MARCH 25, 2019- MONDAY- TAMPA-ICELAND-PARIS-MÀLAGA
Snyrtingar
The Vikings bumped across choppy seas in wooden boats for weeks to reach Iceland. We do it in 7 hours, smooth sailing in Icelandair Flight 1884, a sleek metal sky suppository, 7 miles above the waves. Flight 1884 is cheap, frills clipped and snipped to one free bottle of water, and meals and liquids for sale, plastic accepted only. But I have 3 seats to myself, my own headphones, and an impenetrable Icelandic film to fill the time. ‘RIFT’ seems to be about cars driving through grey landscapes, two scrawny guys post romantic break-up, a hole in the ground, things that go bump in the night (whenever the audience needs a wake-up), an occasional bare chest (see previous reason) or bare rump (ditto, when the going, plotwise, goes dangerously glacial). I listen for a hint of connection between Icelandic and its Scandinavian, Germanic, Dutch, English relatives. I get only the rumble of glaciers gargling. It fills the time.
The Titanic lies ten miles below, three miles of water, seven of air, and 106 years between us.
Keflavik Airport, steely, edgy, efficient spit and polish over-priced Wal-Mart to the Travel Weary, disappoints my memory of arriving here in 1971. I remember aged wood, sheepskin rugs, pony skins, all deserving capture. I look for something now. The signs!! Written Icelandic confirms my suspicions launched by the language in “RIFT". Those Vikings made it up as they sailed along, racing away from their northern relatives, lips tight in the cold air. There are a few snippets hanging or—or cribbed--from neighbors. Űtgang (Exit) is love child of English ‘out’ and German ‘ausgang'. ‘Timi' (time) IS a no-brainer. But…’snyrtingar'??? There is nothing to grab onto, however imaginatively. Snyrtingar requires the help of a visual or a translation, both provided outside the restrooms. Fortunately.
24 hours after leaving Tampa, we arrive at Calle Hinesteros 14, our home in Màlaga for the next days. The snyrtingar does not require a sign.
MARCH 27, 2019- WEDNESDAY – MÁLAGA
“We hope your country recovers.”
March 26 is a blur of launchings, landings, airports, time zones, and heavy eyelids until we crash and at Calle Hinestrosa 14, Màlaga, España, a minute into today, March 27, twenty-four hours from lift off in Tampa.
We awake, groggy, consciousness barely fetal under jet-lag.
Food is midwife. The `promacion del dia` at the corner bar is grilled thin pork, egg, sunny and runny, crispy fries, sweet/tangy tomato, onion, and pepper compote, fresh rolls, crunchy and doughy, and coffee. Then, we walk.
Worn stone pavers in zigs, zags, squares, circles channel us through narrow streets, deep canyons, shadowed and cool under slim balconies that notch the sliver of blue sky and block the heat of the sun. Like so much of Andalusia, Málaga lies atop a template laid down during the 700 years North African Moors created a sophisticated and tolerant civilization here. I think of my favorite line from one of my favorite movies, ‘The Lion in Winter’, delivered by the incomparably haughty Katherine Hepburn in her fourth Oscar-winning performance, as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, commenting on the behavior of her family: “It's 1188. We're barbarians.” Not so the people of Andalusia. Then. Or now.
High above Málaga we walk through the city cum fortress cum castle cum palace of Alcazaba, the Moors’ last defense in 1487 before inswooping Christians wiped out their civilization from Spain. It's beautiful. It looks across to Africa, almost visible to the south.
We stop to watch a little boy explore his first burst of geraniums. His parents, the throaty consonants and soothing lilt of Scotland now theirs, as natural as their native Urdu. We talk Brexit and Trump, disappointed in our countries, under assault of narrow minds, then part with “We hope your country recovers.”
We walk under pointed arches, trimmed in stone coaxed into lace to the inner courtyards, perfect places, gardens with pools and the ripple of fountains, all Moorish inspirations, soothing. Orange blossoms drip perfume, as sweet as the oranges they will birth are bitter. Beauty revives us.
By sunset we are finally awake, worthy of the food of Andalusia.
MARCH 28, 2019- THURSDAY – MÁLAGA
La Manquita, the One-armed Lady
‘Desayuno uno' , Breakfast Number One, at ‘our place’ on the corner jump starts our taste buds with fresh squeezed orange juice, pulpy, and thick. It chases off the last wisps of the fog of jet-lag, and lets the sweetness of Málaga through.
We walk the streets, quickly become familiar routes, to meet Alejandro, guide for a ‘free’ walking tour of his city. Roll call of our group is a sweep across Europe. We're the only swimmers from across The Pond. Alex is a fine guide, a hyper-caffeinated geyser of fact, anecdote, legend, story, tidbits, hooks for our memories of his city. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Catholics, despots, and Fascists leap out of his narrative of the city's 2800 years of history. Some left just fragments. The Romans left a theater. The Moors recycled its columns into their fortress, then buried it, the soil preserving it until it was discovered in 1952. The city rises above it now. “It's not the biggest or the best preserved Roman theater in Spain, but it's ours. And we use it.” He touches his lips to quiet us and we hear actors on the stage below us.
Triumphant Catholics routed the Moors in 1487 and built a cathedral where the mosque was. It’s huge, bloated, as cathedrals usually are, an ungainly overdone mish mash of architectural styles and conceits in fashion during the centuries it took to get it to its current state, still unfinished. Think myopic drag queen let loose among the prom dress and bridesmaid rejects in GoodWill ten minutes before closing time. The roof leaks and it’s short a few towers. “But, it’s ours and we love it. We call it ‘La Manquita’, ‘The One-Armed Lady’ because it's missing that tower.”
Málaga claims 2 famous sons: actor Antonio Banderas (swoon and drool from the ladies, and maybe some of the guys), and Pablo Picasso. Only one has a museum here. I have forgotten how superb are Picasso's early pre-cubist portraits, soft, revealing. I find a favorite in the cubist period. It’s ‘Woman with Raised Arms'. She's blue, dynamic, stunning, audacious, and has at least two arms.
I take this image with me from this day, a surprise gift from Málaga and its famous son.
MARCH 29, 2019 – FRIDAY – MÁLAGA TO GRANADA
It's practical, really.
Way up in the hills above Granada gaggles of us jostle to the edge of the cliff to watch the late sun burnish the cubist walls of Alhambra, ‘The Red', across the valley. A dozen hopeful sellers have spread trinkets on blankets under the trees. Most are African. My guess they are from Senegal since that is the closest part of Africa where people are so deeply and beautifully black. Street selling is illegal. Everyone knows it. No one cares but the police. They’re supposed to issue tickets. If they catch these guys in the act. It's a pain for everybody.
We watch the practical solution unfold. A few minutes before the police arrive a teeeeny chihuahua runs through the crowd, circling every seller, yipping a warning in soprano chihuahua-ese. The sellers get it, wrap up, and Olympic sprint out of the square. When the police arrive there are no sellers, no citations, no red tape, just a happy, now yipp-less K-9. He's wearing a black vest just like his humans.
It's practical, really.
We’ve been in Granada since early afternoon.
In the morning we have a last ‘Desayuno 3' at ‘our place’ down the street in Málaga before loading onto the Granada bus at 11:15. We turn east and north, away from Málaga and the sea. The landscape rises into hills, dry bronze through a scrim of olive trees. Dennis remembers other places. “The Spaniards must have loved California”. Ahead of us the snowed peaks of the Sierra Nevada complete the picture, a template, even to names, that the Spanish laid over a coast half a planet from home.
But nothing in California is like Granada. There have been Gypsies here and Berbers from North Africa and Jews. They have left narrow lanes, walls, gardens, sublime architecture, language with the snap of castanets, music with the howl of desert winds, and dance with the insistence of great epic stories. That's why we come.
Subversive K-9s are not in the plan, but much appreciated. Laughter leavens the wonder of such a place, gives us space to breathe.
It's practical. Really.
MARCH 30, 2019 – SATURDAY – GRANADA
“It's who we are”.
Granada has its own song. It deserves it.
We walk 7 miles today, most of it up the hill to and around Alhambra, remnant of the exquisite taste and refinement of Moslem culture in the 14th century, peaks of beauty, Himalayan in glory.
For centuries Granada was a center of learning and tolerance. Jews, Moslems, and Christians, all descendants of Abraham, lived here. When militant fundamentalist Christians, under the banner of Queen Isabella (yes, THAT Isabella, the Columbus one), self- appointed by God, took the city they ransacked the library and burned the books. 400,000 volumes of centuries of research and knowledge in science, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy drifted as ash into the wind. The royal library of the Christian monarchs held 400 books. Ignorance, intolerance, self-righteousness triumphed over knowledge, curiosity, respect. The Inquisition followed.
The Alhambra survives, way above Granada, intolerance defeated by its beauty.
Free guide Anna leads a dozen of us through her city. With great humor she strips pretense from the royal, imperial, triumphal architecture that lays over the Moslem and Jewish truths of the city, but accepts the history. The faces of Andalusia and Granada make denial impossible. Good looks are common in Spain. Even by the high standards of their countrymen and women, the people of Andalusia are memorably handsome. We’ve seen these faces before…just across the narrow Mediterranean in North Africa. For 700 years Spain and North Africa shared more than culture. Some modern Spaniards don’t like to be reminded of that.
But, says Anna, “It's who we are”.
Perhaps once again, intolerance will be defeated by beauty.
MARCH 31, 2019 – SUNDAY – GRANADA
I could go on and on about the food. So, I will.
Granada takes its food seriously. And gives it away with equal enthusiasm. Ask for a cold ‘cerveza’ , even a small one, and it comes attached to a plate of tapas, ‘gratuito'. Order another. Ditto. Order a third. Yup. ‘Tinto’ in its wine glass qualifies. Coffee, too. Even ‘agua’, plain or ‘minerale’, with or without ‘gaz'. It is food to weep over: crisp bread with thin slices of pork sautéed in garlic, potato salad with fresh peas and chips, ‘albondigas', tiny apotheoses of the lowly meatball, chunks of yellow potato baked in olive oil and onion slivers…We keep drinking just to replace the drool.
Our AirBnB has a terrace on a hill high in the albayzin, the old Moslem quarter, churches squatting where mosques once stood. It has a view of the Alhambra across the valley and down onto a tortured narrow lane that leads up and down the slope to a web of alleys, foodie heaven, restaurants bulging onto the cobbles, waiters at the ready with ‘bebidas', alcoholic and non, and their attendant tapas, free. It’s the weekend, Andalusian Spring, and high season. Granada is abloom with flowers and weeds, aka tourists. None of the restaurants our hosts recommend have free tables. No matter. We free lance, find one with a jolly waiter, make it ‘ours’. Like many of the restaurants and shops, it's Moroccan, owned, run, staffed, decorated. North Africa has returned to Granada, doing its magic.
These places open and close late. Breakfast isn’t in their plan, but we find scrumptious ham, cheese, lettuce, mayo ‘bocadillos' on warm crisp rolls, with fresh squeezed orange juice, and ‘café con leche’ down out of the albayzin. Last night we wandered across town with a chocolate fix in mind to Café Futbol (football, really soccer) to swoop long, crisp ‘churros' one by one into a cup of hot thick, thick, thick milk ‘chocolate’, medicinal after those 7 miles yesterday. Still later, we munched chicken shwarmas at Kabab King. We are ecumenical in our gluttony.
The rain in Spain might fall mainly on the plain, but today it has joined the tourist tribe and climbed upward to spill on the hills. Grey skies don't dim the colors of the old Moslem quarter. They wash them in the softness the bright blue sky denies them. We wander down out of the albayzin, across the busy-ness of Plaza Nueva, up more narrow streets of the old Jewish Quarter, under the trees of the ‘bosco’, the forest that wreaths the feet of Alhambra. Granada is in bloom, colors flooding the flat, moist air. Floats of pink trees, purple irises, coral geraniums ring the Alhambra, baguettes to the red stone. It is a day of softnesses.
Tonight, we have the staccato of flamenco.
APRIL 1, 2019 – MONDAY – GRANADA TO CORDOBA
Bus 33 drops us at Juan Paolo (Jorge Ringo?) II Bus Station, a semi-fitting memorial to the globe-trotting Pope, honorable, but a wreath below airport or bridge. Still, it has buses and we load onto the local up to Cordoba, qualifying by age, if not infirmity, for the seats behind the driver. We’re the only ‘gringos'. The driver and other passengers chat the whole way, the sentences rich in that all purpose untranslatable ‘claro'….I hear you, of course, I get it, it’s settled, how could it be any other way?
The road is two lane, a ribbon wrapping olive orchards and unrolling through small towns. Well-dressed middle aged señoras drop on and off. Dennis has moved to the other side of the bus, out of the sun. The seat next to me is empty, briefly. ‘Ocupado?’ asks the grey-haired señora in jeans, magenta coat, and elegant scarf. ‘No ocupado', and she joins me, hands folded over her large black handbag, and her ‘móvil’ at her ear. Whatever the issue in the conversation , ‘claro' resolves it, the phone goes into the bag, hands fold over the bag. We drive on.
The houses and villages are white, capped with ochre tiles, scattered and bright angularities in the green-grey prickle ball landscape of olive trees. It is not a lush landscape, nor a poor one. Nor an easy one.
I heard this landscape in the wail of the voices and the staccato stomp of heels last night. The Flamenco was not a performance. It was a confession. The woman sang. I didn’t understand the words. I didn’t need to. Her voice ached with sorrow, passion rage, the human music of a hard life. The man stomped his fierce message: We are here, dammit. We endure.
Claro.
APRIL 2, 2019 – TUESDAY – CÓRDOBA
“We were First Place in 2015"
Granada on the weekend was dense with brio, a kind of late night party filled with people who don’t know one another making up for it with noise, hoping the clatter of wheeled suitcases on pebbles, leaving the party, won’t be theirs.
Córdoba is Sunday dinner at your favorite auntie’s.
We love it immediately. Yesterday Marcial and Ana welcomed us to their ‘patio’, in full bloom awaiting the judges of the best patio contest. It drips flowers. Our room has doors opening onto two tiny balconies, geranium bowers.
Marcial is right. Dinner is wonderful at the place around the corner and there are no tourists. Molasses swirls patterns on a platter of eggplant, micro-sliced, dusted, then fried—crisp on the edges, soft in the center. Perfection. Warm bread sops up tender ox-tail braised in thick sauce the color of garnets. Ditto.
We walk home through narrow alleys, empty of tourists and the clatter of those wheels, the air dense with orange blossoms. This is a place of small treasures. A red votive lamp in a niche, someone's hope against the dark, 36 pairs of husky legs slowly turning a massive float, practice for the Holy Week processions, putting muscle into their faith, flowered balconies, quiet.
And, then, it has one magnificent treasure.
Today, by 8:30, we join a few camera-toters for the early morning free entry to ‘La Mezquita’ ,THE mosque. 1200 years old, one of the largest in the world, it contains a cathedral INSIDE it. (Well at least they didn’t tear the mosque down, I'll give them that.) To the Christian it is a church, and parts are decorated as such. That historic lack of taste and judgement attracts some. I appreciate the artistic merit of much of Christian iconography, but all those tortured saints, sinners, and saved are distracting. I prefer the simplicity of Romanesque churches to the complexity of Gothic, and to the thoughtlessness of modern church architecture, though I make a major, beloved, exception for the sublime Sainte-Chapelle, and the ecstatic spiritual space of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. So, the visual purity of mosques appeals to me. (Those of you who have sidled through the aisles of chatchkes that are the Travel Junkie hostages in our house may stop laughing. Claro?)
La Mezquita delivers. We come for the architecture: the forest of 856 red and white columns that support the 15,000 square meter roof and its exquisite prayer niche. We are stunned. La Mezquita joins our small list of perfect places, sharing our wonder with Machu Picchu in Peru, the Prayer Room of the Royal Mosque in Esfahan, Iran, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, the Temple of Abydos in Egypt, handmaidens all to the Taj Mahal.
The gold mosaic and the man who created the mosaics of the prayer niche were gifts to Moslem Córdoba by the Christian emperor of Byzantium, symbols of a more civilized approach to difference. Both the Vatican and the Spanish Catholic hierarchy have refused a petition by Moslems for permission to pray in La Mezquita. In 2010 two knelt to pray. They were told to leave.
Down a few alleys from La Mezquita, the superb Archeology Museum tells Córdoba‘s story. It was the biggest and most cultured city in Western Europe centuries a thousand years ago, a center of learning, and creativity, with Christian and Jewish communities thriving under enlightened Moslem caliphates. The rulers turned sour, feared those different among them, drove them away. The light went out of Córdoba. Perhaps it is still dimmed.
But, there are Marcial and his wife, Ana.
“We were First Place in 2015".
And they keep trying.
APRIL 3, 2019 – WEDNESDAY – CÓRDOBA
Salmorejo is lemony gazpacho thickened with bread and garlic, topped with confetti of Spanish ham and half-moons of hard-boiled egg. It clings to my spoon, thick, then my tongue, cool, now my memory. Remarkable. A platter of warm croquettes, ten, in five flavors, and shredded cabbage under wispy licks of molasses is no less so the croquettes bring crisp, warm crunch, over cheese, spinach, squash, potato, and something I can’t name. The cabbage and molasses bring musky sweetness. Warm rolls and icy beer settle the flavors. That was last night, around the corner, at Taberna Santi, ‘our place in Córdoba.
Yesterday, our second day in Córdoba began in the glory of La Mezquita, The memory sticks indelible, but we doubt it. We return this morning, more attentive. Details seep in, exposing memories as insufficient. More forgiving, I notice the beauty of some of the Christian overlays, just groan at the statue of Saint Whoever, twisted in a paroxysm of ecstatic martyrdom, arrow piercing her breast. I hope that those who must suffer find some solace in the promise of reward. I find wonder in the beauty around her
Later we are alone in the Flamenco Museum, an old inn of simple lines. The display acknowledges the Arab, Roma Gypsy roots of the music, and even more remote origins off the guitar that underlies it. I did not know that the music, the singing, the dance have different roots, flowered together here in Spain.
In late afternoon, a young woman plays Flamenco guitar in our patio, just below our balcony. Marcial says she is very, very good. I can’t judge by his standards. By mine she is worthy of the flowers.
APRIL 4, 2019 – THURSDAY – CÓRDOBA TO SEVILLE
La Mezquita inhabits my senses. For the third morning in a row I return to it. I weave back again, through the narrow alleys and sweet scent of orange blossoms, the only sound the scuffle of my feet on stone. Dennis stays at Marcial's. We leave for Seville at noon. He deals with packing our skimpy bags. I deal, with unpacking the effect of this place, then just give in to it. I carry it with me as I walk home, distracted. The alleys take charge, push and pull me out of familiar territory. Marcial's map has disappeared from my jacket. My internal one is murky. Our place is near the ruins of El tempo Romano, the Roman Temple, an easy landmark, but hidden by the colluding alleys. The kindness of an elegant old gentleman gets me back on track, my Spanish---cobbled from operatic and family Italian, and French from 50 years ago---up to his directions “Second street, left. Find Alfonso Tre on his horse. Keep going. There it is.” He is right. Dennis, used to my geographical indiscretions, has heard many versions of this story.
The bus ride to Seville is unadventurous. It crosses a smothe plain sprouting green felt, unremarkable except for the color and the expanse. Seville is Big City, raucous, congested, amorphous until we get to the neighborhood of our AirBnB, a long, wide park sprouting trees, tables, and tapas.
APRIL 5, 2019 – FRIDAY – SEVILLE
Seville is stunning. There is just too much of it.
Córdoba is dinner at my favorite auntie's---no my grandmother's, the centerpiece one perfect dish, (her carne alla pizzaola, described as “The single most delicious thing I have ever eaten" by a college friend, a serious chef and gourmand, thirty well-fed years after his first and only taste), just ‘us’ and perfection. Seville is a ‘State Dinner’ at the Queen's, place settings from hell strewn for miles over linen and under tiaras and coronets, gold, jewels, some crown, many not, everywhere, glare whiting out detail…and interest.
Seville cathedral is the biggest Gothic cathedral in the world, and third biggest of any style, our free guide says. Born as a mosque, raised as a church, it has long outgrown the nursery, sits cramped and uncomfortable, pushing against alleys. Too close, I see it only as walls (“small bricks Moslem, big bricks Christian") and a 100-meter tall bell tower, né minaret. We move on.
The other courses in this over-rich meal impress, blur, fade. We need something small, tight, sharp. There are 3 Velasquez paintings at the Hospital de los Venerables. Perfect. Dennis’ map software loses it in the tight alleys, wants us to walk through walls. Next? Our guidebook and sore feet decide: the museum is closed from 2 to 4. It's 2:05. We bus back to Jero's, ignore the perfunctory rumble from the grumpy dog, climb the stairs, and take refuge behind our eyelids.
APRIL 6, 2019 – SATURDAY- SEVILLE
This is the plain in Spain where all that rain falls. It's more of a sputter this morning at 8, uncommitted to drenching, carrier of grey light flattering to the landscape slipping past the windows of Bus C1. We’re on a semi-dry run for tomorrow morning’s spurt to the bus terminal and Cádiz. And, C1 takes us to the Alcazar, erstwhile (and sometimes current) royal palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, centuries of sublime, civilized, artistic dialogue between Moslem and Christian traditions written in stone. Some say it is the equal---or the better---of the Alhambra.
We line up to see for ourselves, joining hundreds, jostling umbrellas, mumbling in languages from 4, 5, possibly 6, continents. (I see no Antarctic penguins, just the Nuns-in-Mufti kind.) The Romance languages, diaspora descendants of Latin, provide music: the throaty, gargled resonances of French are the harpsichord, the meaty sibilants of Portuguese add the deeper woodwinds, the clicked cadences of Spanish insert the drums, and the voweled harmonies of Italian are the harp. My ears await Romanian. I hope it’s brassy.
The Alcazar is surely the equal of the Alhambra. If Alhambra wins for setting, the Seville Alcazar grabs the prize for gardens. We win because we have both. Some of those Spanish kings, several famed for persecutions, and nasty permutations of ‘my way or the highway' involving pyres, spikes, and axes, had sublime aesthetic taste, open to the art of the Moslems, if not their beliefs. They drew Moslem design into their spaces, gardens with the sound of water, inlaid ceilings, tiles. One magnificent gateway, commissioned by King Pedro I in 1364 has inscriptions in both Spanish and Arabic, one extolling his virtues, the other praising Allah.
We wander, eyes raised to mosaics, arches, inlays, tiles, beauty overwhelming purpose. We lose one another, then join up, inevitably, in a garden. I imagine the princess of Portugal brought here to marry her Spanish king, falling in love with and in this place.
This time around we put real effort into finding those 3 Velasquezes. We dump Google-ese and try Spanish on a waiter wiping tables further down the alley. Bingo! The building with the three Velasquez paintings is around the corner. Score one for the humans.
The paintings are worth the walk, the wait, and 5 Euro admission, but two other paintings, both of Santa (Saint) Catalina, tell a better story. The earlier one, painted around 1603 shows a generic saintly type, eyes heavenward, very much otherworldly, very much the virgin who led a quiet life and did good works, got beatified. In the later one, painted around 1650, Catalina is less a Santa than a Force to Be Reckoned With, eyes firmly anchored on this plane, hard- staring, straight out of the canvas, lips set, with a definite ‘Don't f**k with me boys, this isn’t my first rodeo’ presence. She is reputed to have had visions of many earlier saints. I bet they didn’t stay around long.
Any guilt (minimal, shadow of a year in Catholic school, Guilt Central) I feel about describing Catalina thus is assuaged by a cup of helado/gelato in 3 flavors, all chocolate. Dennis has mango sorbetto. We’re together at a tiny table wobbling on cobblestones, in a narrow alley with ochre walls, under swags of carnelian geraniums in one of the most beautiful cities gracing our planet. Our eyes roll heavenward, grateful for these rewards...here on this plane.
APRIL 7 AND 8, 2019 – SUNDAY AND MONDAY – CÁDIZ
Cádiz is old.
It was already eleven hundred years old when ‘BC' became ‘AD’, 2000 years ago. Named ‘Gadir' by Phoenician sailors, it is the oldest continuously occupied settlement in Europe. The name has changed over three millennia---the Moslems called it Qadir---but the native-born still call themselves ‘gaditanos', the people of Gadir. Roots are deep here.
The remains left by Greeks, Roman, Moslems, medieval Christians are respected, but seem like smudges on a deeper truth. There's no rush of tourists and gluttonous cameras to Cádiz most of the year. That changes next week. It's Easter—Holy Week. Crowds will clog the streets to watch processions of the faithful carrying their favorite saints out for an airing. Sun worshippers come in summer to air out their bikinis and broil on the beaches. Cruise ship stop in, for some first landfall in Europe, for others the last, before they sail into the Atlantic and fall off the Earth. The ships disgorge, collect again, toot off, blips.
We're here because I am drawn to places on the edge of continents. Back in the day, this was also the edge of the known world. Neat!
Our high up AirBnB is painted deep purple and has a balcony overlooking a narrow street, a plaza, and a wee stretch of Atlantic, grey now under rain clouds. Our host, Carlos, is a retired dancer. He guides us through the angles and contorts of his old, large, angled apartment, his dancer’s inCtinct creating space for his long arms and legs, giraffe-graceful. India is his travel passion. Bits of it are holding up the walls. So are drawings of Lorca, Spain's dramatist, and of Marilyn Monroe. We like this man.
We stay two days, slipping between raindrops, quiet. The walls have seen it all in three thousand years. We make no impression on them. The reverse is not true.
APRIL 9, TUESDAY - CÁDIZ BACK TO MÁLAGA
If we hop off the bus and onto the ferry we can be in Africa in 35 minutes.
This is Tarifa, land's end for Spain, where the broken kiss of Europe and Africa is washed by the rush of the Atlantic and Mediterranean to their own embrace. Our bus stops briefly, two hours after leaving Cádiz on our return to Málaga. We stay on the bus, leaving the voyage to Tangiers for another trip.
The ride along the coast is beautiful. I can’t see Africa, but I know it’s there, so there is adventure. We pass the turn off to Gibraltar, unremarked. The 9am sun is brilliant, the sky Moorish blue to the north over rumpled hills, bleached to the south over the Mediterranean. The bright splashes over the landscape might be white-washed villages, but too many are white-washed vacation villas. This is the Costa del Sol, over-developed playground for the sun-hungry. We are not tempted to include a stop here on our way to that ferry.
Our first AirBnB in Málaga had the charm of the aged and experienced. This one does not. It's drab, perfunctory, old before it was ever new. When asked on Facebook ‘What kind of hairdo are you? It mutters ‘Blonde, frizzy, grey roots. I'm on Kitty over there at the end if the bar. I catch the light, more brass than gold. People notice me. That’s too bad because Kitty never knows how to answer the question “what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?”.
There's a mix up on rooms, but we meet two guys from Germany, switch rooms, move from Pink Room to Blue Room, gain a balcony. There are geraniums hanging off other balconies, and a buzz from the street 4 floors below. Some charm seeps in. Kitty smiles.
8
Euros get us fresh washed and dried clothes, the lavandería autimatico all
ecologico. Dinner is 2 tapas in Plaza la Merced during 40-minute lavar, then 3 more tapas, laundry
dry and warm, after 20 minutes in the secadora. It is after 9pm. Spain comes alive. A
robust chunk in mini-skirts twirls fireballs, a no-talent stringy beard honks
out songs in English over a guitar, voice outclassed by more talented fingers, dogs,
always welcome, always polite, leashed or not, sit hopeful for cast offs. Unlike
Kitty we know what we’re doing in a place like this.
APRIL 10, 2019 - TUESDAY - MÁLAGA
I may have misjudged Kitty.
I see her over there at the corner table, fiddling with an electronic cigarette. The morning light is not kind to the hair, harsh brass, nor to the rest, just harsh. Now.
But there is a glimmer there of something younger, almost lovely. Around her, the young of Spain, so handsome, so young, so fleet, weave a space, move on. She looks away. Is she sitting in memories, vague, and richer for it, of that one time she almost caused traffic to ripple at the sight of her? She watches them pass. She puts the vaper down, digs in her purse, unfolds a cigarette, lights it, puffs, waves to the waiter, gestures He has been waiting for her summons, brings another coffee. She smiles. Maybe she does know why she is here.
We finish the last of our desayunos, sandwich again upstaged by fresh squeezed ‘zumo de naranjas' , pay, and pass on across the square, unnoticed. We are not part of her story. She slips into ours.
Today is a freebie, gift of Turkish Airlines. They’ve dropped those faulty 737s from their fleet before the 737s drop us out of the sky. Our flight from Málaga is rescheduled to tomorrow. We vote for Better Late Than Never, and gain this final day in Spain, traded for one of two dozen in Turkey. So, we wander.
The map lies. The food market is not a trek, just an amble.
A half-pound of tiny dried figs drops into our bag, next to a half pound of ‘frutes secos', the planet’s most outrageously sexy trail mix. Half walnuts, whole almonds, dried berries, raisins, huge, sweet and tart, apricots, all captured and distilled sunshine and now ours. We join a line of shoppers following the smells from roasting chickens slipping temptations out of the wide open corner doors of ‘Pollo Asado'. ‘Caliente’ says Counter Guy. It's not a question or a suggestion. He knows his stuff. Our ‘bocata de pollo asado’ comes out of the oven, crust crackling over chunks of white meat chicken basking at just the right temperature.
Cities, five.
Days, a dozen and a half.
Years, three thousand.
It's our last night in Andalucía.
Pity.
