Mad about Madrid

If you live in North Texas and would like a quick and easy European getaway, it's hard to beat Madrid. AA has convenient non-stop flights from DFW. The new Exprés Aeropuerto bus service takes you from MAD Terminal 4 to central Madrid for €2 a person. The major sights are in a compact central zone. The great museums are within a five or ten minute walk of each other and a couple of them are free every evening. Madrid is clean and pretty, with an energy that is inviting but never intimidating. In short, DFW -> MAD is so easy that we've already done it twice and are looking forward to doing it again.

Walking around a city is one of my favorite entertainments and Madrid is eminently strollable. We walked from Plaza de Cibeles up the Gran Via all the way to Plaza de España, awed by the architecture. We wandered along the new river walk west of the Royal Palace. We lingered in gathering places like Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, and Plaza Santa Ana. We walked up and down Paseo del Prado and spent delightful hours in Parque del Buen Retiro.

We spent an interesting fifteen minutes watching a trio of pickpockets, three young women in their 20s, at work in Plaza de Cibeles. Laughing and talking, they blended into the crowds crossing the street or gathering at bus stops, looking for an open purse or pocket to snatch from. They finally noticed our eyeing them and eyed us back as they left for new hunting grounds.

Coming out of the city cultural center, I noticed a middle-aged couple fussing at each other. The woman was carrying an infant swaddled in blankets, which I thought a bit odd considering her age. What was even odder was that I looked in at the child as she was cooing to it and saw that it was, in fact, a miniature dachshund, lying on its back staring right back at her.

While we love coming to Madrid, I am still perplexed by the food. Tapas bars are crowded and noisy and confusing and don't appeal to me. Restaurant meals are expensive, with main dishes easily costing €20 and up. I don't understand a lot of the terminology on the menus and translation to English doesn't help. I need to figure out the best way to eat here, or better yet, find someone to take us along and show us the way.

I've had a lazy camera this trip and hardly took any snaps. Here's a few of them on Flickr. And here's a snap of me doing what I do best:

Mileage Run to Madrid

A frequent flyer will sometimes do a "mileage run" to get the miles necessary to get or maintain status with an airline. When the airline sweetens the deal by offering bonuses, the mileage runs multiply. Various offers from American Airlines, for example, have led to a rash of AAdvantage members booking flights from Chicago (ORD) or Dallas (DFW) to Los Angeles (LAX) or San Francisco (SFO). To earn those all-important BIS (butt in seat) miles, some fanatics have gone so far as to book daily round trips between ORD and LAX for five or ten days in a row: fly ORD -> LAX in the early morning, get off the plane but stay in the terminal then board the next flight back to ORD, get a few hours sleep, and start all over again the next day.

I like having status with AA, but I'm not nearly so driven as that. Make me a reasonable offer, though, and I'll gladly plan a trip.

Right after AA announced it was entering bankruptcy, they also decided to offer double elite qualifying miles on all flights through the end of January. It's been a month since we got back from Italy, so we took this as a clear sign that it was time to travel again.

Bueno, entonces, we're off today to Madrid for five nights. The convenient flights are non-stop from DFW to MAD, it's easy to get into the city from Barajas airport, and we found a good deal on a hotel right across the street from the Prado.

I'll be taking snaps and writing more, of course, but until then here's my Flickr photos from our trip to Madrid in March 2010.

Alla Bolognese, con Cinzia e Sergio

Bologna is an exciting place, a bustling commercial center since the Middle Ages, where there's always something going on: shops large and small sell everything from luxury jewelry and designer clothes to €1 housewares, market stalls offering heaps of Christmas trinkets and cheap clothes line busy thoroughfares, long queues wait to enter trattorias and gelaterias and hole-in-the-wall al taglio pizzerias, street performers and political protestors sing and shout to get the attention of passersby, and always there are people out and about early and late.

Bologna is not always pretty. Graffiti is everywhere, some buildings are hundreds of years past their use-by date, and the city has its share of unsavory characters. There are times when you think the whole town needs a thorough power-washing and repainting.

I first visited Bologna in 2001 and was immediately attracted to its gritty, edgy energy. We came again in 2003 and 2005, and now in 2011 the appeal is as strong as ever, which is a little surprising since Bologna doesn't seem to care if I visit or not. The central tourist office is unhelpful and uninterested. There are no museum passes, but then there aren't many museums. The infrastructure for visitors is tied to the many trade fairs held here, so at least it's relatively easy to get to and from the airport.

We've started each day by getting out the map, picking a direction or area unfamiliar to us, and head out that way. An old guidebook and Google have helped narrow down our options, but mostly we're exploring to see what we can find. An old palazzo, a church courtyard, another piazza full of street vendors, a slice or two of pizza and maybe a gelato and by late afternoon it's time for a break. We head back to the hotel and have a lie down before deciding where to go for dinner.

Friday night, however, was something special. Years ago, I started using Flickr to share my snaps, and one of my first contacts there was cinzia_t, who lives near Bologna. As Terri and I planned this trip, I was excited by the prospect of finally meeting Cinzia in person. We exchanged emails and made arrangements to get together for dinner.

Cinzia and her husband, Sergio, took us to Trattoria del Pellegrino just outside the city walls near Porta Santo Stefano. The place was packed with Italian families enjoying the beginning of the weekend.

Terri and I wisely let them do the ordering for us, and we were treated to several different kinds of pasta and meat dishes, all Bolognese specialities, washed down by vino rosso della casa and followed by zuppa inglese. More important than the food, of course, was enjoying the company of our friends. Cinzia is the most bilingual of the bunch, fortunately knowing some English, while Sergio spoke a little English and Terri and I stumbled through our Italian. The language difficulties just added to the fun, however.

After dinner, we went for a long walk into the city. We strolled up Via Santo Stefano as Cinzia and Sergio told us about the churches and markets and piazzas we passed. The walk ended in Piazza Maggiore, the wonderful central plaza of Bologna, and sometime after midnight we finally said arrivederci, with many hopes and plans of seeing each other again soon. The perfect end to a perfect evening.

Today is our last day in Bologna. We had to do some rescheduling because of an Iberia pilots' strike, but we must have had a large balance in our travel karma account because the new schedule is better than the old one. The only bad part is that we have to leave on the first bus to the airport at 5:20 a.m. We are due to be home a mere 20 hours later. Goodbye Italy, Hello Texas.

Here's my Flickr photos from the trip. For those who would rather sit back and let the computer do the work, here's the slideshow version.

The Other Italy

To most travelers, Italy means Rome, Florence, and Venice, with perhaps day trips to Siena or Cinque Terre. There are good reasons for this: those cities are wonders, with enough art, food, history, and charm to beguile the most cynical. But there's another Italy that I love just as much, an Italy that too few people take the time to see.

When we left Venice, we took a regionale train to Vicenza, where we spent three nights. Another regionale to Ferrara and another three nights, then on to Ravenna for three nights. These mid-size Italian cities (and there are many more like them, Parma and Perugia and Verona, for example) have great food with local specialities, fine art and museums, festivals and events. Each one has a population of around 100,000, so a few tourists like us can wander in and not be noticed.

We usually arrive on an early afternoon train, which means that as we walk into town (yes, they're small enough that you can walk from the stazione to the centro storico) around 2 p.m.; the streets are deserted, a ghost town with only a few stragglers and dogs roaming the narrow streets. It's the afternoon break, when all the shops are closed and everyone goes home for a few hours. We check into our hotel and put away our bags before heading out again.

By 4.30 p.m. or so people are starting to come outside and by 5 the shops are re-opened and the bars are again serving coffee and prosecco. By 6 or 6.30 the passeggiata is in full swing: everyone is walking up and down the main streets, window shopping, talking with friends and neighbors, running errands. At this time of year there are Christmas markets in the plazas, merry-go-rounds for the kiddies, and temporary ice rinks for the teenagers. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been wandering around within these evening promenades, seeing and hearing and smelling life in Italy.

Here's Corso Palladio in Vicenza just the other night:

And here's Perugia from a trip back in 2005; different city, different year, same ritual:

By 8 or so we're off to dinner somewhere, eager to try local specialities like baccalá in Vicenza or cappellacci with zucca in Ferrara. We sit down and wrestle with the menu and drink and eat and wonder whether we should get dessert. We leave by 9.30 or 10 and again the streets are dead, no one about, the city gone to bed for the night.

Altogether it's a pleasant and appealing rhythm of existence.

We'll be ending our trip in Bologna, La Grassa, La Rossa or The Fat, The Red. "Fat" because Bologna is known for being wealthy and prosperous as well as having the greatest food in Italy -- mention "Bologna" to an Italian and their eyes will light up as they speak of great dishes -- and "Red" both because of its distinctive red tile roofs and its leftist politics. Several of Bologna's mayors have been card-carrying Communists.

These photos and more over on Flickr.

Wandering Around Venice

It is an amazing thing that within 24 hours one can go from an apartment in Texas to a hotel in Italy. The amazing becomes depressing when one realizes that this time has not improved in over 50 years since the introduction of jet airliners.

This trip we didn't get vaporetto (water bus) passes, so we're walking everywhere. There is no better place in the world to wander; if you've never been here, Google "venice map" to see what a maze it is. There's no grid, no plan, no organization: major thoroughfares may be barely wide enough for two people to pass while some large squares sit empty and silent. Of course there's no wheeled vehicles of any sort except for baby strollers and grocery carts that need to be wrestled up and down the bridges. A walk of five minutes from hotel to restaurant may twist and turn up and down a dozen streets and across several canals. The shortest distance between two points is never a straight line, always a zig-zag.

On Thursday, our first full day in Venice, we revisited major sites and old favorites. We walked from our hotel in Castello near the Ospedale to Campo S. Maria Formosa, then on to the tourist madness of the Rialto Bridge. We wandered through S. Polo on the far side of the Grand Canal and eventually made our way down to Dorsodouro, where we had a delightful lunch at Taverna San Trovaso. We had a gelato as we walked along the Zattere, then headed back over the Accademia bridge to return to Piazza San Marco.

Friday was a day to explore new areas. We headed east through quiet old neighborhoods of Castello, past Arsenale, then along the bustling markets of Via Garibaldi. We visited S. Pietro on its little island, then wandered through eerily quiet residential neighborhoods. Parks, trees, block after block of apartments with no bars, no restaurants, no shops -- it was a Venice we had never seen before. We walked back along the fondamente to the tourist madness of Riva degli Schiavoni and had lunch at a little place down a side street behind the Bridge of Sighs.

Today, Saturday, has been gray and misty. We went to the Correr Museum (where we discovered that the paintings we most wanted to see, masterpieces by Carpaccio and Bellini, were on loan to Tokyo) and a guided tour of the renovated clock tower overlooking Piazza San Marco. Later this evening we'll head out to try a new neighborhood place for dinner.

Tomorrow we'll wander some more and then on Monday we'll head off the beaten path.

These photos and more over on Flickr.

Italy #9

After we went to Florence for our honeymoon in 1999, Terri and I made a habit of returning to Italy every year: Tuscany in 2000, Emilia-Romagna in 2001, The Marches in 2002, the Veneto in 2003. We skipped 2004 because that was the year I had to put Momma in the nursing home, but in 2005 we were back with a grand sweep from Rome through Umbria and Tuscany to Bologna and Venice. Then we got sidetracked by retirement and moving and trips to other places, although we made it back to Rome in 2008 and 2009.

(Six years may not sound like so long ago, but consider this: on that last long trip to Italy in 2005, I was still taking snaps with a film camera, we wandered down dark side streets looking for Internet cafés because we did not own a laptop, and my very first travel report was sent out after we returned home via a primitive communication technology called 'email.' Now I carry several digital cameras, we require WiFi for our MacBook and iPod, and I am a real-time location-services-savvy Facebooking blogger.)

It's time to go back. We leave in a couple of days, flying to Madrid then on to Venice. After several days in La Serenissima, we'll go to Vicenza, Ferrara, Ravenna, and finally Bologna, three weeks altogether. The Italians will be getting ready for Christmas, with roasted chestnuts on every corner and tortelli di zucca in every restaurant. Mostly we'll be eating and drinking, but we'll make time for some looking, too.

While you look at this snap from our last trip to Venice in November 2005, I'm going to start packing.

Next post and snaps from Il Bel Paese...

Almost Time to Go

As I write this, the temperature here in Buenos Aires is 75° while back home in Fort Worth it's 69°. In other words, it's almost time to leave.

Since we did all the touristy things in years past, this time we decided to focus on simply getting to know our neighborhood better and enjoying it more.

One of the most pleasant results of this new approach was that we've eaten really well. I've complained before about the lack of variety and spice in Buenos Aires cuisine, but either the food has gotten better or our attitude has changed. With one or two exceptions, we never ate at a restaurant more than two or three blocks from our apartment. We found places we had never noticed before and stopped in at places we had often walked past. The restaurant fare was so good and still relatively cheap that we only cooked at home a couple of times. Some particular favorites were vacío at La Cholita, sorrentinos at La Parolaccia, sorrentinos at Rigoletto, lomo a caballo at Rodi-Bar, lomo at Melo, pizza calabresa at Güerrin, and milanesa napolitana at María de Bambi.

We brew our morning coffee here in the apartment. The stuff sold in supermarkets as 'coffee' is nasty and imported coffee from Brazil and Colombia is expensive, so we brought a couple of bags of Aldi coffee in our checked luggage. There's no half-and-half in Argentina, but we did just fine adding a spoon or two of crema to our morning café con leche. (There's a lot of cream for sale in the groceries: I wonder what people use it for?)

We've yet to figure out a reasonable way to exercise during our month here. It may not look like it, but I have a regular routine that I go through every day, mostly stretching, light weights, and brisk walking. Here, though, it's hard to do any of that. Walking in the city, dodging cars and buses and jostling through crowds, is not as satisfying as a fast five miles on the Trinity Trails. We're losing our tans.

Last night on the local news we saw a report about a large truck that had overturned on an overpass, dumping tens of thousands of pounds of yerba maté on the ground below. Crowds of men, women, and children rushed in to pick up the packages to haul home.

The parks are getting cleaner and nicer every year; Plaza Vicente Lopez is still our favorite. I can think of few things in life more pleasant than sitting on a park bench on a sunny spring day, watching people come and go: that little boy chasing his ball while his older sister rollerblades past; the young couple intertwined on the grass and in each other's eyes; the elderly woman, elegantly dressed, being helped to a bench by her young companion; the suited businessman on his cellphone making florid gestures in the fresh air. Stories unfolding simultaneously before one's eyes: life being lived.

Every year we come to Buenos Aires we have a bout of respiratory ailments. Cold, allergies, air pollution? All of the above? The last several days we've both been coughing and sneezing; it's not enough to keep us away but it's annoying.

Packing for return is so much easier than packing to leave. Beginning a trip means having to decide which shirts? Cold weather or warm? How much underwear? How many pairs of jeans and slacks? Which pointy kitchen implements in the checked bags? But returning involves no decisions at all: pack everything!

During past stays in Buenos Aires, I've written about things we missed back in Texas. Now, I can't even remember what they were because this year I've missed... nothing.

Before you know it we'll be through DFW customs and boarding the TRE train for home, wondering whether our car will start after sitting in the parking garage for a month. And as I put the key in the ignition I'll wistfully remember being able to live happily and well for a whole month with no car at all.

Here's my snapshots of this trip. Or you can go to the slideshow version.