Fun Stuff in Spain Part II

 I am not a good solo traveler. I have friends that happily travel the world alone, and I admire it so much. When I'm alone I feel self-conscious and anxious, I always wish I had someone to ask if we're going the right way and to laugh about going the wrong way. The exception to this, kind of, is museums and art galleries. There is something intoxicating about going in to one of those knowing that I can wander around wherever I want and IF I WANTED TO, I could go in, look at one exhibit or painting, and then leave. I generally don't, but I could! 

The Picasso Museum was in a part of Malaga with a big public square ringed by restaurants and a rabbit-warren of shops and galleries. Malaga was Picasso's birthplace, so obviously I had to go check it out. Every souvenir shop within a one-kilometer radius is filled with Picasso shirts, prints, bookmarks, postcards, magnets and tote bags. I did end up buying Angus a shirt because Picasso painted bulls a lot and Angus is a Taurus (I do not really cling to the tenets of astrology at all, until I do). 

 Entering the museum was a little harrowing. Unlike many places I have traveled where English is the first language, most people did not speak English, which is fine, but I have some French and a little German and no Spanish at all. There were two long lineups for the museum, and I had a pre-purchased ticket and time slot, which meant I could go in the line that only moved slightly faster than the other line. Then some dude was barking at me that I had to leave my purse at the coat check, but not in a way that was immediately understandable, so I was flustered and clutching my phone and wallet when I finally got in. I was also sweaty because holy shit Malaga was HOT. The only saving grace was that it wasn't very humid, so shade made a big difference and it was more bearable at night. Walking around during the day was like being a bug under a magnifying glass.

I didn't have a lot of knowledge about Picasso beyond Cubism and women with eyes and boobs in weird places. I found it interesting reading about his life and work. He was a bit of a nepo baby - his father was a painter and art teacher and by all accounts very encouraging of his son's talent, so there was no 'rebelling against your parents' desire for you to be a doctor' thing (was that a thing in the late 1800s? No idea). He was strongly anti-fascist and obsessed with brothels and prostitutes - it's hard to decide if this was in any way admirable or largely exploitive, but I guess if they're in art they're not being erased?

 Before I went to the museum I accidentally went to the birthplace museum, which is diagonally across the square from the art museum. After I saw the art I decided I did want to see the birthplace, which was much less crowded and expensive and equally fascinating, if not more so, partly because I had an audio guide for that one. 

The various toasts of Malaga

I also went on a tour of the Alcazaba and the Cathedral. That was amazing, largely because the tour guide was fantastic - young, enthusiastic, and hilarious. The Alcazaba was built by the Muslim rulers of Malaga as a fortification, and the guide led us up to the top, stopping at every turn to describe why the way it was built was so brilliant. There were double doors  in narrow corridors and sharp turns so it would be almost impossible for the attackers to get enough momentum to use a battering ram. Once they got in the first door, it was dark so the first people who entered could be picked off easily by archers from above. There were walls where boiling water (not oil, apparently that's a myth, oil was too expensive and hard to heat) could be poured down, and the floors were constructed so the water would make them slippery. Where there were two ways to go, the guide would ask us which way we picked, and then tell us whether we died or not. Then when we got to the top, he told us that all of the ingenious construction turned out to be futile, because the Spanish laid siege to the city and they ended up surrendering. This made me feel really sad for the builders, which is probably weird because presumably fewer people died?

The Cathedral was visually stunning, even though I have a very complicated relationship with churches. I still liked hearing the history. 

By the end of the tour my feet were done and I was remembering the August that I walked around Central Park in New York with my friend Marilyn and when we got back to the hotel room I said this was the wettest I had ever been while still wearing clothes (I also said "you want first shower? I'm getting naked either way!" and she said "uh, you go ahead"). I now had a new contender for that benchmark. 

I booked an Uber, but then ran into the same problem I had encountered a few times - tiny, narrow streets and Uber drivers that could not locate me and did not speak English. A lot of street were not very well marked either. I walked up and down trying to figure out where the first driver was and never managed to find him. I felt like I was about to burst into flame and I was getting the stabbing pain that happens in my right quadripcep when I'm on my feet for too long, and I was feeling slightly desperate. The second driver finally mentioned something about a garbage truck, and I said wait! I just passed the garbage truck! And found him, thank all the gods. 

I went back to the hotel and had a very cold shower. Matt had a work dinner that night, so I went out with another couple - I had met the man in San Francisco, Matt's giant company had just acquired his tiny company and his wife was there helping him at the trade show. The company is called DORC, so Matt kept saying "are you ready for your three-way with the Dorcs?" They were super fun, we drank a lot of wine and I had Wagyu beef for the first time, despite the fact that I had kept reading that it was crucial to go to Malaga and try a Galician blonde (this apparently refers to steak, not sex workers, thank goodness, but nice callback to Picasso I GUESS.)

Fun Stuff in Spain Part 1

First, I completely agree that the airport concierge/babysitter thing was hugely kind and understanding of my husband to put in place.  Second, Steph asked very reasonably why I didn't eat for 15 hours. Sometimes when I fly all I do is eat. Flying always makes my stomach a bit queasy and sometimes just continuously putting food in it makes it better. I can have lounge oatmeal and grapefruit and then an hour and a half later happily accept the in-the-air omelet. Almonds and cookies? Bring 'em on. If we have to get up crazy early, I sometimes get a gross, greasy breakfast sandwich - don't ask me why it helps, it just does. 

I had a very good meal for dinner on Air France at about six o'clock. They offered more snacks, but I wasn't hungry. For every successive lounge and flight I think I was just so anxious that my stomach tightened up to the point where eating sounded really unappealing. In all fairness, many of these hours were overnight ones where I should have been sleeping, but they still offered food on every flight. By the time I landed in Malaga all I wanted was a shower, and then we were going for dinner anyway at 8:30, which was 2:30 back home so really I had just skipped breakfast and lunch, but drinking wine under those circumstances did not feel like a wise decision. 

I did not maintain the same decision-making capabilities for the remainder of our days in Malaga. I would get up in the morning and set out on whatever I was doing. At some point I would get a smoothie or juice because their fresh-juice game was STRONG. Then I usually wouldn't eat much again until dinner, because I was on the go and alone (a couple of times I did have a giant beer and some kind of toast in a cafe, which was lovely). This often did result in having a drink before I got any substantial food. I don't think I ended up causing any international incidents, and apparently the reports on me from Matt's colleagues were mostly positive, but I won't make a habit of it. 

The first day I went to the terrace in the hotel to take a breath and read a book. It was empty and the bartender seemed rather desperate to make someone a drink so I ordered a gin and tonic. Rather than the reserved little rocks glass it is served in at bar night, she brought this large goblet-type thing which I now know is called, delightfully, a copa de balon, or gin balloon. She had a strong Russian accent, and as she started pouring the gin she said something, which I didn't process until I was already mesmerized watching her pour in a circle. Then I realized that what she was saying was "tell me how strong you want it" and I yelped WHEN! She dribbled a little tonic in and walked away, leaving me to consider my life choices.

A bit later Matt and his colleagues arrived for a one-hour reception. There was supposed to be food, but this ran up against the manager of the restaurant who was perpetually cranky and unaccommodating. The hotel had no ice machines, so the front desk people told us to get it from the restaurant, which he seemed to find infuriating even though the restaurant was usually deserted. So Ice Nazi who kept dooming us to drinking lukewarm water also wouldn't give us any food except almonds, olives and tortilla chips with no kind of dip. Not only this, he started coming around whipping the bowls away at ten minutes to seven. We didn't want to complain about him, but we were getting increasingly prone to fits of hysterical laughter (not least because some of us were now drinking on empty stomachs again). 

At the end of the reception, Matt's colleagues Camille (who I've hung out with in Ottawa and San Francisco) said she was just going to order some pizzas for anyone who didn't feel like going out again. She was going to walk next door to the mall to pick them up, and Cheryl the marketing manager was going to go with her, but she had been managing stuff all day and looked exhausted so I said I would go instead. You know what GPS doesn't show you? How far above the ground a particular location is. You know what was really hard to find in this stupid mall? The third floor. We wandered for what felt like hours, Camille finally saying "what's really embarrassing about this is I'm not even drunk". 

We finally found the pizza place, grabbed the pizzas, then stopped at the grocery store to get paper plates and plastic forks. Except there were no plastic forks. Or knives. There were only spoons. Plastic spoons. We got back to the hotel and went to where we'd seen an empty terrace that you walked through the little hotel gym to get to. 

It was dark, and we asked a employee if there were lights that could be turned on. She said no. So we went back to the restaurant terrace, where naturally Mr. Sunshine said "outside food? Not possible." He said we could eat on the other terrace. We said there were no lights. He said they would turn some on. They did not. We were rolling with it. We were ready to eat our salads with plastic spoons. Then we opened the pizza boxes.

The pizzas were not cut. 

It is extremely difficult to cut a pizza with a plastic spoon. 

We ended up tearing them and basically eating like animals, in the dark, and drinking wine out of the bottle. We had really great meals the night before and all the nights after, and this is the stuff good conference stories are made of, so *shrug emoji*.

Spanish Steps

We have Spained (not sprained - much). 

Full disclosure that will shock approximately none of you: I am a terrible traveler. I WANT to travel, and immerse myself in other cultures and learn about how people live in other places and be open to new experiences. But I am so anxious and awkward. I always think I'm doing everything wrong. It is such a terrible, inconvenient thing having a body while traveling, particularly one that is crooked and reacts badly to changes in routine. 

 That is all okay. I said to Matt at one point that we spend a lot of money on traveling so it's easy to fall into the thinking that it should all be perfect and beautiful and if it isn't we're doing it wrong. But i think a very important element of travel IS being uncomfortable, physically and mentally. It's good to shake up a comfortable routine, and it's good to really feel what it's like to be somewhere where you don't speak or understand the language and everything is confusing and frightening. It gives us not just sympathy but empathy for the people who come to our countries from somewhere else and don't speak or understand the language. I'm always afraid I'm going to come across like a stupid tourist but whatever, I AM a stupid tourist, most people are nice about it. 

 I started my other-language immersion in the Uber on the way to the airport (because my husband was already in Malaga, having gone to Paris the week before, and I am alone with my terrible sense of direction, remember). A lovely man named Behezagire who spoke mostly French was driving me. We managed to have a nice conversation with his bit of English and my very bad French. I told him I was going to meet my husband in Spain to celebrate our 30th anniversary and he said he had also been married 30 years, and asked me how many kids we had. He said they had four kids (three boys and a girl) but it was because they had the kids when they still lived in Africa (Burundi). He said it would be a little crazy to have four kids living in Canada, which made me laugh. 

We had worked through almost a dozen scenarios getting me from Ottawa to Malaga, mostly because we booked the flight later than would have been ideal. In the end I flew Air France from Ottawa to Paris, then KLM from Paris to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Malaga. I fully acknowledge that I was traveling with the highest level of privilege in the top level of comfort, but that is still a lot of flights over a lot of hours. Two days before I left Matt told me he had paid a couple hundred dollars for a 'concierge' to help me at Charles de Gaulle Airport. I said, a tiny bit indignantly, "you got me a babysitter?" You guys, without this lovely woman Lina, I would have disappeared somewhere in CDG airport never to be seen again. It is BIG, and confusing, and it was the middle of the night and I would have been utterly and completely screwed. In addition to knowing exactly where I had to go, she was allowed to bypass some long lines and enter some no-entry-looking entrances. The most surreal part of the long walk through the airport was a series of like twenty tv screens, all showing Julia Roberts being radiant and being pelted with cherries in some perfume ad - just what you want to see when you are limping along feeling greasy and gross and desperate for a decontamination shower. 

CDG airport looked like a total throwback. It seemed weird that it wasn't wreathed in clouds of smoke. I went to my gate and instead of an announcement for who should board when, the attendant just sort of looked around at people and gave a Gallic little shrug, and then I walked up and showed my boarding pass and he waved me through graciously. I went, but I was still baffled by the process. 

I got to Amsterdam and sat in the lounge at a table, surrounded by weirdly enormous chairs, staring at nothing for two hours. After the last flight I got off and found the baggage claim where the flight was listed. We waited, and some bags came out, and then there was nothing, and there were a bunch of us still waiting. I was firmly at the 'why does anyone travel voluntarily' stage of grief when a woman who had sent her husband ahead to get the rental car announced to us that he had called and told her that those of us not coming from the European Union had to go find a mysterious second baggage carousel - we were supposed to intuit this telepathically, I guess? My incandescent rage at the stupidity was outweighed by my relief at being able to grab my suitcase and meet Matt outside finally.

The hotel was only about a twenty-minute drive from the airport. I had the best shower of my life and was about to sleep for ten hours. Then Matt said "everyone's going out for dinner in an hour and you're invited." And I said "....okay". I am a fan of the group tapas dinners. Plates and plates came around and you could just grab a bite or two of everything rather than a big whack of one thing. I was sitting with Camille, Matt's colleague who I really like, and when I said no to wine she said "oh, so you don't fall asleep at the table?" and I said "yep, I haven't slept or eaten for fifteen hours and two countries". They are a good interesting, funny group and I got through on adrenaline. Dinner started at 8:30 and took a long time, and when we came out the area was still bustling. We had a nice walk back to the hotel and then I thoroughly and comprehensively crashed.