produces double the olive oil that Italy produces. There are places on the highway around Granada where olive trees stretch in all directions, as far as the eye can see. Finally, despite having visited no telling how many cathedrals in my adult life, I finally realized this week that the Sacristy basically is the priests’ locker room. Not sure how I had missed that before, but now I know.

Cheers,
Mike

Seville

Given our general distaste for big cities, my strategy for our trip to Spain was to start big (Madrid) and go progressively smaller. As such, we spent the last three nights in Seville. With a population of 600,000+, Seville isn’t exactly “small” by American standards but it’s a lot smaller than the 3.2 million in Madrid proper (and 6+ million in the metro area). Overall, I would say that Seville is second only to Florence on my roster of favorite European cities.

Our apartment in Seville sits in a quiet corner literally adjacent to the western-most wall of the Real Alcazar (i.e, Royal Palace). Seriously, when we visited the Alcazar and were in a sort of isolated part overlooking what I believe is called the Poet’s Corner, we looked down and saw the front door of our apartment maybe 50 feet away. The apartment is also within probably 300 steps of the Seville Cathedral. So … if you’re considering Seville as a travel destination (highly recommended) and you’re looking to stay somewhere that is dead perfect, contact Alejandra here.

Anyway, after arriving via train (2 ½ easy hours from Madrid) on Sunday afternoon, we visited the Seville Cathedral and the Church of the Savior. The cathedral is the third-largest in Europe behind St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. Since it actually has the largest footprint of any cathedral, I’m not sure what “third-largest” covers. Volume? Height? Weight? Anyway, it’s big. The cathedral was begun in 1401 and finished in 1528. It has an 80-foot altarpiece (aka wall of gold), the tomb of Christopher Columbus, and was home – infamously – to the first (forced) public confession and punishment for heresy during the Inquisition.

The Church of the Savior is a couple blocks north of the Seville Cathedral. It has many of the statues that people parade through town on floats during Holy Week, which is a Very Big Thing. If you want more info, either Google “Semana Santa” or visit Laura’s blog on that topic here. Most importantly, en route to the Church of the Savior, Paige found her favorite thing about Spain. If you know Paige, you know that she is fond of order and symmetry. She particularly likes topiaries and uniform hedges. Yes, almost as much as she likes power-washing. As it turns out, Seville is a complete triumph where all of these things are concerned, as it seems like they wash the streets every night.

We started Day 2 with a long walk through the Triana neighborhood. Triana is on the other side of the river from Seville proper and used to be viewed as the wrong side of the tracks (bridge). Now, it’s just a more colorful part of town. Less touristy. More “real.” And home of possibly the best tiny patisserie on the planet – Dulceria Manu Jara. We then looped back around and spent some time meandering through Seville University and the surrounding area. The classrooms – one of which is pictured below – are slightly different from ours at KU. While Paige and Hollis joined the locals in the typical Siesta, I put in a full afternoon of completely random wandering. This time, the wandering included stumbling upon a terrific hole-in-the-wall men’s shop. The name of the shop is Cabello Sastreria and it’s on the order of Drake’s of London. So if you’re into that sort of thing and you have plans to come here, you’re welcome.

In the evening, we went to the Flamenco show (one of the billions available) that was recommended by the woman who owns our apartment. I appreciate and support Flamenco primarily for the reason that I appreciate and support bullfighting: tradition. More than anything, the performance drove home two points. First, I could never play the Flamenco style of guitar. Second, the only thing that would be more annoying than having a kid who is a drummer (mercifully, Hollis never practices) would be having a kid who is an aspiring Flamenco dancer. After the show, we had dinner at our apartment owner’s dad’s Mexican restaurant, La Cantina Mexicana. It was the best meal we’ve had in Spain.

On Day 3, we started with a visit to the Royal Alcazar. The Alcazar has been used by Spain’s rulers – including the Moors that ran things until the Catholics managed to conquer them – for over a thousand years. Instead of waiting in line for who knows how long, we had skip-the-queue tickets that also granted us semi-private access (15 people per 30 minutes) to 20 or so rooms that are still used by the current monarchs. As Paige told Hollis, nobody – and I do mean nobody – does advance vacation planning better than I do. The Alcazar was rebuilt in the 14th century after the Catholics took over, but a lot of the original Islamic design was kept intact. In places it looks like the kings throughout the years basically didn’t want to deal with redecorating and said, “fine, we’ll leave the floors and wall tiles and ceilings alone and make up for it by just hanging a bunch of European art and tapestries.” While the palace is interesting, the gardens are terrific … and, making The Boss happy, neatly manicured.

After lunch, I made a solo trip to the Museum of Belle Artes. This small museum primarily features 16th century religious art and satisfies my main criterion for making a museum truly enjoyable – basically no one was there. Then I did a few more miles of wandering in areas north of the primary tourist district before swinging back through the old Jewish quarter (Barrio Santa Cruz) again. The Jewish quarter typically is my favorite part of European cities and Seville’s is no exception. I find the random shops, incredibly tight quarters, and labyrinthian streets fascinating. I suspect the thousands of Sevillian Jews that were executed here both before and during the Inquisition and then the thousands more that subsequently were forced to live here would view the quaintness through an entirely different lens.

After a second run at paella for dinner (at a place that I can't really recommend), we ambled over to the Plaza de Espana, walked around quite a bit more, and finished -- as usual -- with ice cream. Although I'm walking at least 10-12 miles a day on this trip, the scales are going to have a field day when I get back.

Next stop(s) … Rondo, Granada, and Toledo.

Cheers,
Mike

Madrid

When Paige and I were planning our summer trip way back in February, we initially were thinking about going to Russia. I had done all of the initial recon, had planned and priced various things, and even had confirmed with my first-year PhD student that she and her husband would be cool with house-sitting, dog-sitting, small mammal-sitting, and Hollis-sitting for 10-12 days while we were gone. Hollis was fine with that, but then we got the idea that maybe it would be interesting to go somewhere that would appeal to him (Russia was NOT in that category).

As many of you know, Hollis was enrolled in Spanish Immersion programs from kindergarten through 8th grade. For many of those years, every subject he took (except English) was taught in Spanish, and the focus consistently was on proper grammar, execution, and accent. So … since he basically is fluent in Spanish, we thought he might like to go to Spain. We were correct. The only potential concern was what Reagan, Hunter, and Hadley would have to say about it. Every time Paige and I have gone overseas, we’ve left the kids at home. We’ve taken loads of family vacations, obviously, but trips to Europe have always been ours and ours alone. Since the other kids are older, live in Texas, and would have their own plans for the summer – and because we did, in fact, take everybody to Hawaii last summer – I was hoping that they would be OK with being abandoned. I’m not sure if I was right or if they are just extremely convincing liars, but either way we pushed ahead for a trip for three.

Our connecting flight from Kansas City was through Charlotte. Almost two hours after boarding in Charlotte we were still sitting at the gate due to problems with the plane’s software. After twice turning it off and on again (no joke), the pilots finally got us on our way to Madrid. The apartment we stayed in was dead quiet and ideally located – just a block south of Plaza del Sol – with easy access to all of the main sights in the city. On our first day, we visited the Royal Palace and the Almudena Cathedral. The palace supposedly is the “third best” in Europe, behind Versailles (France, obviously) and Schonbrunn (Austria). I would agree that it doesn’t match either of those places, but I have no idea what the people-who-make-such-lists would put at #4. The palace has 2800+ rooms but you’re only allowed to visit 20 of them. Most of the rooms are pretty spectacular, but you’ll have to take my word for it because Spain has a thing about prohibiting photography inside tourist attractions. I guess maybe their thinking is that if people aren’t allowed to take pictures, they’ll be more likely to buy a book in the gift shop. My sense is that they’re wrong. The Almudena Cathedral is impressive but very different from what you typically encounter in European cathedrals. Madrid isn’t really a “church city,” though, so perhaps that isn't too surprising.

On the morning of Day 2, we visited the Descalzas Royal Monastery. Although I am not Catholic, I am a big, big fan of monasteries. This one is accessible via guided tour only (which is just about my least favorite thing ever) and it’s a crapshoot as to whether you get an English tour or a Spanish tour. Ours was in Spanish (of course), but at least there were only about 15 other people in the group. During the tour, Hollis periodically translated insights while we spent a lot of time just looking at stuff. The main takeaways are that the monastery was founded in the 1500s and it currently houses 17 monks. Apparently there aren’t huge numbers of young men lining up to be monks these days. I understand the supply of nuns is even tighter. Anyway, this particular monastery is a very good way to spend an hour in Madrid.

After lunch at the Mercado de San Miguel -- a tightly packed indoor foodie free-for-all just off of Plaza Mayor – we headed to the Prado Museum via Metro to show Hollis how to navigate subway systems. Luckily, we left all of our metallic balloons in Kansas. The Prado is a gigantic deal for lovers of non-modern (that is a technical term) European art. I view myself as being pretty cultured in terms of both music and literature, but not remotely cultured when it comes to art. I know that I like Caravaggio, Delacroix, Bierstadt (thanks, Hunter), and – very broadly – stuff from the Renaissance period. Beyond that, my ignorance has virtually no bounds. As experienced art novices, our initial approach was to use the museum’s guide to find stuff we were supposed to appreciate. That ended up being too complicated, so we ended up walking around randomly for about an hour and a half, appreciating things – while defying no telling how many knowledgeable-art-person conventions – as we passed from room to room. One thing the Prado definitely has going for it is that just about all of the art actually looks like art. I strongly suspect that is not the case at the two modern art museums nearby.

Post-Prado, Paige and Hollis went back to the apartment and I hopped the Metro north (sans balloons) and spent about an hour with Yunah Park at her workshop. Yunah is from South Korea but moved to Spain 14 years ago to study guitar performance. After finishing her studies at the conservatory, she decided that she wanted to build classical guitars rather than play them. She was mentored initially by a couple of famous European builders and then apprenticed with a master builder in Madrid – Angel Benito Aguado. She has taken over his workshop as he is trending toward retirement and moving outside of the city. Yunah has been building guitars for seven years and currently is working on her 50th instrument. Her work is outstanding. I bought a guitar that she finished a few months ago and placed with a boutique shop in Madrid (most of her work is commissioned at this point). As vacation souvenirs go, it certainly takes the cake.

For dinner on Day 2 we went to Botin, which reportedly is the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the world (founded in 1725). Hemingway frequently went there both to eat and to write. In fact, for those of you who are familiar with his work, it’s the restaurant where Jake and Lady Brett go at the end of The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway is my favorite author, so it was kinda cool to be in that space. Anyway, Botin is famous for their roast suckling pig, so that’s what I got. Paige got chicken and Hollis got steak, and both were better than the pig. But, when in Rome (Madrid) …

After dinner we walked around a bunch more, got dessert at two different places, and then stopped in at a hat shop. I was talking to the proprietor and she was handling things semi-capably, but when we hit a point where I couldn’t get my question across, I remembered that Hollis was standing right there. So I asked him to step in. The hat lady was visibly relieved (and very surprised) and said something on the order of “thank heavens.” I told Hollis to tell her that the only reason we brought him to Spain was to serve as our translator, which she found highly amusing. Anyway, Hollis got to use his chops and I got a hat, so it was win-win.

Day 3 was a bit lighter, with just a bunch of random walking around in town and then a trip to Parque de El Capricho. This gigantic and absolutely lovely park was created by the Duchess of Osuna in the late 18th century.  At the time, it was part of her estate. The park is a 30-minute Metro ride northeast of the city center and typically is ignored even by locals. We were there on a Saturday afternoon and I doubt there were 150 people in the whole place. I would say that if you’re in Madrid for three days and want to get away from the general hustle and bustle, it’s definitely worth your time.

When we got back from the park, we took the advice of a former student of mine (whose fabulous travel blog is here) and went to dinner at a restaurant called Tandem. Hollis was able to broaden his almost non-existent food horizons with samplings of some sort of mystery meat appetizer, cod, ox tail cannelloni, and a curried dish with beef cheeks. We capped the evening by going to see West Side Story (en Espanol, of course). It was very well done and may have been Hollis’s favorite Madrid experience.

My favorite thing about Madrid? Well, as usual, I mainly enjoyed striking off in different directions, visiting random coffee shops, and just generally absorbing the feel of the place. One thing that always hits me when I am traveling and that struck me in particular over the last few days is that 13-year-old boys are annoying wherever you go. And finally, as a public service announcement I thought it might be worth mentioning that if you're ever having trouble finding something that you really do need, Madrid can hook you up.

Next stop, Seville.

Cheers,
Mike