June 8 to 10—'Snake Snake, Fish Fish' and a Couple of Working Days Near Home

Dear Family and Friends,

Friday, Day 25, Martha awoke, dedicated to spending as much of the day as possible working on her book. Dani had put together a walking itinerary for the day. After having gone through the Lonely Planet to start checking off the tasks that we had completed, she developed a four mile hike through some of the local parks with the intention of leaving Martha plenty of time to work on her book in the evening. We considered it a ‘Mystery Walk’ since Martha did not know our ultimate destination. Both Martha and Dani experienced ‘Mystery Rides’ with their parents growing up, so the walk was much in the same spirit as when we and our brothers would be packed in the car … to end up at the Chipmunks’ Live Show or in Atlanta unexpectedly.

As we explored the parks, we found ourselves once again covering new territory, below the viaduct, up and down stairs, by old stuff and new stuff. A completely enclosed park below the Catedral Almudena contained one of the oldest walls in the city, The Arabic Wall; the park was recently dedicated to Emir Muhammad I, who was instrumental in the early settling of the village of Mayrit, as they called what is now Madrid.

Down the hill and around the corner, we entered into the Campo del Moro, where the Moorish army bunkered down in combat as they tried to get their village back from the Christian king, Alfonso VI, who had taken Madrid and Toledo from the Muslim population in the 11th century. Martha saw a pretty peacock and stepped closer to see it, only to disrupt it from its shady spot and send it towards the main area where people arrive in the park. There, it fluffed its feathers and turned round and round, showing its front, its rear, its splendor in defense or in unrequited love. Who knows with such bird brains? We could here inundate you with the gazillion up-close photos that we took of this magnificent creature, but will instead show you 'the view less photographed,' here taken by Dani to show that, in fact, other photographers were focused on the other, more colorful side!

We walked on, finding great pathways between trees where ducks were hiding or rocks had formed neat hideaways and escape paths with questionable ‘round the corner’ destinations hidden by ivy and overhanging brush. As we turned to complete the last quarter of the pathway around the outskirts of this park, which was directly below the Palace Real, we came upon the third and the smallest of the Rosaledas that we have yet found in Madrid. We also ran into our destiny for the rest of the day—two American girls: Nicole from Michigan and Joy from California (but originally from Thailand). We started to recommend the other rose gardens to them and quickly learned that the two girls had no guidebook and had been wandering aimlessly most of the day. We talked a short while about their year studying in London, which was about to come to a close. Tomorrow they would go to Barcelona for five days on the beach (a trip that Nicole was VERY much looking forward to enjoying) before heading back to London for five days. Then, it would be back to the states for the flat-mates, returning to their much-missed families and their futures in psychology (for Nicole) and biochem (for Joy) … their final years at school and then on to grad school that each of them, most likely.

Dani told them about the eventual aim of our Mystery Walk while Martha danced around with her fingers in her ears, “LA la LA”ing so as not to spoil the plan. The girls agreed that their budget-conscious plans of continuing to wander aimlessly not knowing what they were looking at might be better turned into spending time with two women who know the language and who had spent the last several weeks learning the history and location of certain areas of the city. And who were also on a budget! So, we joined forces as traveling strangers often do, and headed out of the park and farther North towards the day’s destination.

We passed by whatever Dani had planned as we saw that a carnival was setting up and were curious about the food and rides and whether our ‘destination’ might end up to be among the fair grounds instead of outside in the buildings nearby. We smelled the battered, fried fair foods, looked at the rides with “Chicago Bulls” and “Miami Forever” decorations that revealed their origins, and discussed Nicole’s difficulties with being vegetarian in the British and Spanish culinary cultures. Finally, we exited and headed back towards our free entrance destination: Ermita de San Antonio de Florida, where Goya is buried and where one of his finest frescos (of the miracle of San Antonio who raised a slain boy to save a man who was wrongly accused) is left in-tact and recently rejuvenated in 2003.

Martha loved looking at the ceilings of humans surrounded by cherubim, imagining the pain-staking work of having to hold one’s hands above the head to work on such ceiling pieces for so many hours on end. It was neat to see the care taken in the restoration and that counter-cultural stance that Goya took in creating a scene where Man was closer to God (ie, higher to the ceiling and surrounded by angels on lower levels) than the Angels, which was contrary to the trends of the era when the paintings were created. And so, we managed to ensure that the two American students saw some art while in such an art-rich country!

Next, we took them to La Rosaleda in the Parque Oeste (where Martha and Dani recently ended their trip to Casa de Campo), the largest and most-frequented of the rose gardens in Madrid. We let the girls loose to explore the beautiful textures, smells, and colors of the roses—hoping that the flowers would not affect Joy’s allergy sensitivities too much—while we sat on the sidelines, Martha playing cards and Dani putting together some notes about Barcelona for them for the next five days of their Spain adventure. After a good while of stopping to enjoy the depth and variety of the rose garden, the quad headed up the hill, just in time to grab some refreshments and to catch the closing of the Templo de Debod (bummer). No worries, as we caught some photos around the temple, told the girls of the significance of the temple’s presence in Madrid, and brought them behind the structure to a grand view of the Western city and of the Palacio and Catedral, which they had passed by but not known their significance. At a local supermarket, we showed the young duo the joys of buying wine by the box and other items from the local grocer as a fine way to reduce costs in foreign lands!

We chilled near el Prado in one of the nearby parks before ending up at 100 Montaditos, a sandwich shop with 100 different mini-bocadillos of various types (including fare for the vegetarian among us). We sat in Plaza Mayor to enjoy our sandwiches, some music from a maestro playing the keyboard, and the opportunity to take photos of ourselves and for others. Next, we journeyed to see the crowds gathered in Plaza de Santa Ana, one of the major centers of nightlife town, and finally walked the duo home before heading towards our own home. So much for Martha working late into the night on her book!

We really enjoyed spending the afternoon with Joy and Nicole, and hope that it works out that we can visit with Joy's mom while we're in Bangkok. Please do get in touch, Ladies! In the meantime, all you readers should know that the title of this blog posting comes from Joy's mom's discussion with Joy's ex-boyfriend while he was visiting with her in Phuket. When asked if she knew much English, she replied, 'snake snake, fish fish,' completely confusing the young man in its direct translation of a Thai expression meaning 'a little of this, a little of that'!

Saturday, June 9, we stayed home predominantly. (Martha says, 'Just so that I don't have to write much for the blog! HA!') Martha posted on the blog while Dani worked on our next-steps and napped in the afternoon heat during the day. At night, we took a ‘short’ walk, just around the corner to the Iglesia San Isidro, which Dani had read is splendidly lit at night. Of course, we managed to take every turn except the needed ones, taking nighttime photos of the Plaza de Toledo (photo to left) and once again by the dahlia park dedicted to San Francisco (photo of cathedral to right). Martha took the opportunity to play with her new camera to see how the different features worked at night; it has an anti-shake feature that works amazingly in the night light. By the time we had found the Iglesia San Isidro (not pictured here), of course, the lights were off! An adventure for another night, surely.

Sunday, June 10, Martha got down to serious business with her book once again, now maxed out at 32,500+ words after going through nearly half of the original draft. These beginning chapters are easy, she believes, because she has some earlier-written drafts of the first several days of the trip to draw from in this revision. The hard part will come when she gets down to the later days and needs to work that ol' long-term memory to bring back more details. By then, however, we will likely be back in the lands that she is writing about, and she hopes that will aid in her recall. Oh, and in the morning, we enjoyed some time playing with a visitor to the apartment (photo to left), who was kicked out expediently.

Martha took charge of our afternoon walk, bringing us back towards Retiro with the intention of going further East into streets-yet-explored. However, as we approached the park around 5:30 PM, Martha remembered that there was free music in the park every Sat and Sun at 7 PM!! So, we killed some time, walking by the big pond and the statue of Alfonso VI (which looked much different on a sunny Sunday surrounded by people than it had on our last two trips here in the rain). We walked around the lake to find the big drum circles (that our buddy, Diane, would have LOVED!!).

We finally sat before YouKali, a jazz singer with a trio on keyboard, bass, and drums. The story she told was that she had gotten in trouble with the law and was paying her community service by singing in the park for a couple of nights! Many of her songs were English-spoken jazz standards, such as 'Bewitched' and 'All the Things You Are,' but it seemed that she got into some more original work in Spanish, French, and English, as the evening progressed. The night became chilly as the four finished their performance, and we headed home, stopping at the Doner Kebab Istambul along the way for some seriously delicious meat and chicken kebob (schwarma style) and a Turkish salad with a great parsley dressing. An amazing and filling meal for just nine euro total.

When Dani could get on the computer after our walk, she looked into our options between 22 June, when we leave our apartment in Madrid, and 4 July, when we leave Dusseldorf, Germany, to arrive in Bangkok. That’s quite a bit of time to play with, and there were parts of Spain that we thought we’d miss out on without the full six months here, but this little side-trip will take us to one of the towns/regions we had really hoped to visit: Santiago de Compostela in the Galicia region of the NW, where she found us a cheap flight from there to Frankfurt, Germany, on 28 June. So, we will have six nights to make our way through Salamanca and Leon, Spain, before spending some time around Santiago de Compostela, and then we will fly to Germany for several nights to make it from Frankfurt to Dusseldorf for our flight to the Far East!! How exciting!! We may even manage to set foot in Luxembourg and Belgium since Frankfurt and Dusseldorf are so close to those borders and the German bus/rail systems are so good!! The adventure continues!

In love and light,

Martha and Dani