>From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 14:40:14 -0400 From: Michael Israeli Subject: up the down staircase, June 7th The subject is a reference to the Madrid metro....but more on that later. A couple of general things we've not mentioned yet: - when we got to spain from copenhagen, we were waved directly on through - no customs hassle of any kind. - Michael is always correct with respect to which direction we ought to go in order to find a hotel, a transportation site, or a point of interest. - Hillary is almost always incorrect with respect to above. - Sadly, we rediscover these tendencies vis a vis sense of direction daily. We left off, we believe, with a tale of our final dinner in Barcelona. We got up early today and had breakfast in the hotel, then took a cab to Estacio Sants to catch the 10:30 Intercity train to Madrid. We had some time to kill in the train station, so we took a picture for Uncle Jeff, and then looked around a bit....Michael sent Hillary on an errand to purchase some postage stamps. She managed to ask the information people where to buy stamps (in Spanish), and then to actually find them, and to ask the woman at the counter for them, and to pay for them and get change and everything all by herself. This was a huge deal, you have to realize. Hillary also went and bought some water and some melocotonitos (tiny peaches), using her amazing linguistic skills to find out how much these items cost before committing to the purchase. Michael, on the other hand, found a mailbox and sent some postcards. So, we hopped on the train, which was very nice...lots of legroom!! and good climate control, too. The trip from Barcelona to Madrid started out going kind of southwest along the Mediterranean coast. During the first part of the trip we hugged the coastline, which reminded Hillary of the northern California coast, especially certain parts of the coast we passed by that greatly resembled Red Rock Beach in Marin County, CA - even down to the nude sunbathers, who were completely visible from the train, by the way :) We passed through some very upscale looking resort areas and these were surrounded by cheaper looking apartment/motel type buildings. Maybe some summer homes, too? we're not sure. There were many golf courses, tennis courses, soccer fields (we saw some games going on). Many of the cheaper looking buildings were orange, blue, yellow, or pink! There was a lot of new construction going on as well. In between these resort areas were some agricultural areas - some olive farms, some other kinds of farms, and there were these very poor looking villages right up near the resorts. The trees in the region were palm, fir, and maple. The wildflowers were mainly yellow and white. After a while we also passed some public campgrounds, which looked very nice - subdivided by twine tied to stakes, large areas whithin which people pitched tents or set up an RV or trailer or something. These had easy beach access as well, and public playgrounds for the kids. The next big stop was Tarragona, and that's where the train turned to start going inland, more directly west. We passed through some large industrial areas with tanks, and warehouses, and shipping areas. These were interspersed with some beautiful countryside - trees, farms, hills, those nice white and yellow wildflowers, and big open country areas....and some mountainous areas. We can't really describe it that well. Imagine a cross between the Irish countryside and the California countryside near Yellowstone, with some mountains thrown in! Michael slept for a while and Hillary read a book (surprise) during the next hour or so, until the conductor came to check our tickets, which was sort of anticlimactic after all the warnings we'd recieved about ensuring that everything was perfect with respect to filling out our railpass correctly. The next big stop was Zaragoza, which was a big station with a lot of colorful graffiti on it. The city of Zaragoza was visible from the train, and it looked really big. There was a large rail yard and we saw some freight trains loaded up with shiny new automobiles. As we passed west of the city, we observed some feedlot cattle (a feedlot is kind of a large, dirt-floored, fenced in area, surrounded by feed troughs, where they fatten up the cattle before shipping them to market) - several of which were *ahem* having their way with each other. After Zaragoza, but before we reached Calatayud, we saw a large herd of white goats being sheperded along (goatherded?) by some guy with a stick. It was comical because the goats extended to cover an area perhaps the size of a football field, and there was this one man trying to herd them. We passed through a very large farming region, with tons of olive trees ranging from new saplings to ancient trees. Eventually we came to a picturesque stop called Mora La Nueva, where the station was a yellow brick building with white trim, somewhat reminiscent of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. This station, unlike most of the others, was nicely tended, with fir trees and oleander shrubs nearby. Moving westward, we passed through another largely mountainous region, where Hillary observed what she thinks was a plant called astralagus growing on the hillside. This is another one of those poisonous plants :) Michael noticed what he thinks was the cooling tower of a nuclear reactor, and a nearby very large electrical plant of some kind. Also of note on our journey - about an hour outside of Madrid we passed a large group of cows grazing freely on the hillside, below a fortress of some kind which looked like a castle out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In this region the wildflowers were mostly red and purple, not yellow and white. The last big stop before Madrid was Guadalajara, a very large and modern city with tall, square, buildings mostly of red brick. There were also some older style buildings, including a church we had a good view of from the train. On the way out of Guadalajara we saw a huge black cardboard cut out of a cow in the middle of a field :) About 1/2 hr outside of Madrid we passed a large hill or small mountain above which there appeared to be about 8 or 10 hangliders. Then there was just some open country and then finally.....Estancia Madrid-Chamartin!!! Chamartin is the station we came into, it is in the north part of Madrid and is not the station closest to our hotel, but all trains from Barcelona go here. Upon arrival, we schlepped our stuff up a few flights of stairs and then set about searching for the Eurorail Aid office which our pamphlet clearly stated was in this station - because we wanted to get the updated timetable we were told to get. After schlepping back and forth across the station a few times and attempting to talk to three different officials, it became clear that pamphlet or no pamphlet, the office was a figment of someone's imagination. So we moved on to item 2 on our list of things to do in Madrid - buy a map! that was a lot easier and quickly gotten out of the way. Feeling a bit more worldly after navigating thus far, we decided to take the Metro to our hotel, instead of what would have been an expensive cab ride. So, we schlepped our stuff down the stairs, across the platform, down some more stairs, across another thing, and bought tickets and figured out where we had to switch trains. Then, to enter the actual metro system.... *sigh* You know those automatic turnstile things, you put your ticket in and it sucks it through and spits it back out and lets you go through - like the Septa subway? Well, Hillary had some trouble going through there....the turnstile wouldn't let the suitcase through so she tried to lift it and ended up doing a major pratfall, landing on her back with the suitcase on top of her, feeling incredibly stupid and grouchy about the whole thing. But, we survived. We schlepped down some stairs, across some platform, up some stairs, and down some other stairs, or so it seemed, and eventually got onto the train - which we rode to the next stop, then switched to another line, which took us the rest of the way to Puerto del Sol, which is right near our hotel. To get out of the metro, it was more of the same. Up, down, over, yada yada. Finally, out into the sun!! The metro ride was pretty unremarkable save for a tall, skinny, dour faced man all dressed in brown who quite obvious about "adjusting himself." Madrid seems much more frenetic, if you will, than Barcelona. While Barcelona is a relaxed city full of American and European tourists and light skinned locals, Madrid seems to be much more multicultural - we saw people of many colors during our brief (3 minute?) walk from the metro to the hotel, not to mention the ride on the metro itself. The streets are much more crowded. Hillary notices that it is much more difficult for her to read the signs and stuff in "regular" spanish (that is what Michael calls Castillian :)) than it was for her to read the Catalan - which seemed to have a lot of French mixed into it. In any case, we arrived at the Hotel Madrid. Michael asked for and obtained a change from a room with twin beds to a room with one larger bed. Yay! :) The concierge was friendly and gave us some pamphlets with touring information. This is really about it. We checked out the shower, which is better than the one in Barcelona as far as consistency of water temperature goes, and we will probably go get some food sometime soon. We hope that you all are doing well and that no one is too inconvenienced by the Septa strike. Lisa, sorry to hear it's been such a problem for you. Let us know when that resolves. love, hillary and michael >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 13:47:56 -0400 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 8: siesta to fiesta? Greetings from tropical Madrid! It is warm and sunny here in central Spain - seems to us this is typical spanish weather. Today we got out a bit and we again noticed some definite differences between Barcelona and Madrid - for one thing, Madrid is MUCH more "big city"ish - lots more hustle, way more bustle. There are many many shops and cafes and little stores and businesses and stuff all crammed together here, the sidewalks for the most part are smaller, and people in general seem to be busier. There are also some similarities between Madrid and Barcelona - most people still seem friendly, the automobile drivers are pretty aggressive in both places, and the street signage is unbelievably poor!! The names of the streets are (occasionally) posted on square plaques on the corners of certain large buildings at intersections, but are often either absent or covered up by the nearly ubiquitous green screens that are used by the construction workers to cover their work area - it seems that much of Spain is under continuous renovation. Anyway. Last night, after we sent the email detailing our journey by train, we went out to briefly explore the area near our hotel, which is called Puerto del Sol - gate of the sun. This is the very center of Spain both physically (there is a marker for "Kilometer 0" embedded into the sidewalk; this is the point from which all distances are officially measured) and politically - there was a big uprising in 1808, against the French troops, during which many Madridilenos were executed - a memorial plaque and wreath are present on the Communidad de Madrid building, which we took a photo of today. This building is also of note because it was used during the reign of Franco as the central police headquarters, and the key scene of Franco's "interrogations." Apparently the deaths of the prisoners here were regularly recorded as suicides. Anyway, last night we didn't really look around this area that much, but we crossed over the plaza to an interesting looking area of two pedestrian walkways which had been draped with festive looking streamers - sort of a roof of streamers had been created, multicolored streamers strung between the buildings on either side - and we wandered through that area looking at the many cafes and restaurants and such. We walked through this area until we reached the road called Gran Via, and then we doubled back on a tiny street called Tres Cruces and went into a restaurant recommended by one of our guidebooks, called Costa del Sol. This place was pretty interesting - it was staffed by a bunch of old fat guys, one of whom greeted us and directed us peremptorily into our seats at a paper covered table. He brought us bread without butter or bread plates, which seems to be customary here in Madrid. Note this is unlike the Catalan custom in Barcelona of giving you the bread with the tomato rubbed onto it - that was served on a large central plate. Anyway, this restaurant we went to last night is known for serving "meat, and a lot of it, at reasonable prices." So, we ordered some sangria (which was heavy on the brandy, very strong, and very sweet), a salad, a mushroom omelette, and a grilled veal dish. (Yes, Mila and Dan, Hillary ate veal. Calm down.) The salad was nothing special but everything else was very good. We left this place and retraced our steps back to the hotel, stopping first at a small restaurant to have dessert (a banana split and a flan). Today, we woke up just in time to miss breakfast in the hotel, so we went to the Jamaica Coffee Bar on Calle Mayor in the del Sol area. We got some espresso and a cappucino (they seemed to think we had "cafe italiano" and "cafe con leche" but really, it was an espresso and a cappucino) and a croissant. The coffee bar was a nice place, similar to the Cafe Central in Barcelona but more indoors. Then we began a walking tour. First we doubled back to get a good look (and a photo op) at the Communidad de Madrid building, which we have already described. Then we walked along the Carrera de San Jeronimo, which is one of 10 streets that meets in the center of the Puerto del Sol. At the corner of San Jeronimo and Calle Victoria we came to a funny restaurant called the Museo del Jamon - the museum of ham! This place is to ham what Sonoma restaurant in Manayunk is to vodka, or what Baskin Robbins is to ice cream. They have "varietal" hams, they have parts of pigs hanging up all over the place, they are really the place to check out of you are a ham fan, we're told. Michael is not a ham fan by any stretch of the imagination, so after a quick look around, we continued on. We walked up the Calle Victoria, which was lined with small restaurants and taverns, many of which had interesting window displays consisting of shellfish, octopus, and cuts of meat, sitting there in the window case. We also noticed several windows where there were people selling bullfighting tickets, and posters advertising bullfights. Then we walked down another small street called Nunes de Arce. This area has many taverns and cervecerias. We walked along until we got to the Plaza Santa Ana, a small but very nicely laid out park. We walked through and around the park, checking out the statues and refreshment stands on the way. The north and south sides of the park are lined by bars/restaurants, including Cerveceria Alemana, which was apparently one of Hemingway's favorites. The east side of the park is bordered by el Teatro Espanol, a large building with columns which since the 16th century has been the site of the center of Madrid's theatrical scene - although the building wasn't put up until about 1869. The west side of the park is bordered by the Gran Hotel Reina Victoria, which is a beautiful, elegant structure that was recently renovated (in the 80s) and which is apparently a kind of hangout for people who are into bullfighting. On the other side of this building is the Plaza del Angel, which isn't really a plaza so much as it is an area where the narrow sidewalk gets a bit wider. This area is of note because one of Madrid's "top music emporiums" is here - Cafe Central (not the coffee bar in Barcelona of the same name!), known for jazz and blues. Then we turned down onto a larger street called Calle de las Huertas, which really didn't look like very much because nearly everything was shuttered and closed. This street houses many bars, which make it a real party scene at night, we're told. We continued until we got the the Calle Lope de Vega, on which there is a big brick building containing a plaque marking the burial site of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who died in a house around the corner shortly after completing his great work, Don Quijote. The building housing the burial site is called Convento de Trinitares Descalzas, and it is in fact a convent, housing a group of nuns who shun contact with the outside world. It looks like nothing so much as a prison complete with iron bars on the windows. Nearby, around the corner on the Calle de Cervantes, we checked out Casa de Lope de Vega, home of the playwright Lope de Vega - who was a rival and a contemporary of Cervantes - note that Cervantes is buried on Calle Lope de Vega, while Lope de Vega died on a street named Cervantes. Kind of ironic. The Casa de Lope de Vega was recently renovated and restored to its original appearance c. 1610. We walked on, stopping to check out the Cortes, the national parliamentary building, in which Colonel Tejera, leader of the right wing Guarda Civil, attempted a coup by charging the building with a machine gun and holding the officials hostage. Juan Carlos managed to squelch the coup, as must be obvious, since he still rules. We crossed Plaza de las Cortes and went onto Carrera de San Jeronimo, walking along until we reached the Plaza Canovas del Castillo, which is a traffic circle that has a fountain with a statue of Neptune in it, and some lovely flowering shrubs around it. We tried to take a good photo of it, it was a bit difficult since there were many cars and people around. While standing looking at the fountain, we could see in the background off to our right the Museo del Prado, perhaps Spain's most famous museum. We zig zagged our way into the tree lined pedestrian median strip of El Paseo del Prado, which they generally just call El Paseo because it changes names as it passes other important sites (another reason not to drive around in Spain - even if you figure out what street you are supposed to be on, it will change names and confuse you!) The Prado is closed on Mondays and we didn't want to go in there today anyway. We walked toward the end of the building and reached the Jardin Botanico - a very large and old botanical garden. We paid 200 pesetas each to get in - this was a real bargain because the gardens were quite relaxing and beautiful. We wandered through the medicinal plant section, back through the roses and other ornamental plants, up around through the interesting tree section, and back toward the front of the garden. We stopped frequently to rest in the shade. We took a picture of one particular sign we found there, marking a tree with pretty white flowers. The name of the tree was something like "philadelphius pubescens," and we liked it :). Michael was very lucky that he had Hillary with him today to point out the many, many, many poisonous plants we passed by. :) :) :) :) After we left the gardens, we decided we'd try a restaurant "recommended" to us by a nice blond girl who was handing out flyers. She said it was her family's place. We figured what the heck. Michael was starving. We went in and ordered the menu del dia - bread, beverage, appetizer, main course, and dessert for 1000 pesetas each. The food was in fact plentiful and good. During the meal, Hillary realized she was simply too tired to continue on the walking tour, which had easily another two hours to go. She has a cold or something, and her Comtrex was kicking in. Michael was not averse to the idea of our following local custom today, so we returned to our hotel for una siesta. We took a nice long nap and are now preparing to go out and check out the nightlife, baby. :) By the way, Hillary is anxious for news from home, so please do not be shy to send her some brief updates (to izzy@izzy.com, but don't quote this entire message!). love, Michael and Hillary >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 14:02:24 -0400 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 9: Las mujeres de la noche!! Now, we left off, we believe, prior to our going out last night. We ended up going to an Italian place for pizza, believe it or not, because we just couldn't face more spanish food :). It was a pretty good place. The pizza was very thin and crunchy and we had a nice bottle of Rioja with it (which cost oh, 6 bucks...) The restaurant we went to last night was on Calle de Horteleza, a street we walked up and down on - we first walked all the way to Plaza Santa Barbara, where we saw some men on horseback leading two other horses each, and then back down the street to the restaurant. After dinner we ended up just going to bed, because we were very tired. This morning we got up bright and early at about 7 am, had breakfast here at the hotel, and went to get on a tour bus at 9:30 at the bus terminal in front of the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is an imposing structure with a formal garden in front which contains many statues. We took a picture of Michael with some of the statues. The tour we took took us around Madrid. We saw a LOT of stuff, but we're not going to write it all down here because it would just take forever. The most interesting parts of the city that we saw today were: 1. The university - it has about 95 buildings on campus and over 150,000 students!! We saw schools of engineering, medicine, dentistry, law, and energy; plus many others we didn't catch the names of. In university city we saw a wall with graffiti on it that says "Nazis No!" - which reminds us, in Barcelona we saw a lot of anti-bilingual and pro-revolutionary graffiti; here in Madrid we see mainly the same BS graffiti we see at home, plus some anti-fascist graffiti. On our way out of university city we passed the National School of Physical Education - of note here were the aluminum people out on the lawn, which reminded us of the large sculpture of people walking on the South St. Bridge over I-95, but on a much smaller scale. 2. Some famous chapels - two identical chapels, one of which was painted by Goya in some famous painting, and one which has been dedicated to St. Antony and is open to the public. As we drove by here, we saw a nice statue of Goya, and some mounted policemen patrolling the area, which was being prepared for a festival to celebrate St. Antony, on June 14. 3. This is for Jeff - Estancio del Norte - a big-ass train station from which trains heading to the north of Spain depart. This station also houses the Principio Pio metro station, which we observed from within a metro-car while we were on the metro (later today). 4. Casa de Campo - this used to be the royal estate, prior to April 14, 1932 (when the king stepped down or something). This is a huge park which contains a zoo, an aquarium, an amusement park, and lots of camping and hiking areas, and also a lot of HOOKERS!! You wouldn't believe it if you saw it. After our bus tour dropped us off at the zoo (where we spent some time looking around and Michael made friends with a gosling) we eventually walked about a kilometer to the metro station. On the way to the metro as we walked through the park we kept seeing condoms on the side of the road. Then, we noticed some women standing at the intersection of two remote roads both lined by open park/wooded areas. Hillary pointed out that one of the women appeared to be naked under her black lace see through body suit. As it turned out, she wasn't entirely naked - she was wearing a skimpy g-string and a push up bra that had no covering over her breasts (it was more of a shelf for her breasts to sit on). She was accompanied by two other women in lingerie and high heeled knee high boots. We walked past them and noticed an increased number of condoms by the side of the road. Further along were more of these women. As we neared the metro station, an older man with no shirt on was heading down the road toward these women...we beat it out of there and hopped on the next metro train. 5. Old Madrid - at one point, our bus took us under a very old aqueduct, and past the only remaining 14th century building in Madrid. The whole area of what they call "old Madrid" was laid out in a very confusing way, and it kind of reminded Hillary of the way Italy tends to be depicted in the movies - narrow streets, etc. 6. Numerous churches were pointed out to us, the one at Plaza de San Francisco was designed by an Italian architect and currently houses many paintings by Goya. 7. The dolphin fountain in Plaza Republica Argentina is one of the most beautiful fountains in Madrid. We tried to take a picture of it from the bus. 8. Alcala Gate - a very large stone gate made of several arches, in the middle of Calle Alcala. We have no idea what it was for or what it signifies but it sure is cool looking. 9. Near the zoo, we finally saw a veterinary hospital! Yay! Also, yesterday, we forgot to tell you but we saw 4 or 5 very very large dogs in the park across from Hemingway's favorite cafe. A Great Dane, a St. Bernard, an Afghan, and some big mutts. It seems that Barcelona is a city that prefers perritos, whereas in Madrid, they go for los perros grandes. :) 10. Plaza de Toros de las Ventas - or something like that - the bullfighting arena where they still have bullfights. This used to be located outside of the city limits, because bullfights within the city were illegal - but now, the city has expanded and it is in the city - but it hasn't moved or anything. From the outside this is a beautiful arena - we hope our photo of it is ok - brick and ceramic tile, sort of similar to the arena near the Olympic area in Barcelona. Anyway, we have lots more written down (believe it or not, we took notes while we were on the tour. Our biggest fear is getting home and realizing we don't remember a thing...) but it would be tiresome to go through it all. We hope that you can kind of get the flavor of our day from this email. We were on the tour, by the way, with a family from Texas - at first we thought they were the Hank Hill family (Fox TV reference) but no, alas, that was not the case. The woman insisted that we must go to the Museo del Jamon - the museum of ham - in fact, she says that the whole reason they came to Madrid was because that is her favorite restaurant in the world. They were really only coming to Spain to go to a wedding in Seville, but she insisted on coming to Madrid for this restaurant. We had a chat with them about the new subway system in Dallas - apparently it sucks and got all messed up by the politicians and it is losing money. Also, the woman from Texas mentioned that we were lucky today was "cool" in Madrid, because, she said, if it were hot, we'd have really been uncomfortable. We aren't sure what the normal weather is like in Dallas, but it must be really really hot there as a matter of course because it was NOT cool today in Madrid! Now, our tour guide did mention that there are 320 sunny days per year in Madrid, which means we were right about it being sunny most of the time (and which is why they have a research center dedicated to solar energy); but it must also be very hot here much of the time, because we've been told that "when it gets hot" in August, everyone who can afford to leaves the city. It is plenty hot enough for us as it is; Hillary says if it were any hotter she wouldn't be able to walk around, Michael says Hillary is a wimp. In any case, it was about 85 by our estimate - Hillary was kind of melting during that 1 km walk to the metro station. One other thing we noticed in downtown Madrid is that there are a number of signs regarding PP O7 which is apparently a piece of proposed legislation that has something to do with poor people. Some of the signs say that it is for poor people, and some of the signs say it will hurt poor people. We can't figure out what exactly it is, perhaps they are voting on some kind of welfare reform or something. Love, Michael and Hillary Anyway, that's all to report for now. It is now time for una siesta grande. >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 19:50:49 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 10: the last day in Spain Hi again, everyone. Last night we went for a walk in the area north of Puerto del Sol, and we ended up having dinner at a Tony Roma's, of all places - at least they have a no smoking section!! We sat and ate and listened to the american country music; the only thing of note really was that the food cost about half as much as it would have at home. While we were out walking we saw a store selling exotic reptiles, and we checked it out - they had a variety of terrariums in there housing a variety of unusual lizards, spiders, and snakes. We got a good look at several fountains and ornate buildings lit up especially so they looked really beautiful in the dark - but we hadn't taken our camera with us on our walk, so we will have to remember that in our minds. Some general comments about Madrid, for the record: 1. If you travel to Madrid and accidentally forget to bring any shoes, no problema!! There are zapaterias (shoe stores) all over the place. On the street with our hotel, there are at least four in this block! 2. Not only do Madrilenos seem to have some kind of shoe fetish, but also there seems to be an inordinate number of places to eat and drink. We think perhaps purchasing shoes makes you really hungry and thirsty. 3. Underwear is not popular among the Madrilenas. G-strings are plainly seen through flimsy pants and skirts *if* they are worn; bras are seen on the tourists only. Not that we're going around and checking this out closely, but it is pretty obvious. 4. Our hotel seems to be a magnet for travelling Americans, in particular Americans who were poorly brought up, and who do not realize that the hallway of a hotel is not the place to run around screaming "woo hoo! european vacation!!" and things like that. The people in Barcelona, even the tourists, were much more civilized. Today, we woke up kind of early for us and headed directly to the Prado - the most famous art museum here. The building which contains this museum is not exciting, although we did take a photo of it. It was supposed to be a science museum but that never panned out, and after it was used by the french troops as military headquarters during the french occupation of Madrid, it became in 1819 an art museum. We spent a couple of hours in there, checking out the works of Velazquez, Murillo, Goya, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and El Greco (et al.) A highlight of the visit was the newly reconditioned/cleaned/restored painting, Las Tres Gracias (the three graces) by Peter Paul Rubens (aka Pedro Pablo Rubens :)) - a very very large painting of three Rubenesque nude women. Hillary is a big fan of Rubens. We also saw a lot of really wonderful marble, bronze, and alabaster statues. Some of the marble work was amazing - women wearing robes that looked so real, you couldn't believe it wasn't really cloth draping over them. Also in the museum we noticed some groups of cute spanish schoolkids wearing uniforms and holding hands :) After we finished up in the Prado we walked down to El Parque del Retiro, a huge 300+ acre park with lakes, exhibit halls, and all kinds of stuff. On our way there, we walked up a street called Calle Claudio Moyano, which is lined with booksellers. Hillary found a set of veterinary anatomy books, and bought them, for 900 pesetas. (These are old books, written in spanish, and really are just for Hillary's amusement, although the diagrams with latin labels are actually useful.) We also stopped briefly at the Glorieta del Emperador Carlos V, a sort of a traffic circle with a fountain in it, which is directly in front of the Estacion de Atocha, yet another big train station - this one is where the new high speed AVE trains to Seville originate. Anyway, in the park, they were having some kind of book festival. The walkways were lined with booths selling various books on various topics and there were big tents set up where corporate sponsors had exhibits. We saw a little "history of Apple" museum set up by Apple corporation, and we stumbled upon a tent set up by the local phone company which contained Internet-connected computers. We sat down to check our email, and found that our friend Patri was logged into izzy's server - so we were able to talk to him, real-time. He was logged in from an Internet cafe in Amsterdam! So that was interesting. We also browsed the cnn.com site and are pleased to see that the French pilots and other transportation workers have stopped striking. We checked the cnn.com weather pages and it seems that Copenhagen and all of Norway are in for at least a few days of rain coming up, so that's kind of a bummer, but at least we will be prepared and can make sure we wear the appropriate clothing for our journey through Denmark and Norway tomorrow. We wended our way through the park and spent quite a bit of time there. We found a really beautiful rose garden there and took several pictures of it - it's been there for over two hundred years *point of contention here. Hillary thinks the sign said 1820 or something like that and Michael thinks it said 1920. Guess we'll never know. Anyway, we walked through there, stopping to sit on a bench and relax for a while...then we walked out of the park and wandered around until we found ourselves at...El Museo del Jamon (jamon, jamon, jamon whole wheat....all right!) We figured we had to give in, and we sat down and ordered two platos combinados - a numero dos y un numero siete. The food was good, but, as we'd been warned, the soup was god-awful. It was kind of weird eating while surrounded by cured pig legs hanging from all the walls. We managed. While in this restaurant, Hillary was shoved around quite a bit, by two different old spanish women. We're not sure if this is normal behavior among old spanish women, or if Hillary just seemed push-able today, or what... During our meal, we observed un perro grande y negro, sitting in front of the glass doors, looking in at us. We thought maybe he was hungry but it turned out he was just being a good dog and waiting for his owner to finish up inside. We left the Museo del Jamon with full bellies and walked around the block (because Hillary said we should go the wrong way again...) and finally found our way back to the Paseo del Prado, and we basically retraced our steps again until we were almost back to the hotel. We stopped off at a parfumeria (this is kind of a small store that sells perfume, makeup, soaps, and other bathroom products) because we needed to get Hillary some conditioner for her hair. Then we headed back to the hotel for yet another well earned siesta. love, Michael and Hillary