Month: October 2018

We’re thinking it is a good thing that our news sources have been limited. Our preferred news feed, Google News, doesn’t even work here because the Spanish newspapers have successfully sued to keep their content on their own sites. We stopped our newspaper delivery when we left Rochester so now we leaf through the Spanish newspapers in the coffee shops. They don’t follow the boy who would be king as closely and the world seems a little more stable.

We set the alarm for seven, an hour and a half before sunrise, so we were out on the streets of Leon in the dark looking for El Camino markers, the yellow arrows. It was a clumsy start but after three café con leche stops and some help from the locals we were out in the country.

We arrived in Villar de Mazarife in time for the menu del dia but the internet connection was was so weak we were unable to use our credit card. I tried to put a photo online and and it kept giving me error messages. The cord has almost been cut and I’m looking for the advantages. We wandered around town after dinner and found a building labeled “Casa Cultural” so we stuck our heads in. Men, all about our age, were sitting around tables in groups of four. They were playing cards and having a good time.

Does anyone fly to Madrid in the daytime? They must but we never have. We always leave near dinner time and the evening and night fly by as we go six time zones into the future. We arrive in early morning and always start with a café con leche in the airport café. A quick walk on the moving sidewalks takes us to the subway and with a few transfers we are coming up for air in the center of Madrid, la Puerta del Sol. I have photographed the dramatic view from the subway exit before but this time I photographed the stairs themselves, covered in an ad for Talavera.

Lack of sleep makes the first day especially dreamy, a mode that is especially suited to securing the local currency, swapping out our SIM cards for prepaid versions and buying a pocket knife, one with a corkscrew, a sacacorcho in Spanish. The last item we took care of on the sixth floor of Corte Ingles, an old fashioned department store similar to Sibley’s.

Back at our hotel in the Chueca district we tried to find a soccer game, Atletica was playing, but the station’s broadcasting rights were too rich for our place. We decided to go out and walk around and stopped for some Pimientos de Padron. Sometimes there is a hot one in the bunch but this was the hottest batch we have ever had. This promises to be a good trip.

Peggi “put up” or canned six quarts of jalapeños on our last day in Rochester. We left some nice looking eggplants on the vine and emailed our neighbor, on whose property we have our garden, that she could help herself to them. We managed to can or eat a bumper crop worth of tomatoes and we gave the last to Kathy, who drove us to the train station. We’ve been eating kale in every dish we make and we expect to find some still when we return.

I checked the status of yesterday’s train and found that it arrived in Penn Station one minute late. That was encouraging. You need a bit of encouragement before getting on a train in this country. Today the train was a half hour late getting into Rochester and we stopped outside town to let another train pass us. In Utica the conductor announced that we had an engine problem and would not be able to travel at full speed to Albany. We texted Duane that we would be late getting in. In a few days we will be in Spain where the trains run like clockwork.

Picasso said he paints his forms as he thinks of them, not as he sees them. Not to diminish the act of recording what you see but to emphasis the act of creation. Presenting what you think you see, or more dramatically, what you want to see seems a more noble concern. In 2018 this is a reason to carry a sketchbook with you.