Tag: Spain

The wow of Bilbao

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

In a fight, Madrid beats Barcelona. That’s my take. I’ve been to both Spanish cities twice now — I returned this week from the capital, Madrid — and conclude that Madrid is the real charmer, the metropolis of less sprawl, less dazzle, less tourists. If it has perhaps fewer bucket-list attractions — despite the marvelous Prado and its trove of Goyas and El Grecos, and Picasso’s overwhelming “Guernica” at the Reina Sofía — it compensates in sheer street-level charisma.   

Madrid is about its distinct, vibrant, supremely walkable barrios, humming with old-world quirks and character. Tapas, flamenco, doggies, blue-chip ham that’s cured for years, wonderful locals, seductive atmosphere. There’s something more intimate, more personal, more special about Madrid compared to big chest-thumping Barcelona. Both are world-class — I do love my Gaudí — but I could live in Madrid.

On another high note, one of my trip’s tippy-top joys was a two-day jaunt to Bilbao, far north in hilly Basque Country. If you know Bilbao, a bustling bayside city of 350,000, it’s probably because of the famous Guggenheim art museum, which is celebrating 25 years as a ridiculously successful tourist magnet.

The Guggenheim, designed with playful splendor by architect Frank Gehry, is a shimmering shrine for modern art, from Serra and Rothko to Warhol and Bourgeois. It’s a succinctly curated spread of visual greatest hits, a tantalizing survey that’s intelligently to the point. You leave filled, not fatigued. 

Naturally the Guggenheim’s star is Gehry’s woozy vessel for the art — all shiny, warped grandeur — which is not only gorgeous, but mind-boggling. How does he conjure such elaborate beauty? (Er, genius.) And how in the world was it actually built — by elves and sorcerers? It’s all so breathtaking, a fun, lavish, almost Escherian modern marvel that vaults gawkers into fits of selfie euphoria. 

Here’s a few more angles:

Louise Bourgeois’ giant spider teetering on the museum waterfront.
Inside the museum, Richard Serra’s extraordinary space-bending steel sculptures.

And some shots of Bilbao and Madrid:

Madrid flamenco. So much boot-stomping, hand-clapping, sweat-flying drama. Operatically physical.
Madrid
Bilbao
Old Bilbao
Old Bilbao
Halloweeners in Madrid (a rare sight)
Street-art dog, Madrid
Real dog, Madrid

Life, in no particular order

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

1. I don’t do dragons. I think they’re silly. For all their fiery tantrums and wing-flapping fury, I can’t take them seriously. Humans ride on their scaly backs like they’re horsies and fly through the sky. I crack up whenever I see that. 

So needless to say I’m not watching HBO’s “House of the Dragon” or Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” big ticket fantasy orgies that by turns bore and baffle me. I don’t even know if “Rings of Power” features dragons — halitosis-impaired Smaug looms large in Tolkien’s Hobbit-verse — but I also don’t do elves or wizards, Orcs or even swords, so I’m pretty much locked out of those good times. 

But I’m not a complete dragon-phobe. My favorite dragon movie is easily “Reign of Fire,” starring Christian Bale and a bald Matthew McConaughey as gnarly post-apocalyptic dragon slayers. If you haven’t seen it, do. It’s a blast. McConaughey chews on a big fat cigar throughout. There’s fire and volcanic sludge and dragons all over the place. It’s also pretty grim. And nobody rides a dragon.

2. My brother and his wife just got back from Madrid — precisely where I am headed 20 days from now. No conspiracies, no subtext, we just happened to agree that Spain’s capital is the place to be this month, this year, right now.

What’s great is that I sent the lovely couple on a sort of expedition to scope the city, suss out all the hot tapas bars and cocktail bars, the most electric neighborhoods, what sights to see and what to skip. 

And they delivered resoundingly, finding me a better hotel in a livelier area, several hip restaurants and bars, a shrine to Goya, and a slew of invaluable practicalities. Teamwork! High five! Madrid is famous for its blaring all-night carousing. You still hear people banging bongos in the street at five in the morning. I land on Halloween. I hope it’s batshit. 

3. The ongoing saga of my misadventures in sneaker shopping — the subject of a prior post — is finally winding down. I spent the summer agonizing over what shoes to get to replace my moldered, moth-eaten collection of casual kicks. 

Halt. Mere minutes ago, after I wrote that paragraph, I ordered the final pair of sneakers I will order this year. (I hope.) Just as I was getting comfortable with some slick new Cole Haans, I stumbled on a pair of rare New Balance sneaks that I fell for instantly. Now what? I put the Cole Haans back in their box (for the moment) and clicked “Place My Order” on the New Balance. 

Which means I’ve now, since July, bought seven pairs of sneakers, an unholy sum that has me and my Visa doing barfy loop-the-loops. What else: I got another pair of New Balance, two pairs of Italian-made Oliver Cabells, a cheap pair of white Adidas Stan Smiths, and some Asics that I promptly returned. Incidentally, one pair of the Oliver Cabell shoes are all but unwearable, causing oozing blisters at each step. And it’s too late to return them. My Visa is writhing.

The indulgence is appalling. I’m no sneaker-head. I don’t collect footwear. I am not Imelda Marcos. I just need a fresh fleet of shoes to replenish the worn and rejected. If the latest New Balance are good, I will return the Cole Haans. That will mean I will own only five new pairs of sneakers. One of those causes blisters. So that means four new pairs. Not so dramatic after all. But still: really?

4. Next to Michael Mann’s cop thriller “Heat 2,” a brilliant, blistering, book-form sequel to his 1995 crime movie masterpiece “Heat,” with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino among other badasses, the best book I read this summer was Sheila Heti’s “How Should a Person Be?” — sticky auto-fiction that giddily pinballs through its meandering idiosyncrasies. This jagged, brainy book functions with the itchy buzz of life. It’s hilarious. Awkward. Wincing. Wonderful. Yeah, life.

Narrated by a 30-ish Heti, it’s aptly described as “part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part vivid exploration of the artistic and sexual impulse.” It happily recalls the sui generis first-person fictions of Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill and Elif Batuman, currently my favorite writers. They kind of drop you mid-thought into their lives, then roll on from there with chatty, funny, unembarrassed realism. The works revel in their mundanity, which becomes a kind of magnificence.

Heti’s 2012 novel was named one of 15 “remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write in the 21st century” by The New York Times. A bold but clear choice I wholly endorse. Heti has a new novel, “Pure Colour,” that I wasn’t bonkers about, but you might find worth a peek. For now, “How Should a Person Be?” is what I’m bellowing about from the mountaintop. (Me. Megaphone. A towering crag.)  

5. If you want to know something about me, read this tart and telling passage from Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel “The Hero of This Book”:

“Myself, I loathe having my picture taken. I have for as long as I can remember, even in the old days when you could go weeks without somebody trying. In all group shots I am not pictured. It’s beyond vanity and in the realm of superstition. I don’t like people looking at me. I don’t like being the center of attention except under very specific conditions. … I will not stop for a photo. I will not look at myself in a mirror for you. I will not watch myself pass in a plane-glass window.”

There. Now you know a bit more about me. Also, I’m not big on dragons. 

Autumn ecstasy, briefly

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Summer is officially dead. Yes!

Yesterday, the first day of fall, landed with a beautiful bang — low 70s, intermittent cloudbursts, followed by the gauzy autumnal light that streaks so nicely through the clouds and on breeze-blown trees. I almost wept. Today’s forecast: sunshine and 63 degrees. The soundtrack: rustling leaves. Be still my beating heart.  

I banish sweat and sun, beach parties, barbecues and Birkenstocks. People moan about seasonal depression right about now. I get that in the spring; setting the clock forward is a ritual of exquisite distress. It was George Harrison who sang that euphoric earworm of misguided seasonal optimism, “Here Comes the Sun.” Damn him. 

Harrison, in my book, is inviolable. Then there are the real musical scofflaws, whose seemingly every tune is a cloying summer anthem, trilling about sand, surf, girls, cars and other frolicsome “fun.” That’s why the Beach Boys are the worst band ever.

Fall is when I shop for clothing, like a trio of chilly-ready shirts and a Bond-worthy waxed jacked from Barbour (on sale, natch). They’re perfect for my annual fall journey, this one to Spain happening the day before that quintessential fall-iday, Halloween. Face it: Halloween beats Easter, July 4th and Labor Day in any back alley brawl. 

I fall for fall. I embrace shorter days, cool weather, scattered leaves and natty scarves, while spurning the obnoxiousness of football and cutesy orgies of pumpkin-flavored confections. I read today there are people who suffer “autumnal existential dread.” The article said: “The melancholy we feel is a form of grief, mourning the lost sunlight, the ease of summertime, and the greenery that abounds in the warm weather.” Boo-hoo.

I pity you not. In fact I kick up my heels and do a leprechaun jig to the staccato rhythm of my own gleeful chuckles. Fall is here. And guess what? Winter, that frosty front of misery for most, is right around the corner. Bring it on. I’ve got the jacket for it. 

Paradise.

Rewards of the return visit

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Friends, those kooks, occasionally wonder why I often return to places I’ve already traveled to instead of going somewhere new and horizon-expanding. The answers are simple and numerous. One, obviously, is that I’ve fallen for a city or country and the days I visited were but a tantalizing taste. I want more. To really get under the skin of a place. So I go back.

(It should be said that last week I was enjoying my first journey to Buenos Aires — my first time in South America — so I still seek the exotic and uncharted.)

To return to a destination is also to refresh the original experiences that made it special and to caulk the holes of crumbling memory. Right now I’m considering a revisit to Madrid, Spain, where I went like 20 years ago. That trip is a fond haze.

Besides Picasso’s gobsmacking “Guernica” and the gems of the Prado Museum — I’m specially partial to the wackadoodle Bosch triptych — I remember only a convivial Irish pub where I met some fun locals and a whiplashing green rollercoaster on the city outskirts. It didn’t even seem to be part of an amusement park, just this stand-alone adrenaline machine amid the trees. Anyway, it was a blast. 

So I’m mulling Madrid for my fall trip, with a three-day excursion north to Bilbao, which is famous mainly for its warped and woozy Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim art museum but has, since the museum’s opening in 1997, blossomed with attractions and an arty, edgy personality all its own.

Guggenheim Bilbao

I’ve yearned to go to Bilbao for at least 15 years, but you don’t just go directly to the city, you typically go through a hub like Barcelona or Madrid then trek north by train to Spain’s autonomous and beautiful Basque Country.

Thus I’m piggybacking a new place with a place I’ve been before, but both should be rejuvenating and illuminating, since, as I said, my memories of Madrid are a scintillating smudge. 

This happens. I went to Rome in March and even though I had been there twice before, it was changed as much as I’d changed in the intervening years. Same with my January visit to Lisbon. I recognized much of the city, but it was also strikingly novel, a whole new world. It’s about layers: each visit peels back exciting ones, those you didn’t see or didn’t have time for the first go around. Discovery is fathomless.

And this is from someone who journals copiously and snaps photos like a paparazzo. But those mementos are static, mere documents, like a map or a postcard. Throbbing, breathing life is the aim, so, yeah, it’s time to go back.

All packed with nowhere to go (yet)

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

I’m ready to skedaddle.

I am going to Turkey and my prep-work is a whooshing blur. Look out — I am a trip organizer extraordinaire, a whiz-bang packer, planner and non-procrastinator. I am completely prepared to go to my next destination, namely Istanbul, with a two-day sidelight to the south in Cappadocia. It’s time. I’m ready. Let’s go. 

I’ve booked my round-trip flight between home and Istanbul, and the same for Istanbul and Cappadocia. Reservations are made for three hotels, seven dinners and a chi-chi culinary tour that ambles across both sides of the city, the European and Asian. 

I know where I’m renting a motor scooter in Cappadocia, and I know the price. I’ve purchased and printed my Turkish tourist visa. My passport and credit cards have been photocopied. I’ve selected the book I will take for in-flight reading. And I have procured provisions: No Jet Lag tablets (self-explanatory), Emergen-C immune boosters and a few airplane-size bottles of booze for the red-eye flight to Turkey.

In my head, my wardrobe is totally picked out and as good as packed. I am, I think, more than ready to walk out the door.

I leave in two months.

My readiness is ridiculous. I’ve accomplished all of the above in little less than two weeks since I bought my airline ticket. I book my flight. And I pounce. 

Yet I am not rash and hasty, though I have been on occasion in the past. (I still rue that musty, doll-house-size hotel room in the Latin Quarter. Refund!). I stay up late, often into the wee hours, researching and cross-referencing restaurants and hotels, poring over various reviews.

IMG_1163Budget is always a factor. Quality is too. Email exchanges with tours, eateries and hotels are voluminous. Like a bulldog reporter, I ask pointed questions, suss out better deals, dig for the best room and best price. Don’t hustle this hustler.

I have done this many times. I’ve had practice. Hire me for your next vacation. In a hair-whipping whirlwind I’ll have you booked and vacuum-packed in less time than it takes you to notify your credit cards that you’re leaving the country. (Yes, I’ve already done that, too.)

I’m sure this all appears quite anal and neurotic. And, dammit, it is. But it’s also the breathtaking, otherworldly efficiency of a luxuriantly bearded wizard or a dancing magical elf. I rule.

My brother and his family are going to Spain for Christmas. I see them straining, huffing, puffing, doing the rich, rewarding work of travel planning. Some of that includes reading books about their destinations that aren’t city guides. (OK, I still have a book about Turkey I need to read before I go: “Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.”)

I’ve assisted my brother a little using my almost eerie aptitude for travel research, helping him locate hot restaurants and the like. But four months out, they’re on the ball, doing great work.

My work, as thoroughly noted, is all but done for Turkey. I have two months.

Two months.

Now what do I do?