¡Felices Fiestas!

My flight leaves tomorrow so I am busy packing, but I wanted to take a moment to wish the blogosphere felices fiestas! I can't wait to see family and friends for the holidays!

Toledo

a view of Toledo

A classic day trip from Madrid, many people told me I shouldn't spend more than one day on Toledo, but personally I think it's worth an overnight stay if you have the time. The capital of Castilla la Mancha is a point of cultural intersection between Spanish, Arabic, and Jewish cultures, a history that has earned it a UNESCO world heritage title. Plus, it boasts more museums relative to its size than anywhere else in the world. If those aren't enough reasons to stay, read on.

Toledo is a classic "city on a hill," and that is no small statement; some areas are even equipped with escalators to temper the steep inclines! Even with mechanical assistance, it was difficult for me to imagine the tiny Spanish señoras climbing hills with their daily purchases as I huffed and puffed my way around. On the evening of my first day I decided to stick to flat land and circumnavigate the labyrinth of city streets by following the river around the city.

theTagus River, which surrounds Toledo on three sides

the elevators of Toledo

To enter Toledo, there are several important gates that allow cars and pedestrians inside. La Puerta de Bisagra is definitely the largest. After a full day of walking up and down I returned to the hostel exhausted, only to have the owner inform me that the best time to see the city was at night! So a new friend from Chile and I set out to see the city illuminated. The gate was spectacular, but just as we stopped to "ooh" and "aah" at the cathedral, the lights shut off for the night!

la Puerta Bisagra

inside the Bisagra Gate

la Puerta de Alfonso VI

la Puerta del Sol

la Puerta de Cambrón

Inside the city, Toledo's general charm comes from its narrow streets and pleasant shops. When asking directions and attempting to navigate, I often assumed that the tiny alleyways and callejones were much too small to be the ones mentioned on the map, but, no, that's just a regular street in Toledo! Particularly interesting and sinister names, like la calle del infierno, add some extra character.

Even with a second day, hitting every museum and cathedral in Toledo is a challenge. The aesthetics alone make it an enjoyable effort, and if you're interested in Spanish history and culture there's nowhere better to see it first hand. The Jews, the Christians, and the Moors form the pillars of Spain's cultural heritage, and Toledo hosted them all in relatively tight quarters, as evidenced by the variety of architecture.

Can you guess which culture each of these cathedrals belongs to?

The scenery was stunning and the museums were riveting, but what is the best thing about my first trip to Castilla la Mancha? Manchego cheese, of course! I bought some right from the source in the Plaza de los Reyes. The shop owner was so friendly that some clients had sent her an illustration of their experience.

To conclude, I absolutely loved Madrid and Toledo. There is a long walk between some of the nearby cities that I would like to try, and I hope that I make it back someday to see the rest of the museums and take in more beautiful vistas--and to ride the escalators again, of course!

Madrid

December 6^th is Constitution Day in Spain, and the 8^th is the day of the Immaculate Conception. Because these holidays are always celebrated on those particular dates, whichever day of the week they may fall on, this year made for a highly irregular schoolweek with Tuesday and Thursday off. Many Spanish people skip an extra day to hacer puente, or make a bridge, so that these holidays create a long weekend. In an effort to assimilate, I took Monday off and went on a quick trip to Madrid and Toledo!

After an overnight bus ride I arrived at the Mendez Alvaro station bright and early on Saturday morning. I intended to go straight to the hostel to make sure I had a warm bed for the night, but got lost almost immediately! It was difficult to get back on track as I continued to be amazed by one monument after another.

el Oso y el Madroño

The Bear with the Strawberry Tree is based on a thirteenth century coat of arms and is considered emblematic of Madrid.

el Ayuntamiento

el Templo de Debod

Egypt donated this UNESCO monument to Spain in thanks for their preservation aid.

Don Quixote

la Plaza Mayor

el Mercado de San Miguel

This market was completely agotado with people enjoying sweet and savory tapas.

Museo del Jamón

The Ham Museum, because Spain. Not a monument, but I was excited for my first encounter with this restaurant!

la Real Academia Española

el Palacio Real

The Spanish have definitely mastered the "off with their heads" look. If anybody around the Royal Palace were to ask me, I was prepared to profess to be a devout Catholic! After a day of wandering, I finally stumbled into my hostel at around eight o'clock, completely exhausted. Thanks, Mom, for emailing a copy of my passport! (Who knew that you needed a passport to travel in a foreign country?)

By Sunday I was better oriented. I spent the morning at the Rastro market—a large flea market known for various districts of wares, including clothing, books, and antiques. One of my favorite sections was a little alley full of pet supplies, and pets! There were a lot of noisy and slightly unconventional critters! I also spent a good half an hour digging through recycled fur hats with a bunch of señoras. It was easy to recognize my fellow shoppers and share a smile as we tipped our furry hats when we bumped into each other in different parts of the city.

canarias

ardillas listadas

From the Rastro I made my way to the Reina Sofia museum, but on my way something curioso happened. I approached an old señora who was feeding the birds to ask for directions, and before I could present my question she started into a sob story about the poor little birds (ugly pigeons and mean sparrows) and their struggle to find food and survive. I began to evaluate this woman. No, she didn't look homeless or crazy. Her clothes were nice. Although, to me, her story wasn't a normal reaction to an approaching stranger poised to ask a question, I tried to sympathize with her feelings and commented how nice it was of her to feed them. She commented how nice it was for me to listen to her, and smiled and parted ways. I continued the search for the museum on my own.

At the Reina Sofía I got to stand before Picasso’s famous Guernica painting. No photos were allowed, so I tried to take a mental picture. I sat with the small children (until a docent told me not to) and contemplated the complex perspective and the faces of the other starstruck onlookers. It was pretty cool.

me and Dalí

el Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

The museum itself is a work of art!

From the Reina Sofía I made my way through Retiro Park. This is the place to be on a weekend or holiday! The park was full of people relaxing, roller blading, and boating. It’s also the locale for some temporary art exhibits, and, I am told, the only statue the features the devil.

My next stop was the Prado museum, which I absolutely loved! In roughly two and a half days in Madrid, I went to the Prado three times! The impressive collection of art seems to include a piece by every classical master, not to mention extensive exhibits by the most renown Spanish painters such as el Greco, Velasquez, and Goya. It is nearly impossible to see everything in one trip. We frequently discussed these paintings in many of my Spanish classes over the years, so it was powerful to finally see them in reality.

By the end of my trip I was completely exhausted, but I felt comfortable in Spain's capital city. I hope that I make it back someday!

Christmas Countdown

Thanksgiving came and went and now the countdown to Christmas is on all over the world! They've put up decorations in the streets here in Cangas, and this weekend I will be heading to Madrid and Toledo to see the sights--and, hopefully, the Christmas lights! Tuesday is a holiday here for Constitution day, so I'm going to do like the Spanish and "hacer puente," or build a bridge, to make a long weekend. And to get in the Spanish holiday spirit, I've purchased my first Christmas lottery ticket. Wish me luck!

Gobble Gobble

¡Feliz día de acción de gracias!

Last week I got to spend time with the youngest classes to share my personal expertise on the American holiday of Thanksgiving. This was interesting because, as an American, no meal gets me more excited than cranberry sauce on top of turkey on top of stuffing on top of mashed potatoes with some pie on the side, but my students had mixed reactions to the photos that I showed them of traditional Thanksgiving foods. After a week of stressing the importance of turkey, football, and black Friday, they must all think I’m nuts! It's worth it, though, because I used the “repeat after me” method to teach them that the sound a turkey makes is “gobble gobblet”—thereby secretly initiating them in McCarthiest ritual! Plus, there’s nothing cuter than a hand-turkey on Thanksgiving.

This year I had a real Galician Thanksgiving. Téresa and Fran invited me to their house and we may have eaten the biggest Thanksgiving of my life! It’s hard to compare apples to oranges, or in this case massive quantities of stuffing to the deaths of fifty or so langostinos for which I am personally responsible, but the meal was definitely sizeable. And it was most definitely a Galician Thanksgiving, as the different courses included langostinos, vieras, pato, sweet potato casserole, and yogur con azafrán. Guess which course I contributed! To put the cultural distinction in perspective, I will also mention that I went to seven different markets to find the sweet potatoes! Our meal lasted from about eight o’clock in the evening until one in the morning and featured American music from the eighties, soft lighting for atmosphere, and bubbly Champaign to set the mood!

Because of the aforementioned mood lighting the photos aren’t especially clear—but here is a course-by-course play-by-play of this year’s delicious Galician Thanksgiving!

la mesa

los (pobrecitos!) langostinos

las vieras

sweet potato casserole

el pato con patatas y grosellas

yogur con azafrán

San Martiño

Los gallegos son muy panaderos, y muy de tomar!

I’m not sure that my Spanish is correct here—but the Galicians I have met while living in Cangas are always telling me this: That people here love bread and they love to drink! Especially wine. Writing a will is completely out of the question here, so land tends to be divided into increasingly smaller and unusual portions, but regardless of size and placement most people with a finca have grape vines and they make their own wine at home. San Martiño was my first festival and I loved it! In Spain the holidays tend to be associated with two things: a Catholic saint and a lot of good food! San Martiño is celebrated in the neighboring town of Moaña where there is a lovely Roman chapel. There is of course a mass, but most people come for the fantastic furanchos. Around the church people open their homes to the public to sell their extra homemade wine with tapas. This alone is an excellent notion, but drinking the wine from a bowl definitely made the event special!

An Ode to the Chestnut

many chestnuts were consumed in the making of this post

A Galician abuela might tell you that any meal is incomplete without potatoes—regardless of the meal. Galician gastronomy includes an impressive variety of seafood and shellfish (more on that later), typically accompanied by—you guessed it—the potato! But before the potato there was corn. And before the corn there was the chestnut!

A Fraga is a common Galician forest with a prevalent population of indigenous aliso, roble, and castaño, (alder, oak, and chestnut), trees. This presence made chestnuts and acorns a convenient source of nutrition for early settlers, and, to my good fortune, the chestnut harvest is still celebrated enthusiastically. During Magosto people enjoy castañas asadas, classic roasted chestnuts, accompanied of course by good music and homemade wine! When my evening class ended we all followed the sound of the gaita and the panderetta, Galician bagpipes and tambourine, downstairs, and by the time I reached the last step most of my students had already joined the circle of merry singers and dancers. Not having tried roasted chestnuts for a number of years I was happy to discover that they are delicious!

Vila Nova

Now that I have gotten to know Spain a little better, I was excited by the opportunity to conquer a bit more of the Iberian peninsula with a trip to Portugal. Téresa, Fran, and Paula invited me to join them on a visit to the border town of Villa Nova where there is a popular market on weekends. I sat in the backseat of the car with my passport at the ready in my purse, but when we casually flew by the frontera I started to flash back to clandestine ventures into Brasil and Paraguay! Apparently border control is quite relaxed here, and even if you bother to stop at the aduana, the customs office, it's likely that you'll be the only one there.

Vila Nova is perched on the río miño that divides Spain and Portugal, where twin forts reminisce the days when the border still required patrolling. Today, the forts have been replaced by a single boat that appears to employ fewer staff than the customs office. The town itself is charming. There is a path along the river and there are many sculptures created by the local art school--including a deer motif because the municipality is called Cerveira. At the market I joined some señoras in a fight for discounted brand-name clothing. Any town with a market is for me!

Not far from Vila Nova, the town of Villazón is woven into a fortress that was once strategically and is now scenically situated on a hill overlooking the river. Between the architecture and the view, this town is a local favorite. We strolled the fort walls, browsed the shops, and partook in the savory Portuguese café before heading back to Spain.

a gaviota surveys his empire