We've been busy!

Happy Nochebuena (Christmas Eve)!

The language school at which G teaches and I was taking Spanish is closed for 2 weeks. The branch where my class was concluded with a Christmas party early Friday afternoon, including instructors forming a living belén (complete with elaborate costumes for the magi, shepherds, etc.), snack goodies, and a Christmas carol contest among the classes of students. Our class sang “La marimorena”—not very well, but with a lot of volume and enthusiasm, clapping, foot-stamping, and shaking tambourines and water bottles half-filled with beans. The unfortunate after-effect: I can't get the dang tune out of my head! (Check YouTube for any of a number of examples of the song.) The winning class had worked out a rather elaborate choreography and certainly deserved the dictionaries they won as prizes.

G, of course, is on vacation, too—the first time since he arrived here in August—so he’s enjoying playing tourist along with me. We’ve been pretty busy going all over: Retiro Park, the Temple of Debob; the Prado, the Madrid royal palace and adjoining cathedral; figuring out the Cercanías and high speed trains to get us to El Escorial and Toledo; and more. I think I’ve done more walking in the last week than in the last 6 months combined.

Just a few brief comments on some of these as I don’t want to spend a week typing out my full impressions:

Put a Sunday afternoon picnic at Retiro Park on your must-do list if you’re ever in Madrid. Young couples, old couples; groups of friends; occasional singles. Families are all over, with children learning to ride two-wheelers, chasing each other, shrieking in laughter. It's impossible to count the number of strollers and it’s apparently quite the thing to dress both of your young children in matching outfits, even if they’re different genders and/or ages. Also very popular are renting a rowboat to row around the tiny "lake" and bringing your drum (ANY kind) to join in the hours-long drum circle.

The Prado: omigosh! Most of you know I have not an artistic cell in my body nor have I had any kind of art education, but still, it was absolutely overwhelming! We spent several hours there and hardly touched the surface. So many paintings I’ve spent my life seeing only as reproductions in books, etc. and there they were—the real thing—and so close I could have touched them. I was afraid I’d sneeze. Two hundred, three hundred or more years old. The frames alone were usually impressive. The size, the colors, the impact—I just can’t begin to explain it.

The palace/monastery at El Escorial was, disappointingly, closed the day we went, but the train trip into the country surrounding Madrid was fun and the town has easily the best belén I’ve seen. The figures are life-size and the recreation of Bethlehem spans the entire town center. There are several flocks of sheep; a caravan arriving with elephants and camels; a wall with Roman soldiers on guard; an encampment with people dancing; a market with housewives and vendors haggling over prices; an entire hillside with goats and cave-like passages; a river with people in rowboats and women washing clothes on the bank; and much more.

Toledo: wow! The streets are narrow and winding—exactly the same as they’ve been for over a thousand years. The cathedral was awe-inspiring. I don’t know how many El Greco’s they have there. There were ceremonial robes dating back to the 14th century—now I know why everything I’ve read talks about noble women spending so many hours embroidering. The intricate details of carvings in stone and wood are incredible. I was awed by the Madrid cathedral, but this one was even more stunning. Everywhere we walked (and G walked me up and down every steep, twisting street…several times!) there were buildings dating back hundreds of years and yet we had to periodically step into a doorway so a car could pass. I can’t imagine what it would be like to enter the front door of your apartment every day, knowing that 30 feet away is a church built almost 1000 years ago and containing Visigoth relics found nearby that date from the 7th century.

And throughout it all, I'm spending more time with G than I have in years. It's just generally a pretty wonderful vacation.