My Amsterdam

Amsterdam was Amsterdam. We visited the beautiful parks, Vondelpark and Rembrandtpark, and strolled through the streets of tall, skinny, leaning houses. We took a tour on a canal boat and visited the flower market as well.

We had yummy open-faced sandwiches with spicy flavors from the previous Dutch colonies like Suriname and Indonesia.

But the whole time we were in Amsterdam, I was thinking of one thing: a local Minneapolis hit from the mid 90s.

One bonus is that now the singer, Jim Ruiz, is our local head librarian at the Southeast branch of the Hennepin County libraries.

And now, we are in Madrid, enjoying our last day of Spanish sun and wondering exactly what to do with ourselves. It’s a strange day indeed.

Madrid=cranky blur & El Retiro

So, when one goes to a European capital, one hopes to enjoy the sights, the sounds, the art, the cuisine, but one might be more likely to experience instead the weariness of a screwed up sleeping schedule and the demands of cranky children who also have a screwed up sleeping schedule.

The Great Masturbator

The Great Masturbator, 1929, Salvador Dali, oil on canvas, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

And if one were to push on through despite these challenges and attempt to take said cranky children to one of the great collections of 20th century art in a museum that might or might not be called the Reina Sofia, one would also have the pleasure of visiting a museum staffed with equally cranky guards who epitomize the shushing-librarian stereotype to the nth degree and whose goal appears to be wringing all of the fun and wonder out of the experience of great art, guards who tell old women to move along when they have seated themselves on the floor to soak in the horror and awe of Guernica or who freak out when a child enters a room without being firmly in the grasp of an adult, whether or not said child is close to a work of art at all. One might think a museum that features a painting called The Great Masturbator might just lighten the hell up a little bit, but alas one would be wrong.

Ah, yes, and if one were six-and-a-half, one might spend more time looking at the plastic Disney and Marvel Comics figures in the window of a souvenir shop outside the museum than one did looking at any of the art, and one’s parents might just be happy you are happy for some brief time.

On bright side, Madrid does has a lovely park called El Retiro that does not have cranky guards in it, and one can find the playground equipment on the north end and the statue in honor of the devil (true story) on the south end (appropriately), and one might enjoy it so much if one were six-and-a-half that one might go there twice in two days.

But one’s parents also might drag one out to eat yummy treats (for the parents) and talk to new friends in sidewalk cafes and stay up until midnight as well because one’s internal clock says that it is 7 hours earlier at home than it is here.

Those things might happen to one in Madrid, but they also might not.

The eagle has . . .

In honor of Neil Armstrong, but our landing looks like it was a bit harder than his was.

See the detritus of a transatlantic flight below:

Henry sleeping after arrival in Spain

Frankie sleeping after arrival in Spain

The view from our hostal in MadridAnd the requisite view from the hotel/hostal window.

Which reminds me, we should have brought some of you with us in our luggage because 1) we didn’t have to go through customs when we arrived in Spain (a little odd and disconcerting actually, but certainly got us out of the airport faster) and only did transit visas in France, 2) we were upgraded to a three bedroom apartment with a kitchenette that is owned by the hostal we originally booked, and 3) we brought some HUGE luggage!

More soon. ¡Hasta luego!