Skip to main content

Madrid Blessings: Food, Footwear, and a Friendly Priest

What a treat: we got to spend a few days in Madrid, an elegant yet careless, old fashioned and easy going, proud but welcoming, southern place with French, Austrian, and Arabic influences. The people were friendly, and the pickpockets we had been warned of by tourists from Austria must have been on vacation.

We met friends of relative F.'s, an international bunch of happy, energizing people in their thirties, talked politics and culture, ate simple food: Spanish omelet made with firm, waxy potatoes; goat cheese, Iberian ham, green olives, served with plain white bread, country fare, tapas. The yellow peaches were so rich in taste and so juicy that our preteen daughter exclaimed, "I have been waiting to eat this all my life. It is like in James and the Giant Peach."

In three days of wandering we noticed more colorful shoes on feet and in shop windows than I have seen in decades; we studied architecture in all styles from Madrid Baroque to Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Fifties Modern, found two Renaissance paintings that were on loan from The Huntington in San Marino, California, for an exhibition at the Thyssen Museum, hung out at one of the neighborhood food markets, where we thought of L.A.'s Grand Central Market and of Mexico which has stayed true to its Spanish roots in so many ways.

The churches we had planned to look at were closed, but we knocked on one of the rectory doors and the priest let us in. He took the time to give us a tour of his church and dismissed us with a solemn God bless. I am placing the Spanish capital in my personal pantheon of European cities, along with London and Rome.


Comments

Badger said…
Madrid is on my shopping list of places to visit SOON!
Lorraine Seal said…
We visited Spain for the first time last September, staying in a small Catalonia village for the wedding of one of our Dublin nephews to a young Spanish woman. It was astonishingly beautiful; it also reminded us very much of Southern California. (Which isn't surprising given that Southern California has a Mediterranean ecosystem, one of five in the world.)

While there we went to Tarragona and Barcelona but not Madrid. To my shame, I had never been inclined to visit Spain. Now that I’ve visited, I can’t wait to go back. I love the way you evoke the experience, not least of which is the subdued sun-washed palette enlivened with splashes of brilliant colour.
Thank you, Badger and Lorraine. We are grateful to have seen so much of Europe while we were living in Vienna. Enjoy your travels!

Popular posts from this blog

Ban on Plastic Bags Bugs L.A. County

Paper or plastic? Bag from South Africa. My friend recently came back from a trip to South Africa and brought me a reusable grocery bag. It is from Woolworths, one of the largest retail chains in South Africa; it is made by a community project and serves as a symbol of the company's commitment to sustainability and social development. I will think of this whenever I use my new bag. Thank you, dear friend! The Woolworths bag is not my first reusable bag. I carry two baggies which fold up into packs smaller than a deck of cards in my purse and a bunch of bigger ones in the trunk of my car. To me this feels like an easy way of making a difference environmentally. Others seem to have a harder time. When the county of Los Angeles recently introduced a ban on plastic bags for its unincorporated areas the new ordinance was met with resistance. Shops bemoan that paper is more expensive than plastic. They charge customers ten cents for every paper bag. Shoppers complain about the t

Passionate Nerd, Dull Date: Encounter With a Stamp Collector

"Their album - it's an excuse." Stamps from Austria Last week I received a packet from Austria. It came with two old fashioned looking petit point stamps. I do not collect stamps and would not recognize a Blue Mauritius if you sent me one but the stamps from Austria caught my interest. As my fingers were running over the stitching I couldn't help but wonder: does anyone still do petit point? Are young people here in L.A. or even back in Europe still acquiring the craft? I learned to stitch, sew, and knit in elementary school in Austria but handiwork was not my forte. On the contrary. Crafts used to be the one subject I loathed - though I believe that my mother still keeps the red and blue pot holder I crocheted in second grade. (It was supposed to be a square but ended up an irregular trapeze.) The other thing I was wondering about when the packet arrived is whether young people still collect stamps. When I was in high school I knew a guy my age with a collec

Casual Spirit, Egalitarian Touch: the American Potluck

"Meal at which all people present share dishes they brought"? Po tluck. Today being Labor Day some families in our neighborhood decided to get together for a potluck: grilled chicken and salmon, home made potato salad; a salad of spinach, blue cheese, and pears; a fruit platter, brownies... I like potlucks, their casual spirit, the egalitarian touch. Very American. Everybody pitches in, no one has to feel bad because one family or even one person had to do all the work. In Austria potlucks are not really common; there is not even a German word for the concept. It could be   Kesselglueck -  literal yet somewhat charming - but that term doesn't exist. On the web I found "Potluck: großes Abendessen, bei dem sich alle Anwesenden selbst mitgebrachte Speisen teilen" (translation from  Reverso ). This describes the idea accurately but it is a bit long. For those of you who don't speak German, here's a re-translation, phrased as an invitation: "P