La Playa

 

As I write this, I’m enjoying a café con leche and toast with butter and jam at Café Bar Habana, one of the many café/bars that line the beach boardwalk near our apartment in La Barrosa. The sun’s shining. It’s already approaching noon, but you’d hardly know it from the pace of life here. The cafes don’t start coming to life until 9:00 at the earliest, some not until 10:00. And the only people on the beach at that hour are walkers and joggers, getting out while the tide is low, the sun is just above the horizon and the crowds are non-existent. Lunch might be in order for some at the moment, but most are like me, enjoying a coffee or juice and a light breakfast. I’ve been successfully getting out in the mornings myself to walk or jog, do some stretching, and a few exercises and yoga poses. Today I still managed to get out, but much later than the two previous mornings. Maria, David and I did an extra late dinner, followed by a warm brandy with David at the rowdy Ché Bar near our place. I didn’t hit my mattress until around 1:00. Crazy for me on Minnesota time. But becoming a lot less crazy here by the day.

 

I imagine by the time I post this it’s going to be Sunday, just because I know I’ll be moving on soon, back to the apartment and then onto the beach for the obligatory, daily relax-a-thon in the sand in the afternoon and early evening. My taza is empty, however, and I’m not quite ready to move on just yet. I predict another café in my future.

 

Picking up where I left off in my last post, I spent one more full day in Madrid prior to riding to the beach with Maria and David on Wednesday.  Tuesday was another busy one, filled with walking and a bit more urban relaxing than the previous day. Yesi and I had a little breakfast in a bar around the corner from their apartment, then took the metro to meet Kenia after work at El Retiro. El Retiro is a sprawling park, just a few kilometers from the center of Madrid. It’s one of my favorite places in the city, filled with walking paths, the greenery of shaded grassy lawns, tons of Madrileños enjoying their city, and a lake in the center, complete with rental row boats. We enjoyed the park, had a light lunch at a café along the lake, then spent a good hour or more laying under the shade near the lake, resting and listening to the happy sounds of the park, which was just what I needed after our previous busy day and considering the sun was causing temps to push up and over 100 degrees.

 

Unfortunately, just like yesterday and like every day, Kenia needed to return to work at 6:00. She’s an extremely hard worker, and currently works for an elderly woman as an in-home care giver. Her hours are 6:00 pm to 11:00 am every day. Every day! Kenia, as I stated in my previous post, grew up in Honduras. She is not intimidated by hard work, and she’s happy to be in a place where she has the opportunity to have a job, pay the rent in a comfortable, safe apartment and continue to strive for better opportunities in the future. It’s so impressive to see her and Yesi, doing what they’re doing and thriving in this new, big city, not just persevering but thriving, finding joy and security, and setting an example for friends of theirs from Honduras who, too, want to make something special and different out of their lives.

 

So, because of Kenia’s work, Yesi and I were again on our own to hit the streets of the city. We found our way to Campo del Moro, a beautiful botanical garden, once the private garden of the Spanish royal family and just behind the palace; a nice set of walking paths along the Manzanares River; and, finally to Casa de Campo, an enormous green space that sits just beyond the northwest corner of central Madrid. It dwarfs El Retiro. Think something more along the lines of the size of a Minnesota state park or a very large county park reserve. We walked thought just a smidgeon of the Caso de Campo, passed constantly by cyclists – clearly this is the place to go if you want to log some serious bicycle miles outside the heart of the city. As we were walking, I was off and on in contact with David. He and Maria had arrived in Madrid earlier that morning and were now heading into the center of the city, and we were forming a plan to meet up. As the plan came together, Yesi and I ended our stroll at Lago de la Casa de Campo, another little lake lined with a path and many attractive looking restaurants (I want to come back for dinner one night.). We then turned ourselves back toward the city, left Casa de Campo and hopped a bus for the el centro. It was there, after a few twists and turns and after missing our bus stop, that we eventually met up with Maria and David. It was a fun reunion, and we ended up going for dinner at El Puerto Rico, a restaurant we’ve been to many times in Madrid, a Rick Steves recommendation and a super fun, little, out of the way local spot in this big city. This dinner – in this tightly packed restaurant – was the culmination of another great, busy, fun-filled day in Madrid.

 

OK, time and location change… Cue the transition… Try to keep up…

 

It is now Sunday, and, like I predicted, this post exists over a couple of days. As of now I’m on the Renfe (Spain’s main train system), bound for Sevilla. A bocadillo de jamon (think something similar to Italian proscuitto on a super fresh, crunchy, sliced white bread bun) and a caña (a very typical small Spanish beer that’s poured from the tap; on a typical day in Spain I feel like I could drink about a dozen of these) down my gullet, consumed at the train station, and I was ready to go. I’m meeting Maria and David’s kids, Eva and Santi, and Eva’s boyfriend Kieran. Sevilla is Santi’s favorite city, and I’m looking forward to having him as my local guide for the next three days. After that, we’ll all head back to the beach and have some good, solid family time for about another week.

 

So, to wrap up our experience on the beach so far. As beach time in southern Spain goes, you don’t necessarily do a lot, but the days just kind of blur together and slide by. I won’t go into everything we did since arriving to La Barossa on Wednesday, but I’ll cover a few highlights…

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  We’ve had a ton of really good meals together. Breakfasts of super good coffee and toast, typically light or nonexistent lunches, then big dinners. One of the best – actually we liked it so much we did it twice – was this place a short drive along the coast to the small fishing village of Santi Petri. It was a fish place – most places here are – but this one was unique because it specialized in cooking whole fish on big sticks on an outdoor fire pit. Our first night we split a couple of large fish – I can’t recall the names - then on the second night we shared about a dozen smallish sardines, all cooked on this big fire pit inside the ripped out guts of an old fishing boat. Super cool experience.
  
  
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  We’ve had a lot of bar time. That doesn’t mean we’ve sat inside a dank bar and just pounded drinks. The bar scene is basically this line of beach places, all with tables facing the ocean. You go to the bar for a café con leche and toast in the morning, you go to the bar after lunch for a caña or a cocktail and some snacks or small tapas, then you maybe go back to the bar again after dinner, for one more drink. One of the best parts of just hanging out at these places is watching David in his element. One bar in particular, Ché Bar, is one we’ve loved since we came to La Barossa the first time. David and Maria are basically friends with the owner, Alberto, and the vibe there is a very convivial one, with patrons seated close together chattering back and forth amid the clinking glasses, the tapas and the waiters flitting around keeping everyone happy. David just jumps into these conversations, and it’s so fun to watch. Rapid Español that I don’t even attempt to comprehend, and lots and lots and lots of laughter. It’s like a floor show I feel like I should be paying a cover charge to watch.

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  Then there’s the sun, surf and sand. La Barrosa is so beautiful from a nature perspective. The wide sand beaches go on forever to our south, and just to our north the landscape changes to rocky shorelines, steep cliffs, and pine forests. Last night I went to these cliffs to enjoy a jaw-dropping sunset, then this morning I walked along those same cliffs for about 30 minutes to Santi Petri, the same fishing village where we had the two outstanding grilled fish meals. Santi Petri is a working fishing and boating village, and it’s this cute little community that juts out on a peninsula separated by a small strip of water from the mainland that contains this area’s largest city – Cádiz. In Santi Petri one feels a million miles from the jam-packed beaches to the south and the metropolitan area to the south.

 

So, continuing to Sevilla. The train I’m on is very full, but very comfortable. I’ll be pulling into Sevilla around an hour from now (5:30 pm), and I’m very excited. I’ve been to many of the cities and villages in this area, but I’ve never been to Sevilla. Also, it’s a notoriously sun-baked oven of a city in the summer, but we’ve lucked out as they’re only expected highs in the low to mid 80s. Good times ahead for sure!