Day 2 found us covering a lot of ground, visiting the royal palace, day tripping out Toledo for a sword-making demonstration, and then back to Madrid. Today was an early morning, since we had a lot of ground to cover.
Day 3
The day began with a bang, or rather, a whoop. Someone…and we don’t know who, exactly, but SOMEone found a reason to open the fire exit door at 5 o’clock in the goddamn morning. Now, I don’t know for a fact that it was one or more of the kids from one of the other groups, sneaking into or out of another room at the ass-crack of dawn, but I do know for a fact that, had it been me in that hypothetical situation and I was in danger of getting caught out after curfew, I would not have opened the door that comes with its own hotel-wide alarm system. But no one ever accused modern teenagers of thinking anything through that didn’t originate on TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram.
The fire alarm only hastened our getting dressed. We were up, as in, awake, and trying to go back to sleep for another thirty minutes. No such luck. We’d just finished putting shoes on when the alarm stopped, and I realized that some of the Spanish profanity I’d picked up in my 50-something years of living in Texas came in handy, after all.
Downstairs, we were the only people from our group at breakfast, which suited us just fine. My recollections of all of the European breakfasts I ate were a variation on the SPAM sketch from Monty Python. “We’ve got eggs, eggs and potatoes, potatoes, toast, different toast, crusty toast, ham, other ham, smoked ham, cured ham, sausage made of ham, toast made out of ham, ham ham ham and ham, and sliced cheese with only a little ham in it.” Everyone assured me the Iberian ham was very different than what I was used to. Again, I have to say, Oh Really? You obviously don’t know the lengths to which I’ve gone to sample interesting and exotic hams and sausages. Don’t presume that their ham is going to change my religion.
And yes, it was good ham. Delicious. Very tasty. But it wasn’t some new and exotic preparation that left me breathless and reinvigorated. It was smoked ham, all right? I ate more of the Spanish tortilla (because I needed the eggs) than anything else, but I did indulge in a piece of toast so I could enjoy the marmalade.
Janice’s mom joined us as we were sipping our café con leches and picking at the remnants of ham. The only other person in sight was an older man carrying a small dog under one arm. He was doing something behind us, I don’t exactly know what, but it involved talking loudly to the desk clerk as he paced back and forth in the open area between the front desk and the door. Eventually, his wife, who looked a lot like him in size and shape, joined him and they were in the process of walking out when Janice’s mom stuck her hand up and said, “Good bye, I’m sorry again about last night, y’all have a good day!”
Before either of us could react, the couple had crossed the expanse between the lobby and the sitting area and were now standing over us at the table, speaking in heavily accented English, laughing with Janice’s mom and asking us all about ourselves. They, we learned, were from Malta: “a veddy small EYEland,” he said. They were also not particularly enthused about their time in Espana. “Thees place? It not so good.” Their accent was more Slavic than Latin-based, which made my subsequent impression of the man sound like Boris Badenov. But I digress. It seems his wife got arrested the previous evening at the local discotheque (yep, discotheque) for yelling across the room at Spanish people. I’m positive there was more to the story than that. For instance, what exactly was she yelling, and why? But those details weren’t volunteered, nor were we interested at that point in getting any clarification, because as he related the saga of their evening to us, his wife was absent-mindedly running her hands up and down the front of her torso, over her breasts and belly, in a seeming stupor, save for the loose, vacant smile on her face and her inability to stand still without swaying.
Janice and her mother could not look away, and yet, they were trying like hell to stare only at the man, who was now telling us he’d been to America once, in New York City, and that his wife? “She like Trump!”
Janice replied, “He’s certainly popular with some people. WELL, we mustn’t keep you…”
I tried to pet his little dog, but he never got close enough for me to reach out. The dog looked friendly enough, if a bit shell-shocked. We would later learn why this was so.
After several refrains of “Okay, well, y’all have a nice day,” they finally staggered off. By then, other people had begun to show up for breakfast and so it was impossible to fully unpack what we’d just witnessed. I wish—oh how I wish!—I’d gotten a picture of Mary with these two, so that you can properly contextualize this story.
It took most of the day and conferring with several of our traveling companions, who’d been sitting on the first part of the story. Here’s what we were able to piece together during the bus ride:
The previous evening, Mary needed to talk to Janice’s brother for some reason or another, but could not remember what room he was in, so she started knocking on doors—including ours. I opened it to see her in the hall, talking to Zane, and waving me off. “Wrong door,” she said. No problem.
One of the other wrong doors, before she got to Zane’s, was this couple from Malta, who were confused by Mary’s knocking. They were dressed and apparently going out, or about to, so it wasn’t an imposition aside from having to explain the mistake and laugh about it. It was this incident that compelled Mary to speak up about it as they were leaving.
The other half of the story took place prior to the disco-arrest, when they were getting everything lined up to go out, which included walking the dog. Some of our group were in the lobby the previous evening, drinking wine and relaxing, when couple came into the common area, sober and loud, and the wife told Maltese Boris Badenov to walk the dog. He did so, and upon bringing the dog back into the lobby, pulled out a baby wipe and wiped the little dog’s ass (it made a loud, distressed yelp at this), and then he wadded the used wipe up and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. They then proceeded to the disco and their exclusive tour of the drunk tank in Madrid’s excellent police station. Most of our tour group—now a sub-group within the larger circus—thought this was wildly hysterical. I can only imagine what the rest of the bus was thinking.
Most of the day was spent getting to Seville, by way of Córdoba, with a brief stop in Puerto Lápice, a small town where they have leaned all the way into being a tourist attraction for Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, being that they are in the historical region of La Mancha. There were windmills, both functional and decorative, and no end of burnished metal effigies of the aged courtly knight and his rotund sidekick, riding and standing, and of course, jousting. We had some fun with that, but our visit was little more than a pit stop, so we snapped a few quick pics, grabbed some postcards, and then it was back on the bus.
We stopped shortly thereafter for lunch at this roadside travel center, what we lovingly referred to as “Spanish Buc’ees.” That’s a bit of a misnomer, because as a European institution, the place was mostly for food, and not for buying tourist-y crap. If you took out all of the merch at Buc-ee’s and replaced it with tables and chairs and a couple more islands for food, that’d be this place. My options were snack food, a cafeteria style set of options, or Spanish Burger King. Cafeteria food won out, and it was some kind of meat and gravy and not anything that I remember eating.
I noticed there that many of the people in Europe, presumably also travelers, but not Americans, are completely disinterested in making space for other people. I stood behind a man my age, my tray in both hands, with food on it, waiting to get a fork from the place where the utensils and napkins were gathered together. He didn’t acknowledge me in the least. He got his tray, thoughtfully chose a plate to put on it, and was leisurely inspecting the silverware assortment when his wife came over with a bottle of water that she placed on the tray, and this was followed by a discussion over whether or not she should have her own tray. Spoiler alert: she did, and I watched this little passion play unfold as my food cooled and my temper rose. They knew I was there. She for sure saw me because I smiled and gave way when she walked over to start the fight with her husband. I eventually reached around and over the man, snagged a single fork, and retreated, and I heard him go “Ut!” to me as did so. Sorry, bud, but I’m on time limit here, and you’ve got nothing better to do than occupy space where crowds of people need to be.
Does this make me the asshole? I honestly don’t know. I tried very hard to not be in a hurry in Spain, and to not get in other people’s way in Spain, until I realized that they were singularly uninterested in not being in my way. If I didn’t move, they were gonna make the “tsch” sound at me as they were forced to break their gangly stride, swerve around me or otherwise re-engage with the world around them. Janice pointed out that the energy I was picking up on was present in any large city like Chicago or New York City, and I admit, it’s not something I’d considered. I don’t ascribe any malice to it, but it’s pretty obvious that we are all pretty self-absorbed these days.
Córdoba was on the way to Seville, and we didn’t get the chance to do the full city tour, so they gave us the highlight; a stop at the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba (Link included so you can appreciate the size of this place). This incredible landmark started out as a Moorish Mosque before they were kicked out of Spain, or optionally kept on as a labor force to turn the mosque into a (wait for it) Catholic Cathedral. Kind of the Old World version of when you see a Taco Bell and a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the same fast food restaurant.
I kid! I kid the Muslims and the Catholics! Especially when walking around in this place and finding myself breathlessly contemplating all of the giant forty feet tall marble pillars, row upon row, some of which boasted an intriguing legend and were roped off to prevent further damage by tourists’ fingers. Not for the first time on this trip, I gazed up at the massive structure, with intricate carvings and hand-hewn marble arches, erected in the building with ropes and pulleys and the sweat of various infidels, who had a lifespan of somewhere just north of 40, and thought about modern day Christians (those that can manage to find their way into church) who plop a dollar into the collection plate twice a year, at Easter and Christmas, and pat themselves on the back for their transactional piety. Get back to me when you spend half your life working on a building you won’t see the inside of when you die.
Our tour guide was an interesting fellow, very animated, with interesting tidbits to share and a verbal tic that got funnier and funnier as he went on. To get our attention, he’d stop and say, “Well…well…well…” sometimes holding that third one in and other times rushing through. It was the signal to listen up for his insights. Some folks tired of it quickly, but not me. I found it charming.
The other two groups were finally starting to loosen up and we were all talking amongst ourselves. Janice had to keep reminding me not to swear, and this was partially because it was supposed to be a student trip and partially because we were pretty sure we’d identified at least one clutch of homeschooled kids and their parents—and we could tell this by their staunch refusal to engage with anyone from the other groups. It was a little off-putting.
At one point, I was walking the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter in Córdoba and I tripped on a loose flagstone. I said, “son of a bitch!” and Janice gave me the stink eye again and gestured to one of the other teenagers from one of the other two groups. He and his brother had been sitting across from me on the bus, minding their own business and not causing a ruckus. He heard me, saw the exchange, and said to us, “I’m in public school, so it’s totally okay. I’m just hanging back here with you guys because I can’t handle the homeschool family.”
We slid into Seville, tired and beat up from the long drive on the bus. We ate late at the hotel, a buffet of something that started to look like Spanish food, including saffron rice and beautifully cooked chicken thighs. This I could get used to.
More photos of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba
Up next? Day 4, of course!