Notes from Spain

8 May 2012

BRIBES ALL ROUND

Up at 0600. Although we are packed it still takes two hours to get ourselves ready for the road. Jones prepares the room for the arrival in a few days of Jill and Barry. We bribe the dogs with meaty bones. Then we slip away.

Our destination is the Spanish city of Caceres. I pause to phone Honda in the hope that the new GPS disks I’ve ordered may have arrived. But the Parts Department does not answer. My current disks are 5 years old and they show their age on new Portuguese roads when we appear to be driving through the fields.

It's five hours to Caceres. The Spanish roads are impressive - immaculate double highways without a crack. Most drivers stick to the 120kph limit, which feels slow. Numerous signs give warning of police radar controls “for your security”. I set the cruise control and concentrate on staying awake.

Vast plains stretch away to the horizon. There’s little traffic. Jones tries to snap a road warning in incomprehensible Basque but it switches to Spanish as she clicks. We arrive in Caceres mid-afternoon. Problem! our route is barred by road-works. I phone the hotel. The receptionist doesn’t understand my English. We find a parking garage and then trek back to the hotel over the hill. This proves to be the long route as the the parking garage is just around the corner from the hotel. Return to fetch our bags, then on foot into the old city.

First stop is for a beer (Jones prefers white wine) at one of the numerous bars on the great central square, the Plaza Mayor. Few people are about. The shops are closed; in Spain they generally open from 9 to 2 and again from 5 till 9. Tourist info on the far side of the square directs us to the best museums and churches.

At the main museum, few attendants are in evidence. A Murillo on the walls is ours for the taking. All information is in Spanish only, much of which we can make out, although we understand nothing of the rapid-fire conversations around us. Beneath the museum is a great ancient cistern whose water lies clear and cold.

THE AUSSIES

At 1700 crowds appear as if by magic. Apart from one Australian couple whom we encounter, we hear no English. There are lots of tourists but they're Spanish. Our hotel – a smart one – offers 15 TV channels, all in Spanish. If it’s to be the European city of culture in 2016 Caceres will have to pull up its international socks.

We sup at a table on the square. Children run noisily around while parents chat. Swallows/swifts swoop above us. Storks occupy all the high points. Life seems normal. There's no sign that Spain is in crisis.

9 May 2012

Leaving Caceres is even harder than arriving. Lots of u-turns and doubling backs. Finally we discover the route out. Salamanca is three hours away on an immaculate double road. The GPS often shows us travelling in the middle of nowhere.

But it leads us faithfully through suburbs of Salamanca to our hotel in the old quarter. Beside the hotel are two cathedrals, one dating back to the 12th century and one to the 15th.

Inside these huge buildings, it’s cold. Near the altar tiny men are clambering up spider-webs of scaffolding to reach a statue on the wall. It’s hard to imagine how ancient scaffolding reached three times as high to the roof.

We wander down the main avenue of the old quarter, past shops, bars, restaurants with pavement tables and chattering crowds to the plaza mayor, the main square. This is filled with kiosks for a book fair, to Jones great disappointment, as it ruins the aspect of the great open square. We take a table for refreshments and to consult our maps.

Galleries and museums are closed till 5. So we go for a long walk around the old city. A fine Roman bridge looks as good as the day it was built.

At 5 the doors to Casa Lis (the Museum of new art and art deco) open. It’s brilliant, especially in its displays of Lalique and Emile Galle glass.

CASA LIS, LIT UP

90 minutes speeds away, although I do spend some of them snoozing in a chair in front of a video display. At the hotel Jones enjoys her second bath in two days. I do battle with the hotel wifi.

10 May 2012

We squeeze out of the underground parking. The hotel receptionist had sketched the route out of the city on a map but we soon get hopelessly lost. The GPS is equally confused. At last we find our way out of the city. I stop at a Honda garage in the hope of acquiring new disks for the GPS but there isn’t a soul in the showroom and the two mechanics around the back ignore me.

So we head north. It’s 5 hours to Bilbao, allowing for a couple of stops. We encounter the first toll road of our trip, nearly 20 euros. Ouch. Old Bilbao is a nightmare for visiting drivers. There’s nowhere to stop or park. Round and round we go, over one bridge and back over another. Several phone calls to the woman in charge of our apartment prove futile. Then we find an underground car park and walk.

Our lodgings are up a crowded pedestrian walkway in the oldest part of town. Temps up in low 30s and we’re both wet with perspiration. Oihana meets us at the top of the stairs and checks us in to a small, modern apartment, one of half a dozen. The furniture is minimalist, there is no crockery, cutlery, air conditioning or fan – and no English on TV. But Jones has brought most of what we need, the place is comfy and central and the double bed is superb.

In the pedestrian walkway, some kind of publicity mock-wedding is being filmed. The crowds ignore it. I answer the front door bell, which is ringing incessantly. It’s a desperate English visitor, who has returned to fetch his suitcases but can't get in and is deeply grateful for my assistance. Later I see that I have a mention on TripAdvisor for my kindness. Jones sits at our first floor balcony watching the passing show. Nobody looks up. The flow of people is constant; so is the hubbub.

All around us are draped the colours of Bilbao’s football team, the Athletic Club, which has just been defeated by Madrid Athletic in the final of the Europa Cup. The fans are downcast, although you wouldn’t know it from the noise.

We take refreshments on a nearby square and then nip into several of the small shops – there are dozens of them all around us – for supper groceries. Between the Chinese shop, the organic shop and the yoghurt shop, we obtain all we need. After supper in our apartment we go walking along the river. It’s a big river but there are no boats to be seen on it. Why not, we wonder.

11 May 2012

We wallk up the river to the Guggenheim. It’s cloudy and much cooler with a threat of rain. There is one single tourist boat to be seen, tied up at its quay on river. An open air café beside the Guggenheim serves us coffee. A ginger-head who looks like I used to is talking to a pretty girl. Next door an obese woman stuffs her mouth with cake before lighting up a fag.

The museum is huge and quite staggering, a vast, silver, multi-hulled ship of a building. It takes us 20 mins to find the entrance, which entails climbing a long stepped ramp up one side. We are impressed by a giant flower-terrier outside the museum. It's by Jeff Koons, Jones explains. I nod intelligently.

I am ambushed by several schoolboys who have obviously been set the task of interviewing an English visitor.

Why have I come and what do I think of the museum? What is my favourite sport and what is my name. I answer all their questions as truthfully and helpfully as I can. My chief inquisitor’s English is not bad although he has to repeat several of his questions. A second group of schoolboys tries the same escapade but the main questioner retreats in fits of embarrassed laughter.

We spend the rest of the day inside the museum. It’s a strange experience. The building itself, all curves and angles, is stupendous. For this alone Bilbao is worth a visit. But we are underwhelmed by many of the works of installation art. We have a sense that the artists have tried too hard to be original, to be different, to break away, to use new materials.

They take themselves so seriously, orthodox in trying to say something new, to break the mould. The recorded explanations of their works lose themselves in shrubberies of flowery metaphor. We come away with a sense of hype. Most of them are too pretentious for us. Or maybe we are too ignorant.

It’s a long walk back to the apartment through the city centre. The buildings are most attractive, mainly low rise and many in an art nouveau style. There are lots of beggars on the street, and musicians playing for their supper. Everywhere there are people walking dogs, and lots of young families with babies. In the alleys black hawkers stand guard over fake fashion handbags in which the public show no interest.

After supper we walk back up river to see the Guggenheim lit up. When we
arrive the museum is still in shadow on the far side of the river but suddenly flames spurt up in front of it from pipes in ground, one of the more colourful works of installation art.

12 May

STRANGE APARTMENTS

We set out for the market a mile away. The building is attractive but there's little to see inside, other than lots of people buying groceries. Stop for coffee at one of the numerous cafes in the old quarter. As we leave, a bulldog on a lead takes a lunge at me. I manage to hop out of the way. The lady owner restrains her animal far too late.

We carry on to the Basque Museum. One part of the Basque country is known as Biscaya (or Bizkaya. It occurs to us that this is where the Bay of Biscay got its name. The most famous exhibit in the museum is a stone pig with a circular disc between its legs. Although there are numerous stone pigs to be found, dating back to a period before the Romans arrived, this is the only one of its kind. The museum is particularly proud of it.

In the afternoon we walk back to town to visit the Museum of Fine Arts. This houses a pleasing collection of paintings and other objects dating back nearly a thousand years. We are most impressed with the contents of its galleries. I tell the receptionist how much we like the collection. The Guggenheim has a stunning exterior but we think the Fine Arts Museum has more to offer. She's delighted to hear it. Back to the apartment, via a grocery shop, to sup and pack. We have already established with the Tourist Info office across the road how best to get out of the city.

Letter from Espargal, 17 of 2012

Jones says that she is getting that sinking feeling, that sense of trying to ascend a speedy down-escalator. She always gets this feeling before we go on holiday. That’s probably because she prepares an ambitious to-do list and then finds both that she’s forgotten several items and that circumstances have conspired against her.

For instance, she returned glum from her waifs and strays run on Wednesday evening with the news that Maggie had gone walk-about. Maggie, mother of our puppy, normally spends her life at the end of a chain guarding the ramp that leads to Joachim’s garage. Joachim disclosed that Maggie’s chain had come loose and that his dog had disappeared that morning into the bush, still dragging the chain. He had gone looking for her – in vain.

Jones promptly started hunting for Maggie herself but had to cut her search short as we were committed to join friends at an early evening cinema show – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (quite good fun with a sharp script, as long as you don’t mind improbable outcomes and predictable endings). Happily, a phone call to Joachim the following morning brought news that Maggie and chain had arrived back the previous night, saving us hours of bush-combing. We couldn’t bear to think of her trapped somewhere.

As I write, Jones is preparing the guest room for our house-sitters, who are due down on Sunday morning.

A loud Jonesian shriek had me hastening to the upstairs guard-rail, where I gathered that Mary had leapt on to the newly ironed sheet that Barbara was tucking in to the bed. Much as she loves our animals, my wife finds her patience much tried by them especially when, as today, puppy chews up her orchid. Old Mother Hubbard comes to mind, except that in this house the pups chew up the shoes as well.

As mentioned, we are preparing to go on holiday. We depart on our travels this coming Tuesday, motoring up through Spain to Bilbao over three days and then making a leisurely loop back through northern Spain to Lisbon before flying to the Azores for a week.

Since last I wrote, I have returned from a delightful week with family in Canada. I wondered during the flight home whether customs officials would find it curious that I was carrying two computers. The officials at Faro airport take a particular interest in passengers who begin their journeys outside of Europe, a fact they discern from the baggage tags. In the event, they pounced on a passenger just ahead of me, an American woman who had sat near me on the flight from Frankfurt.

I heard her answering their questions with a nervous, high-pitched “O Yeah” as I went through into the terminal. I hope she had nothing to declare.

I was interested to note that during my brief absence Faro airport had reopened the eastern section of the passenger terminal that was badly damaged during a storm last October. Some areas were still curtained off for further repairs. Beyond the terminal the airport is a heaving mass of construction as car-parks are extended and new buildings, including a hotel, are erected.

At home, after an hysterical welcome from the dogs, I found Llewellyn and Lucia, as well as the latter’s 18 year-old niece, Kelsey, who had recently arrived from Australia to spend a gap-year in London. The trio had enjoyed the better part of a week relaxing in the Algarve –a favourite destination – both in Espargal and at a holiday island cottage. They had two more days with us before returning to the UK.

While I was away, Barbara took the dogs into the park twice a day for exercise and entertainment - theirs. She induced some of them to run around by throwing a ball for them to chase. I thought this a fine idea and, on my return, I tried the same thing.

Ono – our aging top dog – decided to join in and was outraged when young Russ got the ball. Ono promptly (and foolishly) piled into Russ for the first real fracas of its kind. Russ is twice his weight and, while normally the most amicable of dogs, was pissed off at the unprovoked assault. It took some effort to separate the combatants, especially as the rest of the pack were keen to join in. Fortunately, no harm was done, except perhaps for the ego of Ono, whose waning powers bode ill for his premier status.

Dogs, as so often, seem to worm their way willy nilly into my blog. While out shopping we had a call from an English neighbour to say that the two mountain dog bitches belonging to Silvia, a Portuguese neighbour, had escaped and were frolicking around the village square. Because Silvia works, I phoned her dad who lives nearby to report their absence.

Dad hastened to the village square where he failed to find his daughter’s dogs because these (it emerged subsequently) were returning home another way, taking Farmer Faisca’s rooster hostage en route – with Farmer Faisca hotfoot in pursuit. At some point, the dogs released the rooster (seemingly unharmed) and were reintroduced to their electric-fence-protected grounds. I wish that I were able to illustrate this account but I regret that, like me, you have to picture these events for yourself.

I had hoped some time this week to run the scarifier through our fields, which are knee deep in (lovely) wild flowers and (unlovely) weeds. But with showers most days, to say nothing of distractions, the opportunity hasn’t arisen. The showers have been welcome, even if Jones has found it necessary to mop the living floor at least twice a day to get rid of the inevitable paw-prints. We have picked and eaten those of our beans that survived the four-month drought that preceded the wet weather. Very good they were too, as always, however diminished.

In-between times I have been getting to grips with my iPad, which continues to delight me. The only problem I faced was trying to persuade it that I don’t live in Canada as it continued to insist that I include a Canadian province in my Portuguese address when I tried to order items online. In the end, I restored it to its factory settings and began again, which did the trick. I have downloaded a couple of books and the BBC iPlayer app as well as taking out a year’s subscription to the BBC TV library.

Letter from Calgary

I am in Calgary where I am being seduced by the iPad and catching up with my Canadian family. Inevitably, this is going to be a domestic blog and non-family readers will readily be forgiven for abandoning it at this early stage.

My journey began last weekend with a Saturday flight from Faro to Frankfurt and an overnight stay at an hotel on the fringes of the airport. I mention this only to justify this attempted picture of a large owl (you have to look closely) abandoning a tree near the hotel as I tried to photograph it.

On the Sunday I flew to Calgary, where I was very pleased to be met by my brother Kevin and his wife Ann. This gave me my first opportunity to admire his (relatively) new 6.3L Mercedes AMG which he likes a great deal and I rather liked as well. Like the rest of their family, my hosts are both high-tech and seriously into vehicles of every shape and size, of which (inevitably) more later.

ANN & DAUGHTER-IN-LAW MINDY....... All the talk on my arrival was of the election for a new provincial government the following day by the good people of Alberta. The only question was whether the incumbent Progressive Conservatives would turn out enough supporters to defeat the challenge from the new, even more conservative Wild Rose party - which they did. This is not a part of the world much given to liberal views.

MEGAN ON TRACTOR....... More importantly, that was the day that I was introduced to the iPad. Forgive me! Those of you familiar with the device will marvel at my previous ignorance; those still unfamiliar are hardly likely to be interested. But this is the risk I must run. While I had been well aware of the iPad’s existence and popularity, I had never seriously contemplated getting one because I like to touch-type on a real keyboard. Well! I’m won over.

ANN, SARAH & GIRLS....... To PC users like me, the versatility, immediacy and screen quality of this tablet are a wonder to behold. There’s no waiting around for the computer to boot up; open the leather jacket and you can instantly start surfing. I’m hooked – and I suspect that even my technophobic wife will be impressed. Not that I’m abandoning my Sony Vaio travelling companion; for serious typing or file processing it can’t be beaten. But for most other functions, the iPad leaves it in the dust. Little wonder that Apple has doubled its profits this past quarter.

SUPPER WITH AL & CO....... However, all this is incidental. The real aim of my visit was merely to hang out and catch up with family. Family are all located within an easy ride of Kevin and Ann’s house in a newish suburb on the southern edge of Calgary. Nearest – in fact within walking distance - are Alan and Sarah and their four young children.

Since my last visit they had moved from a lovely house into a truly splendid home overlooking a lake. The lake, like most of the city’s lakes, had been constructed by developers to attract occupants to the surrounding houses. But a lake’s a lake, whatever its origins and you can't beat it for a view.

The house, a mansion really, is magnificent and had been beautifully and expensively finished by the previous occupant who, I understand, ran into financial difficulties. Alan must have used his realtor skills in acquiring it.

After being introduced to the children (Rachel [6 and bouncy], Esther [5 and charming] Juliet [18mts and serious about food] and baby Christian I was taken on a tour. My admiration was entirely sincere. What a stunning home!

The garage houses Alan’s Merc and Sarah’s long-wheelbase Cadillac SUV, just about the only vehicle big enough - as he explained - to take the four child-seats and kit that are essential to family outing. Not much further away – perhaps 15 minutes – live Mark and Mindy and their three children (Conner 13, Ethan 5 and Megan 2). As it happens, they too have moved since my last visit – with Alan’s assistance - to a large and beautiful home also overlooking a lake, quite a big one.

I’m in danger of overdoing the superlatives. Such lakeside houses are much sought after and built to attract upmarket buyers. Each comes with a small pier to take kayaks and dinghies. In winter the lake offers ice fishing, skating and hockey. All year round it offers a wonderful outlook. Mindy says she’s never moving again and it’s not hard to understand why.

There had been other noticeable changes since last I’d seen them. Conner was mature beyond his years and a pleasure to converse with on a range of subjects; Ethan appreciated my efforts to read his Chukka Chukka Boom Boom (if I remember correctly) book about letters of the alphabet ascending the coconut tree, and Megan (who was new to me) was a hoot - an athletic, expressive, delightful little girl.

MEGAN & ETHAN........ We went for an evening stroll with the family dogs, big Louie (a pup last time round) and Bailey, who complete the family line-up. Mark, a pilot like his wife, is teaching aviation at college; Mindy has taken time off to raise their family. She too had acquired a vast vehicle to move the children about; but then this is a part of the world where vast vehicles, like large houses, are pretty much taken for granted.

Speaking of which, we had occasion to visit the warehouse in Calgary where the family keep vehicles that are not immediately required. These include a tractor, several trailers, a couple of quad-bikes and a glorious Airstream caravan, with which Kevin and Ann hope to tour those parts of North America

– they want to visit Alaska - that are not best suited to their motorhome. I regret that I was not able to see the motorhome, which they had left behind in Palm Springs, their winter base. It was a relief to find Penny (seemingly unchanged) and Mike (now sprouting a few senatorial grey hairs) in a familiar house although it had been extended to create an extra garage and more spacious rooms.

Jackson (9) had shot up and was clearly following his 2-metre tall father skywards. Wyatt (nearly 7) still regarded strangers quizzically before coming out with his reflective observations.

Gone was the winter ice-rink that had occupied the back garden but I gathered that both boys had become pretty expert skaters since last I had watched them in action. And they were certainly dab hands at video games. We spent my last evening with them while Mike and Penny took themselves off to a function. Mark, Mindy and co were also present. We chatted as Batman chased Superman or similar around the house, returning to mum for occasional costume repairs.