Thursday, October 22, 2015 Back to Denver

Oh this is the most endless day of my life! We rise at 5 AM, taking an overpriced taxi to the airport. We sit and wait. Isn’t that what flying is all about? Hurry up and wait. We board the plane back to Frankfurt, packed in like sardines. I have a nice conversation with the gentleman next to me, a German national inspecting pet food factories the world over. Considering how long ago I learned German, I’m happy that I can generally explain in German anything he misses in English or Spanish.

Landing in Frankfurt, an aisle chair arrives to take me off the plane. Bird vociferously greets me on the jetway and I transfer. We have our own personal Lufthansa minder. She takes us through the endless Frankfurt airport to our next plane. Frankfurt has set up its airport so that you roll through every duty-free option existing on the planet. My poor body battles the assault of foul-smelling, headache-inducing, overwhelming perfume.

But hurry up and wait again! The plane will board late. Ugh! Keith looks for food, eventually settling on a Big Mac. The sandwich looks and smells as disgusting as I recall McDonalds’ food being. I eat the pickles.

Why when I fly, do I find the world filled with other handicapped people or just people who claim they can’t walk? Obviously, they fail to comprehend my great importance. Ha! Seriously, folks, walk as long as you can. Otherwise, you just slow things down for everyone, including yourself. Given Lufthansa’s prices, I fully understand the desire to be pampered.

Lufthansa first tries to take Bird, asking me for my rental papers. I respond, “Nein!  Mein Rollstuhl!” Acquiescing to my retaining Bird, Lufthansa then pushes us through a door onto the jetway. Other cripples have crowded the space, each pushing to be first on the plane. For the life of me, I will never understand why a person wants to be first to board. You will be sitting in a very confined space for hours, especially if you cross an ocean! None of the other cripples need an aisle chair. By process of elimination, I am eternally first on and last off.

I greet the plane employees with my severely limited German. In their amazed excitement, they respond and I understand! I explain that I learned a bit of German 40 years ago in high school. As German is now seldom taught in public schools, the employees respond that for me, it must be like a mother tongue. They are over kind. Mein Deutsch ist sehr schrecklich!

Loaded via aisle chair onto the plane again, we watch the hordes of people board. Two older perfume-sodden women approach our larger seats, saying “We have both ordered aisle seats! How could we possibly be next to them?” I fervently hope that they move into the aisle seats, one away from us. (Our larger seats cost $100 extra each. On the way TO Frankfurt, the only unsold seat on the entire plane lie next to us. YEAH!) A long conversation between the women and Lufthansa employees ensues. The result? The women, too twitterpated to correctly read their tickets, plop down next to us. 

Shit!

The closer perfume-intoxicated woman notices that I never stand up. Inquiring minds being what they are, she asks me why. I admit to being crippled.

Mistake! She then begins telling me how to live my life. Obviously, a woman who can’t find her clearly marked seat on a 747 knows more about living with MS than I do. And I am looking forward to ten hours of this?! Lord help me!!!

Upon being subjected to incompetent, unwanted advice, I do have choices:

1.     Ambien

2.    Telling people to shut the fuck up

3.    Changing the subject

4.    Doing my very best to ignore them

5.    Explaining and justifying my extremely personal medical choices

Well, I’m out of Ambien, if I tell her to shut up (which in retrospect I should have done) I have ten hours of ice next to me. I take the passive aggressive way out, repeatedly change the subject and then bury myself in Lufthansa’s personal TV.

Lufthansa gives each person their own personal TV set where you can choose movies, TV shows or other things. But you can only watch TV so long.

Should I defend and explain my personal medical decisions? My life and choices remain my own, absolutely none of anyone else's business. 

So, I end up absorbing this woman’s ignorant advice, idiotic drivel and poor behavior for ten hours, swallowing my smoldering anger. She assails me with rude, unrequested advice, regaling me with tales of the inherently obvious. Climbing into a wheelchair eliminates fifty IQ points, so anyone knows more about being a cripple than I do. I keep the peace as I’ve been taught to do, no matter the cost to myself.

I am trapped, lacking viable options. I pray for the flight to end. What do I want? Just for people to keep their mouths shut when they know nothing about progressive MS. For other subjects, I don’t ask for competence. After all, I live in a country that elected a pervert as president.

At last Denver! Not a moment too soon for my fleeting sanity! We arrive in the late afternoon here. Lufthansa provides another aisle chair, then shoos us through customs. We end up by the luggage. Spaced out, we finally realize that the entire planeful of people has passed us when we note the German flight crew walking by. Bear rouses himself, shaking off his weariness. He gathers our suitcases but discovers that the airline has left Tinky the walker upstairs, despite promises to the contrary. We contact the baggage people. After half an hour or so the walker appears. We leave DIA 2 ½ hours after we landed.

Walking out, we find a taxi. We don’t need a special taxi because the huge America taxi easily accommodates all our junk.

Our Spain adventure and the Trips for Crips blog ends here. I now offer an epilogue before I return to writing my memoir.

In the time since, the multiple sclerosis has, as ever, turned my body into a walking time bomb. “Tick, tick, tick,” I hear even in my sleep. 

So, is Spain the last trip? Unfortunately, the answer is probably yes. Since returning home in November 2015, the MS attacked viciously. We have not had a particularly easy year. My health has deteriorated significantly. Upon our return, I lost a lot of core strength, speech, and the ability to walk behind my walker. (To travel affordably via Airbnb, I must be able to walk from the bed where I sleep to the toilet. The disease has now stolen that ability.)

I spent the winter of 2015-2016 sick with one illness after another. The coup de grace for travel came in April 2016 when I fell getting into my wheelchair, breaking my wrist. I began to envy the dead, never a good thing. With progressive MS, if you don’t use something daily, you lose that function. The wrist healed, but I lost the ability to transfer in and out of my wheelchair on to minor things like the bed or the toilet.

So I have lost most autonomy and have unfortunately reached the point where I require assistance every hour or so. My wonderful fellow animals care for me. But I know everyone needs a break. We have hired an aide who comes on Tuesdays (at great expense). Paul cares for me on Saturdays. Keith gets two days off to golf or ski.

It has taken me quite a while, but I have again adapted to this reduced mobility. I am, after all, still alive.

MS has forced us to add a large handicap-accessible bathroom/bedroom in the former attached garage. The beautiful room has consumed our remaining wealth. The minute you say disabled, the same as if you say wedding, the price skyrockets. The number of people doing their damnedest to suck the lifeblood out of cripples truly amazes me. Probably all voted for Trump. (No, I’m NOT happy about November’s election results. The election was good for pot, legalized suicide and Trump. Coincidence?)

Before everything fell apart, I very much wanted to visit the Hermitage (St. Petersburg), the last museum on my bucket list. Fate had other things in store for me. MS has stolen my remaining health and wealth. Currently, we have no travel plans. But the boys have become accustomed to transferring me on and off of the toilet. So you never know!

Previously, we traveled inexpensively using Airbnb.  For $90 a night, you generally rent someone’s flat complete with a kitchen and washing machine. My transfer and walking inabilities have closed this to us. (Our Spain vacation cost us $9k for 3 people taking 3 leisurely weeks in Spain, including airfare) I HATE bad motels and food, but we may have been reduced to that. And I am disgusted with the massive expense of traveling in the States. Obviously, I must get over this before we contemplate future travel.

A year later, Spain appears as a glowing gracious dream, slowly fading, like the last sunbeam dancing across the water just before the sun disappears below the edge of the ocean.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015-We begin the Long, Long Journey Home

Today we began our long journey home. We don’t actually fly out till tomorrow but we must return to Madrid today, so in many ways the trip home starts when we board the RENFE bus here in Granada.

Bloodroot contacts our host Emilio, via texting on my dumb phone. I had forgotten that dumb phones possess this ability, albeit requiring much button pushing. From Emilio, Bloodroot obtains a working knowledge of the washing machine. He doesn’t lock his clothing into a fifteen-hour wash cycle like we did in Barcelona. He correctly operates the washer, then takes his laundry down the street to a business with a clothes dryer.

We walk down to the river taking a nice, leisurely, last-minute look at Granada. Walking along the byway, we see some of the river holds water while other parts do not. Not designed by the Moors, famous for showcasing water’s inherent beauty.  Although decorated like a centerpiece of the town, we sadly note that we view more of a controlled drainage ditch running through town then a glorious though contained river.

At 1:30PM promptly, Emilio arrives, picks up the apartment keys and calls a handicapped taxi for us in rapid- fire Spanish. We relax in a taxi large enough for us and our junk. We reflect upon Rick Steves’ “Pack light!” motto, but note that he travels without wheelchairs and walkers. May the remainder of our journey be this pleasant and simple!

Our journey home begins! The taxi takes us back to the train station, where waiting RENFE employees load me back on the bus. This time I do transfer to a normal seat. For the next hour and a half, covering 75 miles, we watch southern Spain’s scenery go by for the last time.

Retracing our path, reaching Antequera Santa Ana once more, RENFE people efficiently load me off the bus and on to the bullet (AVE) train. The train plays the same stupid, instantly forgettable movie again, this time fortunately half over. After another two hours and fifteen minutes, 300 miles later we arrive again back at Puerta de Atocha, the center of all things Spanish. (Remember the AVE train, a German train, proudly reaches 300 km per hour. The Spanish do have to build appropriate tracks, no?) Only Barcelona Sants rivals Puerta de Atocha.  

Back to Atocha and Madrid. This time a woman greets us, helping us off the train. She has some trouble corralling Bloodroot in the Atocha station. Bloodroot refuses to understand that cripples have their own magical way through huge train stations. After retrieving Bloodroot, who had disappeared using an inappropriate escalator, she personally walks us out to taxi-land. But we can’t find a handicapped cab. Our assistant calls the cab and speaks rapidly in Spanish. We wait and wait. The sun sets; the night cools. We grow cold. Bloodroot eventually calls the taxi too but becomes frustrated by his Spanish. Finally, Bloodroot calls again, this time saying to the dispatcher, “lento, lento, lento.” She slows down and we understand that a handicapped taxi will arrive in 15 minutes.

The cab arrives, the driver greeting us in English. We compliment him on his English skills. He replies that as the only American taxi driver in Madrid he should be good at English. We learn about his various wives and businesses and the cost of a taxi license in Madrid. He takes us out to our hotel near the airport. His brother will get us in the morning and take us to Barajas Airport. He greatly praises the food at a mall near the hotel.

But we fear that the mall will be too far away and too complicated given that Bloodroot flies out in a couple of hours for Santiago. We have dinner at part of the hotel. Despite my fears, it’s quite good. We hug Bloodroot goodbye and turn in for a short night. 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015 The Alhambra

Today marks our ultimate tourist day, anxiously awaited. For today we visit the Alhambra, actually the Palacios Nazaries, considered by many to be the most important tourist spot in Spain, if not all of Europe. I purchased our tickets online this past June, noting even then that many of the half-hour entrance time slots had already been taken.

The Alhambra complex itself lies at the top of the main hill, La Sabica, in Granada. For once bowing to temporal reality, we hire a cab to take us up to the hilltop. We join the line to pick up our tickets for the palace. Bird and I try to sit up near the front of the line awaiting our turn. A guard officiously insists that we get at the end of the line that has one person in it, namely Bloodroot. We join Bloodroot and the guard now believes we try to jump the queue, pushing Bloodroot aside. The guard begins fussing anew. At long last, Bloodroot looks at the guard and says “juntos” (meaning “together”). The man finally buzzes off. In due time, our turn at last arrives. We enter the kiosk to claim our all-important tickets, as required using the same credit card with which I made the initial purchase way back in June.

An immense line neighbors us for those without reservations, people who neglected to purchase prepaid tickets. Do they not read their guidebooks? Every book goes on and on about the number of people wishing to visit the Alhambra. The palace sells out daily, probably by 8 AM. By 9:30, the current time, all palace tickets long ago sold for today. This does not disperse the line or even, as far as I can tell, discourage its inhabitants. You need a different ticket to visit the rest of the complex. Perhaps they desire this or think that they’ll magically get a palace ticket. Reminds one of the old Grateful Dead shows with people begging for a “miracle” ticket.

The Alhambra actually consists of a bunch of things. The Moors built Palacios Nazaries or the alcazar (palace), the alcazaba (fortress), the Generalife gardens and a surrounding medina (city). Charles V erected an unfinished rotunda palace on the property.

In a bizarre twist of fate, we follow in Keith’s mom Jean’s footsteps. She toured the Alhambra in the early 1990s on an AARP tour. We have her tour book she bought here, still full of good info. Jean pronounced the Alhambra the best thing she visited in Spain. I never met Jean. She died young, ten years before I met Keith. But I relish her gentle shaping of his soul. I reach out to touch her spirit through the Alhambra.

For the most part, Europe and her attractions tend to be old. We forget the age of what we visit until something jolts us, be it someone’s guidebook or an old photo. I once saw a photo of my grandmother Carrie standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in the 1950s. We saw the selfsame tower in 2009. Our ancestors wanted to see the same things we do and as us, sometimes they pulled it off too.

Our tickets for the Palacios Nazaries permit entry between 10 and 10:30 AM. Bloodroot won’t listen to me, his beloved mother. Quelle surprise, eh? Deciding we must be physically at the palace by 10AM sharp, Bloodroot insists we run the fifteen minute walk to the entrance. Bloodroot charges ahead, blazing the path. Arriving at 9:50, we learn that the guards forbid entry until 10AM. Thus, arriving early only has cast us into another line.

The guards approach. They maneuver us ahead of the crowd, supplying a removable ramp to cover a set of steps, and set us near the palace entrance to wait. The crowd threatens to overflow, spilling past the line behind us. Like us, they’re forbidden entry prior to 10AM. We all wait, as the guards before the palace doors have machines that must say 10AM before they can stamp our tickets and open the doors.

10AM, here we go! The alcazar, or the sultan’s palace, formed the last stand facing the reconquista. We enter a dim, almost hushed space, mesmerized by the incredible tilework we find in the first room. 

The palace opens into bright light as we enter the first courtyard, the courtyard of the Myrtles. Hedges surround a swimming pool. The palace displays water, wealth in the Islamic world. Water gracefully flows everywhere, sparkling like gold, leaving us humbled by the sultan’s wealth.

From the courtyard, we access a more dimly lit room, the Grand Hall of the Ambassadors. Here, years ago, the sultan would receive you. As our eyes adjust, we see the perfect star covered ceiling and Arabic script everywhere. The room reverberates with history. We picture, almost unwillingly shoved back in time, the reconquista ending here. A bit later, Columbus talked Isabella into financing his voyage in the very same room.

We enter the next courtyard, the Courtyard of the Lions. Per the Rick Steves’ bible, the Jewish community gave the sultan the fountain with twelve lions, one for each tribe of Israel. Water splashes from each lion’s mouth. When the Christians conquered in 1492, they took apart the fountain to see how it worked. They weren’t smart enough to put it back together correctly, but did display the pieces. Fully restored in 2012, the fountain with its flowing water delights us.

While I commune with the Jewish lions, desperately trying to remember the name of even one tribe of Israel, the boys disappear into the sultan’s private rooms, sadly wheelchair inaccessible. Unfortunately, guards prevent the boys sneaking me and Bird into the forbidden area. Bear describes a maze filled with rooms, hallways and staircases bursting with intricately carved wood, filigreed windows filled with wavy thick glass. Peering through the glass produces an antique look to the world. Randomly, beautiful courtyards spring open when you descend one stair. “I also saw amazing private gardens, with a beautiful view across a ravine looking at a church,” rhapsodizes Bear.

Numerous rooms branch off of this courtyard, sadly inaccessible for me. The boys explore them all.

7108

Leaving the palace, we look for something to eat. Trapped once more in a tourist hell, we buy some amazingly bad sandwiches. We eat our crappy sandwiches while sitting outside overlooking a drop off into a lower inaccessible pavilion. We spot some really heavy cats. The cats own the place and have taken it over, but why are these feral cats so fat? Living the good life? Watching the other tourists and the cats, we see people throw the lousy sandwiches to the cats. Eschewing the bread parts, the cats eat the cheese and quasi-meaty parts. But they get so much food they can be picky, often leaving the tourist offerings untouched. Watching the cats forms the best part of the meal.

We eat enough of the quasi-sandwiches to stave off crazy hunger. Full enough to feed the cats too, we then toss our lunch remains (sadly most of it) and leave the stand of questionable sandwiches.

We next visit Charles V’s palace, a two-story circular open-air place. Thankfully, conquering Charles (grandson of Isabel & Ferdinand) built his palace next to, instead of on top of, the Palacio Nazaries. Charles’s son, Philip II, didn’t finish the palace, choosing instead to build El Escorial while leaving his dad’s place exposed to the elements. The place has perfect acoustics. Anything you say in the middle of the circle can be heard all around. The boys set me into the courtyard’s center. I begin to declaim Macbeth. For some reason, they hurriedly push me away, long before I finish.

We take a secret lift upstairs to find Oh God more art( a fine arts museum). I just can’t take any more art. Can you believe that I would ever even think that? Much less utter the statement? We walk around the courtyard and ask to go back downstairs. Keith resists, of course, sucked in by yet another art museum. We leave, ignoring his protests. We threaten to visit another church, bringing instant compliance with our wishes.

On to the fort that defended the city! From the bottom of the hill at the fort’s base, we peer into the fort, seeing a maze of steps, not at all accessible. We part ways with Bloodroot because he wants to see the fort. He promises to meet us right outside the gate of the gardens.

Now we wish to tour the fabled Generalife Gardens. Taking various paths, Keith and I wander through the gardens. Keith likes the olive trees, the pomegranates, and especially the view of the palace from the gardens. We encounter steps repeatedly preventing me from seeing much of the gardens. Keith parks Bird and I, then disappears down a cripple-forbidden path. He sees the Alhambra again, liking the view, as it occasionally pops up as an amazing background item.  Bloodroot actually eventually finds us. He expresses his disappointment in the fort. “Lots of steps. Not much to see.”  Following Bloodroot’s lead, we see another secret part of the gardens, as he takes us on a step free tour.

Gardened and palaced out, we make to depart. As we learned from the morning taxi ride, the palace complex sits upon the tallest hill in town. As we all know, the high ground is priceless militarily. Leaving, we decide to walk down the tour bus road. Rounding the first bend, I spot two Roma with fists full of rosemary standing at the base of stairs descending directly from the Alhambra. I believe I watch them discuss, rosemary waving about, how they will perpetrate their scam on the people walking down the stairs. I also believe the Roma consider wheelchairs unlucky. Unlike prior wheelchair-free trips, on this one no Roma approach us. For what it’s worth, the rosemary scam involves a gypsy (Roma) aggressively pushing a sprig of rosemary on you then demanding five euros compensation as coins are unlucky. The bible warns us of this. We see a good bit less of the scam than we had expected, perhaps because by October the main tourist season has ended.

Leaving the stairs behind, walking downhill, we see how incredibly clever the Moors were with water. Old, very old, tile lined courses next to the road easily handle all the water coming off the hill. The roadway, tree lined and green, feels more gardeny than the official gardens. We watch the water dart here and there, under the road at times. It’s still summer here. We walk under a green leafy place. Eventually, we come to an archway. We enter the city through a gate again finding ourselves on the outskirts of the Albayzin.

The boys know our location. Left to my own devices, I would wander witless and die. We wander slowly back to our flat. Our last official day of vacation ends with the group too tired to cook. We stop to eat our dinner at a place called Abades Paco Martin. We are the only customers in the huge restaurant, never a good sign. Apparently adept at feeding large tour groups, the mediocre food does fill us up. We return to our flat and turn in for the night.

Monday, October 19, 2015 Granada

Today we leave Madrid for Granada, a major trek. The high-speed train tracks lead to Malaga. We ride the bullet train (AVE, or “bird”) from Puerta de Atocha to Antequera Santa Ana.

My computer gives up the ghost on the train, the battery refusing to restart. Since his arrival in Madrid, Bloodroot has refused to power down the computer correctly via Windows 10. He simply slams the top closed, so that by the time the poor thing finally shuts down, he has completely drained the battery. Alas, alack: the computer defeats us, by simply quitting. Would the battery have given up the ghost anyway? Of course, but probably not so soon. Going forward, we have only our phones. I have a dumb phone, albeit with a phone number and international access. Bloodroot has an iPhone without a number and the disposable phone he purchased at the Madrid airport. Can we, as 21^st-century people, survive with such limited access to the internet? We boldly venture forth.

In the physical world, at Antequera Santa Ana, the train abandons us, booting us out to a waiting bus. Fortunately, we spent all that time on Saturday at Puerta de Atocha (Madrid’s main train depot), thus RENFE expects us. The employees on the lookout for a family of three with a wheelchair quickly locate us. Somehow the RENFE bus just feels higher level, perhaps because unlike the lifts in El Escorial buses, this operational lift goes up and down. Big bonus, the employees actually can operate the lift! They rapidly load me onto the bus.

The bus trip allows us to see things passing by more slowly than the train did. We see lots and lots of olive trees. According to the Bear, we pass nothing else. He considers our current journey down to Granada to be a trip through a wasteland. Looking more closely, I feel North Africa and Maghreb approaching through the dry yellow hills surrounding us.

For the duration of the bus trip, I stay in my uncomfortable wheelchair (“Humph!” says Bird) as I really don’t want to have an argument with RENFE.

I speak of the joys of various trips with a woman across the aisle. Her fluent unaccented English leads me to believe her to be a fellow American. Wrong! She’s Dutch. She encourages me to travel, explaining that she spends all her disposable time and income doing so. She has just spent a few weeks in the south of Spain. Now heading for Granada, she sadly admits that she hadn’t booked a ticket in advance for the Alhambra, forcing her to instead buy a spot on an overpriced tour.

Arriving at the Granada train station, we leave the bus behind. Accustomed to huge American taxis, we fruitlessly search for a reasonably sized cab, at least a Prius station wagon, for goodness sake! Luck deserts us. We pile into a cab far too small for us. In this tiny car, we hook Tinky the Walker around Keith’s neck and cram his wheels behind my back. Each time the cabbie brakes, my back uncomfortably bangs against the Tinky’s wheels. Fortunately, the taxi quickly delivers us to our new Airbnb flat.

Using the dumb phone, we contact Emilio, our Airbnb host. He meets us at the apartment and lets us in. Our beautiful flat boasts marble floors and delightful balcony windows. Keith and I take the twin beds next to the bathroom so that I needn’t walk so far with Tinky. Bloodroot gets the big double bed at the opposite side of the flat. Now the bathroom has a bidet beside the toilet, which I must maneuver Tinky around. Each time I visit the pot I think, “Who put this fucking bidet in my way?”

Safely settled in, what shall we do? As the clock says only 2PM, let’s tour! We take off for the Royal Chapel, Ferdinand and Isabella’s tomb. Entering, we eavesdrop on an English tour passing by.

History considers Isabella the brighter of the two Reyes Católicos (Catholic Kings), in our parlance “the brains behind Pa.” On their sarcophagi, her sculpted face holds greater intelligence but more otherworldly calm, as if contemplating eternity with serenity as she faces down Death. I believe Death may have been scared, for once.

By marriage, Isabella (Elisabeth in English) and Ferdinand united the Iberian Peninsula, creating Spain. Together they completed the Reconquista (re-conquest), triumphing over the Moors. Intensely Catholic, they believed that all of Spain (actually all of Europe) should have one religion, Catholicism. Earlier, in 1480, to maintain Catholic orthodoxy and enforce/insure compliance they instituted the Spanish Inquisition, headed by one Tomás de Torquemada.

After 1492, the Inquisition focused mainly on the recently, forcibly converted Jews and Muslims. Never the bugaboo created by the fervid 19^th-century Protestant writers, the Inquisition began as a government sponsored channel to eliminate extra-judicial killings. Historical records, although undeniably spotty, have the court examining 150,000 people and murdering 3,000. (Other sources claim 5,000 victims.) But the auto de fes, with the human torches, provided massive spectacle and propaganda, no? To extract confessions, the court did use torture (theoretically only in 15-minute sessions and leaving no permanent damage). Torture, a legal norm at the time, produced acceptable confessions. The court also relied upon elaborate inter-community spying, reminiscent of the East German Stasi, 450 years later.

Back to Isabella, who perished first, preceding her husband Ferdinand in death by a few years. Ferdinand, a poorly behaved widower, did his utmost to steal kingdoms not rightfully his, including hers. She died believing she had accomplished great things—Spain regained, united under one religion, wholly Catholic, rich beyond belief from the discovery of the Americas. She never knew what havoc her actions bequeathed her descendants, her country, and the world.

The couple had many children, five surviving childhood. Their daughter Catherine married Henry VIII of England. Henry VIII’s & Catherine’s child, Mary Tudor (aka Mary I), inherited her mother’s and grandmother’s overzealous Catholicism, raining down disaster upon England during her short reign. Immense joy had greeted her Spanish princess mother’s (Catherine’s) marriage but times changed. Mary lost her popular acclaim by marrying her first cousin once removed, Philip II. The English had no desire to rejoin the Spanish royal family. To add insult to injury, Mary began burning people, in the name of God, of course. History has not been over-kind to her. In England, Mary Tudor became Bloody Mary, nearly universally reviled, yet in Spain, Madrid has a subway stop named for her (Maria Tudor). Guess it depends which side you’re on.

My favorite of Isabella’s children is Juana la Loca (Joanna the Crazy). She married the playboy prince Philip the Fair. Her obsession with him compelled her to drag about his coffin for years, earning her the ”Mad” epithet. She inherited the Spanish crown, but her son Carlos, ruling in her name, ensured she remained incarcerated as a lunatic. Current historians debate the level of her purported insanity, given her son’s self-serving behavior. Artists love Juana; we saw many paintings of her in the Prado. Think about it. What great material!

Returning to here and now, leaving the sarcophagus, Bloodroot goes down into the crypt, inaccessible to me because once again we encounter “fucking steps”.

Keith returns to our flat as Bloodroot and I tour a madrasa or Islamic school. The school hasn’t been operational since the Reconquista in 1492. A previous unenlightened generation plastered over the school’s incredible Moorish engravings in the walls. One day, perhaps 50 years ago, some of the plaster fell off of the wall revealing amazing hidden beauty. Curators carefully removed all the remaining plaster to discover that whatever zealous Christian who had covered all the Moorish artwork had done us all an immense favor. Protected from the elements, the geometric intricacies carved into the stone retain their bright green, red and blue paint, reminding Bloodroot of the vibrant medieval colors in Louis IX’s Sainte Chapelle in Paris, all the more so for its beautiful tile. An uncovered window points toward Mecca, channeling the prayers of ancient students in the correct direction.

We return home, retrieving Keith. Leaving the flat, we walk to the old Moorish neighborhood called the Albayzin, and begin to wander. Narrow alleys containing lots of steps wind their way up the hill. The thousand-year-old neighborhood laughs at the concept of wheelchair accessibility. Fortunately, I travel with two people who don’t believe in handicap inaccessibility. The shallow stairs have one step up then 10 or 20 feet flat. We pick a restaurant from Rick Steves’ bible. Bloodroot, using his GPS, guides us on a meandering path to the restaurant. Looking around we note every available space holds a stall staffed by merchants aggressively hawking souvenirs, the identical souvenirs probably all made in China.

As we ascend, a woman steps out of a restaurant, inviting us in. No way! Bloodroot has decided that we will dine at the place mentioned in the Rick Steves’ bible. Following his lead, we ascend the many steps, at long last finding the storied restaurant. We look up. A  flight of perhaps twenty much steeper steps lies between us on the street and the restaurant. Accepting defeat, never easy for the males, we began to descend. We return to the restaurant where the woman had beckoned to us earlier.

This Moroccan-style restaurant, Terteria Kasbah, has low tables and backless chairs, definitely a challenge. Somehow, the boys get me out of Bird and onto the edge of the table in a booth with a back, while they take the backless chairs. (Balance, a big problem with MS, demands chairs with armrests and a back. I tumble easily to the floor.) Hookah pipes seem to be everywhere. We try to avoid them as we really don’t want to breathe tobacco smoke while we dine. Looking in a stall across the alley, I see some lamps I like. Unfortunately, they don’t match our mid-century modern house back in Denver. And how would we get them home in one piece? Easily cowed by the boys, I give up. We enjoy the reasonably priced, Moroccan food. I devour my eggplant dish. After dinner, we smell more hookahs coming out to various tables. The tobacco, heavily cut with fruitish smells, primarily apple, wafts by pleasantly. Remember the old saw about tobacco settling the stomach? May be true!

Sated, we bumpily return to our high-end Airbnb and turn in for the night.

Sunday, October 18, 2015 El Escorial

Today we plan to visit El Escorial, Philip the Second’s masterwork. We take the Metro to Moncloa again. After careful research (Rick Steves and the internet), we decide to take the bus, which leaves from the Moncloa metro station, instead of the train. I think that Americans fear European busses. We shouldn’t. Checking our options, we find that busses can be faster than trains and also drop you closer to your destination. Today, the bus terminal lies closer to our destination, so we choose the bus.

Reaching Moncloa, we wander up from the subway to the bus station terminal. We approach the bus driver, explaining that we need the lift. Like the bus to Bilbao, this one has a lift in the rear. The driver loads me into the bus and straps Bird onto the bus floor. She wiggles into a comfortable position. Personally, I would rather transfer to a regular bus seat (sorry, Bird!) but decide it best not to make waves.

Quite rapidly, only half an hour later, we arrive at the bus terminal in El Escorial. Using his iPhone, Bloodroot leads us down a zigzag path through the hilly streets of the town to the centrally located basin. Here, the claustrophobic medieval town flattens out into an ugly barren brick-scape, where at long last we find the monastery and palace of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Philip II built and named his creation after one St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo), whom the Romans roasted over a slow fire. The myth has him (St. Lawrence) calling to be turned over halfway through the process, making him the patron saint of humor. Finding the entire myth rather gross, we discuss whether Phillip II found this, and only this, funny.

Philip II considered himself the leader of the counter-reformation. He visualized a united Catholic Europe under his control, funding numerous armies to achieve this elusive and hopeless goal. Once again, times had progressed, eliminating the possibility of a return to a more medieval world, featuring one ruler and one way to believe.

His lasting fame in the English world comes from the armada he launched to depose Elizabeth I of England, forgetting that God is a Protestant. Bad weather and Sir Francis Drake scuttled Spain’s armada, thwarting Philip’s mission. His bellicose failures contributed to years of sorrow to Europe, all with the best of intentions. Brings to mind the bloated military of the USA today, busy making costly humanitarian crises and messes throughout the world.

During Philip’s time, the Church would sell anything to make a buck. Costly indulgences gave you free entry to heaven while simony bought you a nice Church office. Nothing remained sacred. Smarting from accurate Protestant charges of corruption, decadent luxury, and soft living amongst a money-mad clergy, the intensely Catholic Philip II built El Escorial as a cornerstone of the counter-reformation, austere and forbidding. He ran the Inquisition from here. While other counter-reformation edifices lured the peasants back with beauty, Philip’s work emanates power and power alone. The palace/monastery laughs at luxury and soft living. Philip II set up both his and his daughters’ bedrooms facing the basilica high altar. When they awoke, still laying abed, a mass greeted them.

As the sole uncontested world power, Spain wallowed in monetary glory in the 1500s, pumped up on tons of silver and cochineal stolen from the Americas.  But Philip’s masterwork easily swallowed the arriving treasure, leaving Spain virtually nothing to show from her Golden Age, her period of peak power and influence.

As we travel south through Spain, into the old centers of power, we leave the joy and mercy of Mary behind, in favor of a grotesque fascination with hideous pain. The sixteenth century cult of death replaces Mary with Jesus’ tortured body and ghastly fulsome depictions of martyred deaths, generally at the hands of the Romans. I grow heartily tired of these gruesome, glorified horrors. I strongly considered conversion at Montserrat, because I love Mary. Subjected to this incessant cult of death, I revert to staunch atheism. Besides, Keith says that he’ll leave if I become Catholic or adopt a cat. “What about a Catholic cat?” I query. Not amused, the Bear grimaces in a stoic silence.

Back to the palace. Thanks to both the Catholic penchant for kindness to cripples and the lack of accessibility, I enter gratis. We walk down a dimly lit hallway showing scenes of a battle that the Spanish won against the French (Battle of San Quentin). Bloodroot disappears, heeding his own inner exploration call. Due to my lack of Spanish fluency, Bear and I end up in an endless church service. We eventually escape, garnering looks of disgust from the other parishioners.

While walking through this endless, very large building made of ugly, forbidding gray stone, we enter a room where Prado curators have lovingly restored Rogier van der Weyden’s Calvary. Taking four years, the curators brilliantly resurrected the intense reds of the painting along with the beautifully crafted faces of Saints Mary and John standing at the base of the cross, crying over the dead Jesus above them. Bear basks in heaven as he views the room’s excellent explanation of the exact restoration process. Exhibits include a “before” photo of the unrestored painting, dull and grayish under the burden of six centuries of grime and dust. Gazing at the gloriously restored painting, I remain struck by the intense reds of the work. In an age preceding chemical dyes, would anyone have seen this brilliant color outside a church?

Bloodroot rejoins us. The boys visit the mausoleum downstairs, off limits to me. Keith reports descending into a solid marble crypt, as if entering a marble cave. “Quite amazing”, he says, “Eerie and beautiful at the same time.” He feels no sense of death at all. The bodies lie unseen behind highly-polished stone. Philip II built the tomb to house his family in perpetuity, but it’s already full. Perhaps he expected the world to end before now. Where will the bodies of Juan Carlos and Sofia, much less Felipe VI and Letizia, lie in state? In Sofia’s snazzy art museum?

Tiring of Inquisition ghosts, we return to the bus station, taking a far less convoluted path than we initially embraced in the light of morning. Ravenous, we eat some incredibly bad bus station food while we patiently await the 3PM bus. The busses run every half hour. When the bus arrives, the operators claim that the lift has broken, instructing us to wait for the 3:30 bus.

These older busses have lifts in their centers, where the newer lifts live at the back of the bus. At 3:30 the next bus arrives. The employees can’t work this lift either. They proffer various tools to the ascender gods, to no avail. They order another bus but can’t work the lift on it either. They turn to us, telling us to wait for the 4 o’clock bus. Realizing that the problem relates to employee incompetence, we doubt that the 4 o’clock bus will resolve our dilemma. We decide to board the bus.

The line gives way as the boys push Bird and me to the front of the bus with its daunting five steps. I stand, allowing Bloodroot and a random stranger to load me onto the bus. Bloodroot moves my feet while the other gentleman holds my torso erect to prevent me from toppling back down to the ground. I sit in the front seat closest to the driver. Keith loads a vociferously complaining Bird into the storage space under the bus. As Blanche Dubois in a so purring Southern Bourbon-filled voice long ago quipped, “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.”

The bus returns to Madrid. The entire trip back, I shake in terror at the thought of my impending departure from the bus. I have a bad case of the bejeebers! As usual, I worry needlessly. To exit the bus, Bloodroot holds me upright while Keith moves my legs. The driver congratulates us as we shake his hand. We ride the subway home.

We exit the metro’s shelter, stepping out into the pouring rain. Walking home a short block, we nearly drown. Arriving safely home, we dry ourselves.

The boys want me to sleep to recover from this adventure. However, the whole event has greatly unnerved me. I have a glass of wine and only then can enjoy a well-deserved nap.

Bloodroot decides to run out in the rain to return the empty bottle from the hard cider he bought Thursday. He now faces an absolute downpour. He steps in a puddle cresting the top of his boots, soaking his feet. He returns, reporting that the streets are rivers. He can’t return the bottle because the bar is closed on Sundays. He suspends his boots from the ceiling and begins attempting to dry them with a hairdryer. As an homage to Dali, Keith snaps a photo labeling the picture Son Drying with Boots.

Our neighbor Miguel drops by. “Oh,” he says, “You went out to El Escorial. That’s why Spain doesn’t have any money.”  Touché! I savor the moments when people echo what I’ve been saying all along.

Tonight, Bloodroot, finding us far too lazy and old, researches restaurant choices, seeking an interesting, high-quality place that cares about its food. He finds a restaurant called D’Fabula, which reviews alternately describe as “Bizarre” and “Delicious”. Sold, he makes a reservation. Bear and Bloodroot get a well-deserved break from cooking.

Unfortunately, the sky has opened, pouring down rain. We discuss staying indoors, at home, and cooking, but decide we should go out to celebrate our last night in Madrid. Around 8 o’clock, the clouds close up, the rain magically ceases. Fickle Spanish weather! We venture forth to the restaurant, in which as advertised, we find food both delicious and bizarre. The chef creates many quirky dishes for us with perfect wine pairings. We rejoice in finding a restaurant that cares more about glorious food than it does about fleecing tourists. Phillip II, despite his purported uber-austerity, would be jealous. We enjoy great food and wine. The restaurateurs are artists. We linger at the restaurant, staying out late (for us), the stress of our high-test traveling forgotten. We reminisce already about our stay in Madrid.

Saturday, October 17, 2015 Museum of the Americas

On today’s agenda: The Museum of the Americas, highly recommended by a curator and friend at the Denver Art Museum (DAM).

Our centrally located Airbnb flat in Lavapiés has allowed us to thus far skip the subway. We’ve walked to every major Madrid museum. But today, we make to bravely travel farther afield (splitting infinitives as we go), beginning by venturing onto the Metro. We enter the underground system at our local entrance — Lavapiés. We buy tickets, paying for three of us, although the mega-gates for luggage and wheelchairs open following one swipe of my ticket. Good thing that we’re honest people, and pay for us all, eh?

Descending into the subway, we take the yellow line six stops to Moncloa. We find Madrid’s subway to be very nice, clean and brightly colored, by far outshining Barcelona’s. The trains don’t run as often, though. Here the train appears every six minutes while in Barcelona one stops by every three.

Leaving the subway, we cross a busy street, walk through a college campus and eventually see our quarry up on a hill. Gazing ahead, we find The Museum of the Americas not in the best of shape, looking as though it could use some exterior renovation. Bricks and mortar have worn thin, and the grounds are unkempt; to enter, we circle past many barred and shuttered doors to the only open one. We convince Bear he’s foraging.

Entering, we discover, as foretold, a unidirectional museum with displays entirely in Spanish. We begin with Columbus discovering the New World. I stick with Bloodroot this time so that he can help me with my translations. The small museum has significantly less stuff than the DAM. We find this wonderful and considerably less overwhelming. Numerous small statures refreshingly depict sex as a normal part of our existence. Some of the sculptures depict people copulating, at times, men with men. Unfortunately, we find no artwork showing women with women. Bet the Church didn’t like this. Have fun on earth? Heaven forbid!

For the grand finale, the museum displays their most prized possession, one of the three surviving Maya codices. I see a comic book-esque series of pictures with boxed-in captions in ancient Mayan, written on deer skin and involving lots of dragons. Can I make heads or tails out of it? No, but I’m excited that Diego de Landa, the Hitleresque Spanish bishop who tortured the Maya, didn’t burn everything. Ironically, de Landa preserved much Maya knowledge we have today as he fluently spoke the language and wrote about the Maya world in Spanish, before embarking upon his orgy of destruction. (For more on de Landa, copy and paste into your browser: http://theunion4ever.com/1000-centuries-of-death/diego-de-landa/)

Returning to the Metro, we travel two stops toward home on the yellow line again, exiting the subway at Ventura Rodriguez. Leaving the station, we head over to the Temple of Debod; Egypt gave Franco an actual Egyptian Temple to reciprocate for Spain’s assistance in moving the Egyptian Abu Simbel temple imperiled by the construction of the Aswan dam. Bloodroot enters the Temple and checks it out, finding it pretty cool. Unfortunately for Bear and me, everywhere we look we find stairs, small rooms and tiny doors. Bird says no way! Bear enters the Temple, looking for access for me. He returns, declaring it impossible.

While we’re waiting for Bloodroot the clouds begin to sprinkle. Perhaps moved by his goat-like instincts, Bloodroot senses now as the time to quit the temple and rejoins us. We return to the metro and head home. We put on our raincoats to get to the subway, a good move.  Unfortunately, when we exit at Lavapiés we eschew raincoats, deciding we can make it home. This turns out to be a tactical error.

But was our DAM curator Donna right? Was the museum and codex worth the soaking we received? Absolutely! Although I could be drier!

Returning to our flat, we dry off and hang our clothes to dry. (Spain has no clothes dryers.) The boys fix a nice meal. Warm, full and dry, we turn in for the night.

Friday, October 16, 2015: Modern Art Today-The Centro de Arte de Reina Sophia

Today I promise the boys an easy day. Every time I have said this, unfortunately, I’ve been guilty of uttering a complete and total lie. Will today be the exception that proves the rule? Should I just go with the flow and change my name to Trump? We discuss enforcing rapid progress through art museums and focusing on the art we actually want to see. This approach presents massive difficulty for us. How would we know what we want to see until we see it? Our son moves even more slowly than we do AND he can read Spanish, eliminating our excuse, “Oh, we can’t understand the description by the artwork. Best move on.”

But first, we worry about traveling to Granada on Monday. We decide we must consult with RENFE. Examining RENFE’s website on the internet, I learn of a planned AVE track from Madrid to Granada, to be completed in 2020. Currently, no train tracks exist between Córdoba and Granada. Huh? (Ave means bird in Spanish, thus bird the flying train, causing massive jealousy on the part of my Bird, the wheelchair.)

Duly confused, after breakfast, off we go to Puerta de Atocha. Our proposed stop, Handicap Customer Service, where RENFE provides assistance for people like me getting on trains.

Our first helper, a gentleman working in the Handicap Customer Service Center, becomes so confused by the concept of an AVE train and a bus that he walks us over to the more advanced people who work in Disabled Customer Service. He ambulates most curiously. I later learn that RENFE hires the handicapped to assist the handicapped. We spend around half an hour with a woman who takes my name and enters it into a computer, we think to tell the train people to have ramps where we stop, but we’re not entirely sure that we accomplish anything in our time here. She also seems bewildered by the bus, but does tell us that the bus will be accessible at the time needed. Sometimes I think our destiny involves living  at Puerta de Atocha. Fortunately, our Airbnb lies very close to the Atocha train station. Oh well, if we fail with trains & buses, a cab from Granada to Córdoba costs €130.

Trains settled or unsettled, we begin our art museum filled day with a trip to the Centro de Arte de Reina Sophia, highly touted by Mr. Steves. We ride a most excellent external glass lift up to the fourth floor where we find a plethora of very modern art and art installations. Although we agreed and desire to walk along fairly rapidly, I can’t get Bloodroot to move. He changes his mind and decides he must see everything no matter how much we have to see today. He carefully and slowly reads about each artwork in Spanish. All reading in other languages requires unhurried, meticulous attention, regardless of your fluency level. Ignoring our near constant heckling and cajoling, Bloodroot insists we spend about an hour on the fourth floor. Ugh, children!

The curator loves film as an art form and has matched each piece with an appropriate movie. So Dalί’s The Great Masturbator stands beside the short film Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog). Why do all of these famous Spaniards title their work in French? Fortunately, Bloodroot does not insist upon watching each movie or we would have never come home! (Actually, I later learn that he already saw Un Chien Andalou a few years back.) I’m not sure I have anything really to report, except that I see nothing exceptional, actually nothing really worth seeing. Perhaps Bloodroot has a more positive experience to share. He tells me he didn’t find it too interesting. Alternatively, Keith finds this a most excellent museum floor, chiding me on my lack of sophistication. I admit, I like representational art. I loved Florence!

We travel, again via the most exotic glass elevator, down to the second floor where we push through a lot of Miróes and Dalίs. We begin to see photos and various art pieces about the Spanish Civil War, both Communist and anti-Franco posters. We walk through a lot of precursory studies done by Picasso before eventually walking into the room housing the main event, Guernica. I look at Guernica for really long time, annoying the boys. Guernica, perhaps the world’s most poignant piece of art ever, shows the world turned upside down by the Fascist bombing of a Basque market town. I take in the bull, the symbol of Spanish strength, who stands powerless before the might of modern warfare. The piece has a drawn electric lightbulb at the top, I believe to show the power of the machines, capable of generating both good and immense evil. I ponder the horse screaming in fear alongside the dead women and children. Even now, the images leap forth from the canvas, demanding an end to war, powerfully reminding us that we can easily all become “collateral damage.” I am moved.

After Guernica, we find ourselves sore and hungry. Fried. But we’ve had enough of the Reina Sofia. We make to leave but lose each other. Regrouping, we collect Bloodroot and our belongings.  We begin to look for lunch.

Foraging with the Bear, we drop in on the workers in our favorite wine store, which has conveniently just opened for the day. We explain that we seek a nice place for lunch where we can eat good food, have a glass of wine and relax. They suggest a place called La Veronica, where one of them works.

Obeying orders, we march over to La Veronica where we enjoy a wonderful fixed-price plate (€11) lunch and some wine. The modern décor welcomes us; we sit in front of a pastel-colored wall with some Warhol-inspired canvas hung on it. Refreshed and relaxed, we leave, perhaps a bit reluctantly.

But art calls us! Onward! Back to the Thyssen. Having previously enjoyed the Munch exhibit Wednesday evening, this time we visit the museum’s permanent collection. We start on the first floor, most excellent, containing lot of the 20^th century artists we like. But under the guise of complete honesty, I must admit that I sleep through most of the first floor. This disease has caused me to sleep in every museum that we have encountered, and relaxing with a glass of wine at lunch doesn’t help! Is there a prize for sleeping in every major European museum? If so, I could win!

I wake for the second floor, almost entirely given over to Spanish Impressionism. Like the Catalan Art Museum, we see artists unknown to us who painted in the Impressionist manner. We love it! We so embrace breaking out of the Monet, Manet, Renoir circle. We spend a delightful afternoon surrounded by the art of Spain. Far too early, the museum closes.

We leave around closing time knowing we have one more Madrid thing to see. We roll over to Charles III’s Botanic Gardens, neighboring the Prado. Let in gratis as we haven’t much time, we learn that the park currently closes at seven.

The tree filled park contains lots and lots of dahlias, blooming in every hue. Some plants bear blossoms in more than one color. Walkways surround squares of plantings. Bloodroot investigates Bloodroot items, unknown to his parental units, while Keith and I check out whole aisles of dahlias.

A young man, probably aged two, drives a plastic motorcycle helter-skelter, careening right toward me. His youth allows him decadent speed without paying the slightest bit of attention to what may be in his way. Full speed, kamikaze-like, he approaches Bird and me. I shudder in mock horror. “Hola,” I say. Terrified of a talking woman in a wheelchair, he stops dead in his tracks. The kid backs his motorcycle right into a dahlia bed. Recovering, he charges down one garden lane, then another, much to the annoyance of the two adults attempting to supervise him. He’s very cute. His keepers quickly leave off their exasperation and join in laughing with him.  

We enjoy the gardens for perhaps half an hour.  Far too soon, it’s 6:45PM and a guard begins officiously blowing his whistle to chase everyone out of the garden. Bloodroot, being Bloodroot, finds another exit that he wants us to take, directing us to go to the end of the garden to come out near our house. After providing directions, Bloodroot capitalizes on the opportunity to leave us. He wanders off up some stairs, seeking a palace or something. We encounter the whistleblowing maniac, who, waving violently, sends us in the opposite direction, going back past where Bloodroot abandoned us. We stop to wait for Bloodroot, bringing about furious arm gesticulating and whistleblowing on the part of the guard. I shout, ”Mi hijo viene.” But to no avail. I repeat, “Hijo, hijo, hijo,” pointing behind the guard. (Of course hijo, hijo, hijo, [iho, iho, iho] can begin to sound like a donkey braying.) The red-faced man continues to blow his whistle and wave his arms. His arms begin to make full circles around his body. Puffing, spinning and blowing on his whistle, he resembles a demented windmill. I expect his arms to fly off at any minute, like a cartoon person. Finally, he turns around, sees Bloodroot, and lets us regroup. We leave the gardens highly amused.

We head for home, stopping first to gather groceries. The boys create another fantastic meal. We rejoice in having an Airbnb with a kitchen instead of the non-food monstrosities that caterers force on you, even if we need three elevator rides to get all my cripple crap up to our flat.