Our flight from Madrid was 7:20am this morning. Neither of us slept well in anticipation of the travel. We needn't have worried though. The hotel van, clearing security in a Spanish airport etc, all went smoothly.
We got a cab from the Sevilla airport to our flat and met our landlord right on time. He seems really thoughtful. He seemed to know we'd be frazzled, even at 9am, so he just let us in to the flat, gave us the major info and agreed to meet us again tomorrow once we have the lay of the land.
After living out of a suitcase for the past three-plus weeks, unpacking our suitcases and expanding out into our living space, knowing we were settled in for the long-haul, was wonderful:
The flat has a washer but no dryer. Clotheslines for all of the flats in the building are on the roof. We went up there, just to check it out:
We tried to keep moving today, so walked around the neighborhood a bit. Our street is quite narrow and comes off of a touristy strip off of the west side of the Puente de Triana (Triana Bridge) that crosses the Canal de Alfonso XIII. Our neighborhood is called Triana.
Our street Alfareria, we are on the 3rd floor (2nd in Europe) of the the reddish building at the right of this photo:
Right behind me in the above photo, our street joins Calle San Jacinto, one of many touristy strips about the downtown:
Mario, thoughtful person that he is, provided us some fruit, bread and tea to get us started. Laura and I found a small grocery store with a relatively good selection and decent, less than touristy prices, about a block west and bought a few additional things, including cheese and meat. We made sandwiches for lunch using Mario's bread:
After lunch, I slept for about 2 hours, then Laura and I walked around a bit. We crossed the bridge to the other side of the canal, deeper into the tourist area. It was a warm, clear, sunny day with very low humidity, very much like Walla Walla at this time of year:
This "turret" is at the west end of the bridge:
The view of the east side of the canal from the bridge, the so-called "Centro" neighborhood:
In the Centro neighborhood was what appears to be an overgrown moat around an old building that is now the University of Sevilla:
This building is ambiguously described as a "State Government Office" by Google, pretty building though:
Back on the west side of the canal, my attempt at an artsy photo of the east side of the canal:
Finally, the obligatory first day in Sevilla selfie.
We're hoping to get some sleep tonight, meet with Mario tomorrow to get additional details about the flat, visit Carrefour for some household items we didn't find at our local grocery store and start thinking mathematical thoughts.
Sleep was a bit weird last night. Exhausted from lack of sleep the previous night while flying from Miami combined with a 6 hour time change, I went to bed around 9:30pm local time and woke up around 8:30am local time. It was a somewhat fitful sleep, but the room was wonderfully quiet and dark.
Pardon the clutter.
After a chat with an amazingly friendly and helpful woman at the hotel desk, we got on the bus/metro for downtown around 11:00am and made it to downtown just in time for lunch. We had sandwiches at a Spanish chain called Pans and Company. It was good. Sadly, there is not a location in Seville.
The US fast food restaurants we've seen while traipsing around Madrid: McDonalds, KFC, Carl's Jr., Subway, Burger King and, for Rachel, Taco Bell:
Following the advice of the hotel desk worker, we took your basic tour bus around Madrid. This particular tour bus had two different circuits and unlimited on/off privileges. It had a headphone jack with audio commentary in about 15 different languages depending on which channel you selected. When you encountered something of interest, you just got off the bus, explored and got back on a later bus. Here are some random things we saw while riding and getting on and off the buses:
This generically called a "Cultural Center". It's a converted palace. It's hard to see here, but the main tower is being renovated. I like how the tarps covering the workers have images of what the tower should look like underneath. We saw this strategy used all over town on construction projects. I've never notice that being done in the US. Usually, it's just ugly old tarps until the renovation is complete.
Speaking of "mildly disturbing fish", we saw this monkey fish for sale in the market place:
Actually, this isn't mildly disturbing, it's wildly disturbing. Also, who knew you could eat the things inside barnacles?
We grabbed a light meal at this market. Laura had some seafood tapas that she really liked. I had some small chicken curry wraps, also good. We took the public transportation back to our hotel which involved walking about a half a kilometer at the end. Here is an awesome Spanish manhole cover, very safe:
and inexpensive. Plus reduce, reuse, and recycle, the three r's of conservation.
Tomorrow we get up early for a 7:30am flight to Seville and hopefully settle into our home for the next year.
It was a short day today. We lost 6 hours flying over from Miami. Good thing too, because we're both pretty beat. The flight went on time and our passage through customs was smooth. We even managed to get the customs person to stamp the correct page of our passports (the ones with our visas) without too much fuss.
I'm sure we looked like your average overwhelmed tourists as we wandered around looking for our hotel shuttle, but that too went relatively easily. The shuttle showed up pretty promptly and took us to our hotel very near the airport:
It's pretty isolated out near the hotel. Laura and I went on a couple of walks trying to find anything useful--a grocery store, an ATM, but kept running into dead ends where pedestrians were clearly not meant to go. That said, the room is lovely, clean and well-appointed. Also, the international electric outlet adapters that Emily got me for my birthday work like a charm. Thanks Emily!
We exchanged a $20 at the hotel desk at the very noncompetitive rate of 0.62 euro/dollar instead of the going rate of 0.86 euro/dollar. Upside, the hotel clerk told us how much the bus to downtown cost and gave us our euros in coins that were appropriate for the bus. Consulting google maps, we were able to get downtown to the Royal Palace of Madrid using the public transportation, bus to metro to city center about 45 mins. We had no particular yearning to see the palace, but it was a goal for us as we figured out how to get about. We have a full day here tomorrow before flying to Seville on Wed. Today was just to get familiar and get something to eat. Tomorrow we'll head down there again and perhaps take a tour or visit a museum. I actually didn't get a picture of the palace, but the view out the front was typical beautiful old European cityscape (pardon me while I squint into the sun, haha):
There were also a lot of statues of famous Spaniards presumably. Like this guy:
He looks a bit like he's been hitchhiking and without luck for so long that some birds have roosted on him. There were a lot of other statues. I didn't see any women which is probably one reason why these women were protesting the patriarchy on one of the nearby squares:
Neither of us was terribly hungry, so we stopped and grabbed some empanadas at this place in the palace district:
A few technical things. Our T-Mobile One phones work pretty well. Unlimited texting and data (albeit throttled back from US rates) with nothing to do and no extra fees.
We hit a cash machine with our Capital One debit card and after ATM fees etc, pulled about a 0.83 euro/dollar exchange rate. We also made a few credit card transactions using a Capital One Quicksilver card and pulled a 0.86 euro/dollar exchange rate (the going rate according to google). We'll try to use the Quicksilver card as much as possible. Also, if you have one of these cards and logon to your Capital One account and set up a "cash advance" PIN number, it allows the card to work with the "chip & PIN" systems ubiquitous here in Europe. The ticket machine at the metro station asked for the PIN, we used the aforementioned cash advance PIN, and the transaction completed successfully. We researched the heck out of credit cards before this trip and Capital One seems to be the best in terms of exchange rates, no foreign transaction fees, and now the chip & PIN technology.
Tomorrow we hope to be Madrid tourists for a day, then Wed fly to Seville to settle down for a while.
I'm sitting at the gate with Laura here at the Miami International Airport. We sailed through bag check and security. We were a bit worried about the weight of our checked bags and they did come in a kilo high (both), but the person checking us in let it slide. He even checked our carry-on rollers through to Madrid for free.
We've had a great time these past three weeks or so, seeing the country, visiting friends and relatives and finally hanging with Emily and Rachel down at the beach for a few days. They just dropped us off about an hour ago and we already miss them a bunch. Somehow it's a bit harder this time than when they leave Walla Walla or when we go back to Walla Walla, but I know that we're never more than a day away from them.
Rachel now has the car for the year. (I keep freaking out thinking I've left my keys somewhere, but then remember, I don't have any keys now.)
We closed out the airbnb condo this morning and drove to Rachel's new neighborhood. She has recently moved to one of the ubiquitous duplexes on the south side of the University of Miami campus.
We met her new roommate briefly. She seems like a good fit.
We went to Taste Buds of India for lunch. They had a buffet that was good, but not nearly as extensive as Walla Walla's Indian Cuisine restaurant on Main St. In particular, I was seriously missing the mango lassi.
After a bit of suitcase reorganization that involved annexing most of Rachel's living room,
We went to the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. I actually showed my Whitman ID and got in free! It's definitely geared to kids, but they had a lot of interesting stuff for adults too. I particularly liked the aquariums. Also, the view of downtown Miami was beautiful.
The Schueller women, in particular Emily, got fixated on this puzzle in the "Design Lab".
They eventually solved it, but needed a hint. I saw first hand the persistence that Emily has developed working at MRL these past couple of years, haha. There was a fun touch sensitive dance floor upon which Emily and Rachel demonstrated their prodigious dance skills.
Our visit to the museum closed with a wonderful, immersive, planetarium show. If you're ever in the area, this museum is worth the price of admission (even if it ended up being free for me, haha).
On a tight schedule, we hit La Sandwicherie for dinner. I had the "exotic salad" which was mix of greens, avacado, mango and diced turkey. With the vinaigrette dressing, it was a nice mix of flavors. Laura and I tried to keep it light since we're on an overnight flight to Madrid and are hoping to sleep for most of it.
As I write this final post from the US for a while, there are some sad football fans in the gate area in the wake of Spain's upset loss to Russia in the round of 16 of the 2018 World Cup. This is a bit rushed, so pardon the errors. I'm going to pull the trigger on this and then change the timezone on the blog to central European summer time (+6 hrs from the east coast, +9 hrs from the west coast). See you on the other side!
Not content with seeing the ocean in person, this evening we watch Blue Planet on TV:
The morning was spent watching the move Extract on my recommendation. It wasn't as good as I'd remembered, but also not terrible. After lunch, we went to the beach and snorkeled a bit more. The water was rougher and consequently cloudier so the visibility was diminished. We spent most of our time around the pier pilings at the nearest beach:
Afterwards, we spent some time on the beach:
The tall buildings here are ubiquitous and in many ways depress me. Even as I use them, I'm left wondering what was here before and am struck by how wildly unsustainable all of this is and how precarious:
These massive towers are visible as far as the eye can see. Each one contains multitudes, consuming resources and generating waste. And, using massive amounts of electricity:
I enjoy the beach and the time with my family, but whenever I'm in environments like this, I'm left a bit sad.
There's a bridge visible from the balcony of our 23rd story condo with a drawbridge. This afternoon I noticed that it was preparing to open so I did a timelapse:
This is our last full day in the US for a while. Tomorrow evening we fly to Madrid to begin our year in Spain.
