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Holidays in Tres Cantos

We had a most wonderful time with our kids in Miami. The weather held out, we had time to sit and talk and eat and play games. Couldn’t have asked for better.

Hoping that all my Jewish friends enjoyed a wonderful Hannukah!

As far as I have seen, Hannukah is not a thing in Tres Cantos, so I will share with you some Christmas decorations and lights near our home. The nice thing is that we live near a wide avenue that they’ve decorated nicely. Here’s the tree:

The Christmas tree during the day
And this is the Christmas tree lit up at night

This little store is about a minute walk from my home and I pass it every day. I love how they take the time to set up nice store front displays and change them frequently.

El Desvan, a lovely boutique close to home

And this picture below is the entrance to my favorite restaurant here, called Bernar. Their food is always great, and they have very friendly servers. The neighbors above them went to town with holiday decorations, which is definitely not the norm around here. There is a city-wide contest this coming Friday for best dressed windows/patio and I think they are a shoo-in to win.

Bernar, our favorite restaurant, has outdoor seating protected by plastic walls that lower, like blinds, on chilly days.

The wide avenue near my home has white lights strung in all the trees and some big decorations including some nativity scenes and lighted presents.

lit walkways
A giant ornament you can walk through
I tried to capture the magic in a video, but I’m not very good at this and it didn’t come out as pretty as it looks in person.
Happy Holidays from Tres Cantos!
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Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to take a moment and give a shout out to some people who mean so much to us and who have really been there for us this past year. I’ll start with our kids, four terrific human beings who have continually given us so much joy. I’ll extend it to their spouses and significant others who are also superb. Another shout out to Sue and Jeff, the best neighbors anyone could have asked for! Miss you guys! Special thanks also to Elsa and Nelson for going above and beyond and being the most awesome of friends. Shout out also to my cousins, especially Paty and her family. And to my Aunt Pat whose fun emails I look forward to. And there are so many more people who have just been wonderful to us. You know who you are, and so do we, and we are eternally grateful!

I’m writing this a bit early because we will be spending Thanksgiving week with all our kids in Miami. It will be our first trip back to the US since we moved here, and we’re really looking forward to it.

Since Thanksgiving is such a huge holiday in the US, and it’s also celebrated, albeit on a different date, in Canada, sometimes it’s difficult for us Americans to imagine living somewhere where this holiday is just another non-remarkable day. But that’s how it is here in Spain. People have heard of the holiday—Dia de Acción de Gracias (literally, Day of Action of Thanks)–and they’ll wish you a happy one if they know you’re American, but otherwise, it’s business as usual. No parades, no turkey, no pumpkin pie, nothing.

Even though I understood this intellectually, when I lived here twenty years ago it always jarred me that Thanksgiving Day was a normal work/school day. At the American School where I taught, we’d have turkey sandwiches—getting roast turkey meat was just not logistically possible—and one of the teachers would make a pumpkin pie that we would share in the staff room. The younger children would color in pictures of pilgrims and cornucopias, and that was about it.

What has changed in the last twenty years in Spain? Still no Thanksgiving, but now the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, is a thing here. And it’s called Black Friday—it’s not translated from English.  As in, “No te pierdas las ofertas de Black Friday!” (Don’t miss the Black Friday deals!) And the sales go on for the whole weekend.

It’s such a big deal, that the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, the Madrid City Hall, has arranged for busses to run for free the entire weekend to encourage a more sustainable lifestyle (i.e. discourage people from driving their cars into the city). Here is their tweet:



Being so close to the city, it’s pretty easy for us to hop on a bus or train and scoot down there, so I thought I’d share some recent pictures from when we had to nip down for our pre-travel Covid tests. This first one is a crosswalk sign, which we found amusing:

There are several types of crosswalk signs in Madrid. Notice how the two figures have different hairstyles.

The picture below is of Plaza Castilla, a place we go to pretty much every time we go into Madrid, but which we had never seen at street level. This is because there is a huge underground terminal where our busses from Tres Cantos arrive and from which we catch the metro trains. This week we came above ground when we got off the bus, and then walked the rest of the way to where we were going. It was surprising to see the large, funny-looking gold needle. This structure was a gift from the bank called Caja Madrid to the city of Madrid, in honor of its 300 year anniversary as a city. It is called the Obelisco de la Caja, and was designed by the Spanish architect, engineer and sculptor, Santiago Calatrava. It was erected in 2008, but they had a lot of problems because it is made up of multiple pieces and it was difficult to get it to stand right when they couldn’t dig deep since the underground trains are right there. But they finally figured it out.

Plaza Castilla in Madrid
Here we have ithe Obelisco de Calatrava again, from a different angle. Photo by Guimir.

This is our favorite beer—it’s a “Tostada 0,0” which is to say, a dark brew but with no alcohol. It’s great for having with lunch since you can get right back to work afterwards with no drowsiness. And it tastes really good—you’d never guess it was alcohol-free!

This is the façade of the building in front of where we got our Covid tests. I couldn’t figure out what the design was supposed to represent, though I do see a hummingbird beak in there.

Any ideas what this figure might represent?

Some flowers in a sidewalk stand.

Fresh flowers, anyone?

And us, in front of a fountain, on our way to find a good restaurant for lunch.

Us in the Chamartin neighborhood of Madrid

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

And as always, please check out (and tell someone about) my novels here.

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A trip to Navarra

Ah! It feels so good to finally have all our things! Pictures on the wall! Books on our shelves, our own bed to sleep on, couches to sit on and…dishes! We’re still organizing, but we’re 90% done and it’s looking good!

So, this weekend we took our first trip with SEO—the Spanish Ornithological Society—and went to northeastern Spain, to Navarra.

Navarra was once its own kingdom, before the various kingdoms of Spain were assembled into a country in the 1400s. Since it’s situated close to the Basque Country, and many of the people are of Basque heritage, the road and village signs are all in Basque.

As we headed northeast out of Madrid, we passed through different mountain ranges and saw that winter was already kissing the tops of the higher mountains.

Snow on the highest mountains, just outside Madrid

Our first stop along the way was at a little town called Medinaceli, which sounded more Italian than Spanish to me! We had a hot drink and saw a tiny bit of the village, which, like so many in Spain, juxtaposes the old with the modern in an interesting way. Here’s what I mean:

Modern townhall in an old town.

Spain is investing heavily in renewable energy, as we saw when we passed big fields of solar panels and mountain-tops lined with windmills.

Navarra is a very agricultural part of Spain that grows not only the grapes for my favorite Rioja wines, but also almonds, different cereals, many fruits and vegetables and even rice.

Grapevines in Navarra, leaves turning red.
Spain grows fresh produce for much of Europe

There are several medium-sized cities in Navarra, but we were there to bird, so we spent all three days out in the countryside.

We arrived at our first birding destination on Saturday afternoon, which was Bardenas Reales, a desertic landscape where part of Game of Thrones was filmed. And apparently, some movies set in outerspace have also been shot here.

Bardenas Reales or badlands of Navarra
Thousands of years of erosion has created some interesting shapes in the desertic landscape of Bardenas Reales

It was a gorgeous landscape, but the winds were very strong and cold. The temperature was hovering right around freezing, and the winds definitely took us below freezing, so we didn’t manage to see one our target birds, the Black Wheatear.

But once we were out of the Bardenas, we found a flooded rice field where there were dozens of storks, lapwings, dunlins and herons, so it was still very cool, bird-wise. Unfortunately, I was so enthralled that I didn’t think to take a picture!

On Sunday we went to the Selva de Irati, a huge national forest of beech and fir trees.

Our birding group as we started a 5 km hike through a tiny portion of the Selva de Irati

The forest is the second largest of its type in Europe, extending from northern Spain into the Atlantic Pyrenees Mountains and southern France. And it was far and away the most beautiful forest I have ever experienced. The entire time we drove through the winding roads and then hiked in the forest I kept feeling like I was inside one of those gorgeous puzzles of autumnal scenes, surrounded by the unbelievably breathtaking beauty of yellow and orange leaves, light and dark tree trunks and the stony Irati river bubbling noisily next to the road.

You can see the white trunks of the beech trees that make up this forest

I thought I’d grow used to seeing the delicate branches losing their leaves and the sparkling streams and the endless mountains, some tipped with snow—but three days wasn’t enough time for that to happen.

Cold but happy!

We saw some really cool birds there, including the scarily named Quebrantahuesos (literally, Bonebreaker, or in English, Bearded Vulture),

Qubrantahuesos or Bearded Vulture Photo by Richard Bartz

and the cute little Eurasian Bullfinch

Eurasian Bullfinch Photo by Francis C. Franklin

For the last hour we got soaked in the cold, autumnal rain, but it was still a wonderful experience.

With all the green, healthy moss, it’s clear this forest gets a lot of rain!

Then on Monday we went to the Foces Navarras, which are gorgeous canyons. First, we stopped at a scenic overlook to get the lay of the land.

Overlook (not lookout!) of the Foces de Navarra (the canyons of Navarra)

Then we drove several kilometers further, to a place where we could walk at the bottom of the canyon, following the old path of a train that used to travel hugging the cliffs. As we walked we scanned the canyon walls for the elusive Wallcreeper. It’s a small, light-gray bird, just under the size of a tennis ball, and it flutters on the steep walls, poking its long, curved bill into cracks to get at insects. Every now and again it spreads its wings, like a little butterfly, and you get a flash of startling burgundy. It took us nearly 2 hours, but in the end, we found one of the three birds that had been seen in the canyon in the last several days. Steven, one of our companions got this photo of it.

Wallcreeper Photo by Steve Lane

All in all it was a wonderful trip and we’d like to go back to this area again in the spring, both to enjoy the landscape (though the leaves will all have fallen) and to hopefully pick up some of the bird species we missed.

I hope you enjoyed coming along with me virtually on this little jaunt to Navarra. Do you have any questions? What do you think of the landscapes of Spain so far? I’m hoping to do more of these blogs about our birding trips!

And as always, please check out (and tell someone about) my novels here.

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Happy Halloween from Tres Cantos!

When I lived in Spain before, Halloween was not on anyone’s radar, and outside of the American Schools, it basically didn’t exist. Things have changed in the last 20 years, however, and Halloween is now…well, it’s kind of a thing. Not like in the US, no, but… on the spectrum.

For starters, I was able to get a cute pumpkin at the grocery store.

My cute little pumpkin!

That was just not possible before. The orange-colored pumpkin-shaped pumpkins were out in the fields, but grown only as animal fodder, and never used for anything like human food or decorations. But they were the same vegetable—I bought one each year from a friendly farmer and made jack-o-lanterns and then pies.

Secondly, there were never any Halloween decorations, let alone costumes, available. Now you can even find part of an aisle at the store dedicated to costumes and decorations. True, it’s not a very big part and it’s dwarfed by the Christmas decorations (yes, here too they start with those too early as well!)

Some Halloween costumes and decorations, squeezed in between Santas and stockings.

You can also see bars and restaurants decorated for Halloween. These two were in Madrid, but there were several in Tres Cantos as well.

Going all out on the spider webs!
Jack-o-lanterns on a Basque Restaurant window

And, oddly, the other type of store that had a lot of Halloween decorations were beauty salons. This is the storefront of one of them here in Tres Cantos.

Even hair care products can be made scary!

And my hairdresser, in a different salon, gave me an excellent haircut and then agreed to take off her surgical mask (black of course) and let me get a picture of her. (Surgical masks are still worn indoors 100% of the time in all stores, and only removed in restaurants while consuming food.)

My hairdresser had cool make-up!

My all-time favorite Halloween decorations, however, were at the bakery. Mid-October there were chocolate pumpkins, witches, ghosts, and glazed-doughnut eyeballs that were pretty freaky! I could only get a photo through the plastic wrap—I didn’t actually purchase one—but they were amazing to behold.

Glazed doughnut and doughnut hole eyeballs!

The funny thing is, though, the Halloween furvor died down earlier this week, as the real holiday, All Saints Day, which is November 1st, approached. And thus the bakery transitioned to selling different body parts. Today when I went to buy bread, there were a host of colorful “huesitos de santos” (little bones of saints) decorating the shelves. They are made of marzipan and are one of my favorite treats!

Huesitos de Santos. Mmm!!

Anyway, wherever you are celebrating, I hope yours is a spooky good time tonight!

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Watching the Volcano…

It’s Sunday night, and our movers are coming TOMORROW!!

So just a quick note to share something I’ve been wanting to cover in the blog for a few weeks, which is the volcano erupting in the Canary Island of La Palma. As of today, it’s been going for 28 days, and there is no sign of it stopping any time soon.

Some rough figures: the lava from the eruption has so far destroyed 1835 buildings. Every day it adds another handful to that figure. And that’s not to say how many more haven’t been destroyed, but the roads leading to them have been blocked with molten rock and are completely impassable. So, lots of people on the island are affected.

I took these two pictures of the TV images. Not great, but gives you a hint of the might of this volcano.

There have also been 83 earthquakes associated with the volcano, and the other day there was volcanic lightning.

I’m fortunate enough to be on the mainland, far away from the scene of disaster, but close enough that it’s still on the news, pretty much daily. And watching the images, well, it’s just incredible. Awe inspiring. The sheer enormity of the volcano continuously erupting, spewing flames and rock fragments high into the air, which fall in flickering whisps, and the glowing yellow and orange rivers of molten rock that flow like honey being tipped from an overturned jar…well, it just takes my breath away.

This grainy picture does not begin to do justice to the phenomena–go online and find the better images!

There’s a (free) channel/app called RTVEPlay which has a livestream of the volcano erupting, and every night we put it on for a while. I’m mesmerized, watching the explosions, hearing the soft roar, and wondering how far I’ll be able to see the lava flow before it is cooled enough that it no longer glows and is therefore lost in the blackness of the night.

None of this is to diminish the pain and suffering of the islanders who have to contend with this situation. About 7000 people, just under 10% of the island’s population, have been forced to flee their homes, sometimes with very little warning, and unable to carry much, with no idea when or if it will ever be safe to return. I feel really bad about their plight and there are a lot of charity campaigns that have been set up to help clothe, feed and house the volcano refugees on the Spanish mainland or one of the other islands.

Still, I just wanted to share these images, on the night of calm before the chaos that will erupt in our home tomorrow, all the noise and mess, boxes and items spewed and strewn across the house as we unpack. But tonight, we sit here and watch the volcano hurling green and yellow flames into air and leaking orange rock, like thick cake batter, down its side, and wonder at the strength and might of this planet we inhabit.

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Everyday shopping in Spain

It’s been 4 months since we packed up our home and moved out of Austin, 3 months since we settled down in Tres Cantos, and our furniture and things are ABOUT TO ARRIVE! Next week! Yipee!!

So, I probably won’t have a post for next week, as we unwrap and unpack for hours on end. I’m guessing that we will be surprised by some of the things we find in the move since I packed about 60 boxes back at the end of 2019, when we first decided we were going to sell our home and move to Spain, before Covid…

Ah, well.

In today’s blog I wanted to talk about shopping in Spain. For starters, I’m living in a small city (approx.. 45,000 people) and so my experience is different than if I were in a rural village or a larger city (though I’m pretty close to Madrid, so that can skew things slightly.) But still, I think my experience with stores is pretty typical for what you could expect in most places in Spain.

Since the Spanish, as do most Europeans, tend to live in more densely packed urban areas, (even when in smaller cities) it’s easier to have a lot of shops within walking distance from your home. I took this video below about a 5 minute walk away from my home, and you can see that there are quite a few shops to choose from, right there.

A quick tour of shops near home, at least until I got distracted with the cat! Sorry about the sloppy ending!

But let’s dive a little deeper. One of you (shout out to Marilyn!) asked me to describe what grocery stores are like. Are they the huge Walmart experiences? Well, some are, some aren’t.

Within a 10-minute walk from my front door, I have 2 grocery stores, and if I wanted to go a bit further, I’d have several more. The larger one is actually very similar to a neighborhood Walmart (it’s run by a French company) and you can find small appliances, phones & computers, housewares, clothing, books and all the usual grocery store fare. It’s laid out in wide aisles, and there’s a lot of choice. What’s more, it’s located in a mall, so there are also restaurants, (including a frozen yoghurt shop) movie theaters, and a host of apparel chain stores.

The “small” grocery store, in the opposite direction, is not that small. The pictures below are taken in that store (albeit furtively since I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to take pictures inside!) You can see the fruit and veggie section has quite a variety, but not refrigerated, for the most part. This is because they are really fresh. (There is a cabinet behind the 4 isles of produce with refrigerated fruits and vegetables like salad fixings, peeled veggies, etc.)

In Texas, especially in Houston, we had a terrific choice of fruits and veggies. Spain also offers a great choice, but since there are a lot of fruit shops, some supermarkets don’t have a very big selection. There are some things I consistently find better in one store (great bananas, for example) and a different thing, like lettuce, much better in a different store.

Can anyone guess what the fruits in the bottom right-hand corner are?

What changes is the variety in certain products.  For example, since the Spanish love their olive oil, the choices of brands of oil are astounding. I couldn’t even get all of them in the lens of my camera.

Olive oil, anyone?

Same goes for types of jamon, the cured ham, and other cured meats.

Breakfast cereals are not as widely eaten here, so the choices are fewer, though my husband has found several that he likes. (As I mentioned in my blog post about Spanish breakfasts, I prefer the fresh-baked bread for breakfast.)

Some old friends, and some new cereals to explore

There are also quite a few choices of milk (both nut “milk” and cow’s milk) though they are mostly sold unrefrigerated, in these vacuum-packed cartons (that must be refrigerated once opened but are convenient to store in a pantry until use.)

Soy, nut and cow milks

One difference from when I lived here more than 20 years ago, is the variety of prepared foods now available. Everything from typical Spanish foods like the tortilla de patatas (Spanish potato omelet) to croquetas are widely available. And foods like pizzas, chicken tenders and frozen, ready-to-bake veggies are on display.

There are also quite a few vegan options. We tried vegan burgers made of eggplant the other day and they were wonderful!

An interesting experience, which happens when I go to any new store, even in the US, has been figuring out where in the store to look for things. Peanut butter, for example, is available, but don’t look near the jellies and jams to find it.

Delicious jams and jellies–we’re still trying new ones!

Between the two grocery stores and a few other specialty shops, I have found pretty much everything I’ve wanted, including the brand of lotion, shampoo and toothpaste that we used in Texas.

One new grocery store vocabulary word for me this time around is the word for “organic”, which is “Bio”.

What can we not find in Spain that we miss from Texas? (Thank you to my friend, Pat for the question!) Hmmm. My husband might say what he misses from our local Austin grocery store, HEB, was their brand of dental floss. We get the Oral-B floss here, but there’s something about the HEB one that he really liked.

What I miss is the variety of cake mixes. There are a few here, and maybe they’re good–I haven’t tried them since my pans have not yet arrived from the move. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, though, that you CAN actually get these cake mixes on our good ol’ friend, the Amazon website, but a standard Betty Crocker devil’s food cake mix box costs about $11!  Not happening! I think I’ll just have to “make do” with the Spanish sweets I can find here. It’s rough, but someone’s gotta do it!)

So that’s groceries, but what about other things? There is IKEA for furniture and housewares, as well as several other furniture stores, though none I had ever heard of. There are electronics stores and a huge outlet mall in the next town over for miles of shopping under one roof.

Closer to home, for apparel , there are lots of boutique stores as well as bigger box stores in the mall. There are also lots of small specialty stores for hair and skin products, or pet products, or produce.

And then there are “estancos” which really have no equivalent in the US, that I know of.

An estanco, here in Tres Cantos. You can see the ramp leading up to it in front for handicap access.

When I first got here thirty-five years ago and saw the “tabacos” sign, I quickly decided that that was one store I’d never feel compelled to visit. But I was wrong! As government-sanctioned stores, estancos used to be the only place you could buy cigarettes, but they are also the only place to buy bus passes. You can also find stamps (these are only sold here and in post offices), nice pens, gifts, and a whole host of odds and ends.

And speaking of odds and ends, there is a type of shop called a “bazar” (pronounce it like a Spaniard, bah-THAHR) or “hiper bazar” which are the Spanish equivalent of Dollar Stores. In these sometimes ramshackle, sometimes surprisingly upscale shops, you can find all manner of things from practical to outlandish, some darn near junk but others quite good. Many are plastic items, which is discouraging, but there are also ceramic and glass wares, all sorts o things for the home, craft materials, party decorations and even junk food.   

What about you? What do you think you’d miss if you chose to live abroad?

And as always, please check out (and tell someone about) my novels here.

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Brihuega

Good news: our stuff is finally on a boat, making its way toward Spain! Not sure when we’ll actually have it delivered, but it looks like it will be in this coming month of October. Yay!

This weekend we rented a car and decided to go birding/sight-seeing in the mountainous area north-east of Madrid (about 100 Km from Tres Cantos). Actually, Spain is the most mountainous country in Europe, so practically anywhere you go is mountainous.

Why this particular area, you ask? Well, it had been raining all over Spain for the past week (with really bad flooding in the south) and the weather in many parts of Spain was still predicted to be “unstable”. But we were itching to take a longer trip to go birding to places that were not easily reached by public transportation. So, with the weather radar map in front of me, I chose a spot that seemed to have the best forecast, and there we headed.

We stayed several nights in the small city of Brihuega  (bree-WEH-gah), a city of about 2500 people, located in the Province of Guadalajara. (Yes, this is the one that the city in Mexico was named after.)

View from atop the newly remodelled castle which now serves as a museum. and a venue for performances in Brihuega.

Brihuega is in the Autonomous Community (AC) of Castilla La Mancha. In Tres Cantos, we are living in the Province of Madrid, located in the AC of Madrid, so it was nice to see a different AC and province. Castilla La Mancha is notable for many reasons, not least of which is that the famous Miguel de Cervantes set his seminal work, Don Quijote de La Mancha, in this AC, so several of the towns we visited on our trip were part of the Ruta de Don Quijote (the Don Quijote Route, which traces the route that the fictional character took in his travels across the Spanish landscape.)

Standing in front of a renovated church tower in the heart of the ancient city of Brihuega.

Brihuega is a city that was built on a village in existence since before the Common Era, possibly as early as 600 BCE. Back then it was the Celtiberian people who lived there.  (And who knows how much farther back history goes, as in all parts of Spain, probably much further.)

In any case, in the late 1000s CE it got its murallas, its defensive walls, as Spanish kings were rallying in an effort to thwart the Moors. And several parts of those walls, including two of the 5 original entrances to the city, still stand today. Our hotel was built alongside one of the gates.

This entrance to the ancient walled city of Brihuega is called Puerta Cadena. Our hotel, and the wonderful restaurant where we had gourmet dinners every night, is on the right.

I think murallas are so cool.  

Some of the ancient walls, murallas, in the southern part of the city, at nightfall.

Nowadays the city is famous for the lavender farms that surround it, and there’s also quite a bit of tourism since they’ve spiffied-up their old buildings and turned them into cool places to visit. The Castillo de la Piedra Bermeja (the Castle of Vermillion Stone) is one such building. It had been in ruins for several hundred years, but they hired an architect who re-designed the walls and ramparts, based on the stone ruins, and now it’s an excellent place to visit.

From our base in Brihuega, we chose different eBird birding spots, and then stopped along the way whenever we saw an interesting place to explore. One of the highlights was the small village of Pelegrina, also on the Don Quijote Route.

Pelegrina from a distance. That ruined castle on the hill caught our eye.

Although small, the village had a lot of flower gardens and these increased the aesthetic beauty of the area.

Pelegrina had lots of flowers growing throughout the stony village.

But our eyes were on the castle-ruins at the top of the hill and we couldn’t resist exploring. We climbed the hill, found a great restaurant with an outdoor terrace for lunch, then headed up the rest of the way to reach the castle.

Video taken from the foot of the ancient castle in Pelegrina.

If you like old castles, then you won’t be bored in Spain. There are so many, often atop the highest hill around, and very often in ruins. But they are still worth visiting, if only to imagine their former splendor and guess at the cause of their demise.

The town of Siguenza, with another castle we didn’t get to explore on this trip.

Do you like old castles? Or do you prefer the bigger cities? Do you have any questions for me?

And as always, please check out (and tell someone about) my novels here.

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Dogs in Spain

This blog post is dedicated to my middle son who (finally) got married this weekend to his girlfriend of 9 years. They met his freshman year in college and have been inseparable ever since. They are both wonderful people—compassionate, kind, sensitive, intelligent, athletic and hard-working. Wishing them a wonderful life, filled with continuing good health, passion, joy, enough money and a friendship that, as it has all these years, just keeps getting stronger!

Also, I’m so grateful to live at a time when physical distances of thousands of miles can be bridged with technology to such an extent as to be able to meaningfully take part in a ceremony on the other side of the planet.

Full disclosure: I’m a dog-person. But prejudices aside, dogs in Spain are adorable!

A patient pooch, with his leash hooked onto a tie-ring on a building in Madrid.

Take this little guy, waiting patiently outside a grocery store for his owner to return. He didn’t even give me a second look once he quickly established I was not the human he was waiting for. As you can see he’s anchored to an iron ring built into the wall. This is called a tie ring. Just over a hundred years ago, which is to say “recently” in terms of Spanish architecture, these tie rings were where you’d tie your horse when you arrived to that building. Many old buildings here still sport them, and now they’ve got a use again as a handy place to park your pooch.

The owner stopped to read her cell phone–for several long minutes, and her pup waited patiently for her to be ready!

Speaking of parks and pooches, there are also, like in the US, doggie playgrounds, though we’ve seen quite a few that take that concept to the next level, with tunnels, ramps, obstacle courses, doggie teetertotters, etc. And these parks are open and free to the public, often located within large people parks. Here is one we saw in Colmenar Viejo, and Tres Cantos has some as well. You can see that it is so large that I could not get it all in.

A doggy playground in Colmenar Vidjo.

Dogs are so well-loved that there is even a huge dog-shaped flower planter in front of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. This multi-story living monument, that has to be watered and pruned regularly, is called “Puppy.”

“Puppy”, a living statue in Bilbao. Photo by Jeff Koons

Since it’s easy to walk to the grocery store, a place to tether your dog while you shop is handy. However, if you stop for a coffee or a glass of wine at an outdoor bar/café, your dogs can just rest at your feet.

Two pooches waiting patiently while their owner enjoys a cool beer on a hot day in Tres Cantos

With so many dogs, of course, there are tons of grooming shops (like Mama Dog, near where I live), vets galore and yes, even a place where you can get Mediterranean food for your dog (advertised on the bottom sign)!

Two cute advertisements for our canine friends, here in Tres Cantos

And, you might wonder, with so many dogs around, is un-scooped dog poop a problem in Tres Cantos? For the number of dogs that there are, it’s surprisingly pretty much a non-issue. That’s because there are strict laws—the local paper recently carried a full-page reminder that if you get caught not picking up your pet’s pooh, that will cost you €550 (which is over $600!) So, that and plenty of conveniently located pooh bag dispensers help keep the sidewalks clean.

These gizmos are everywhere, providing handy poop bags and a foot-pedal activated disposal repository

“Does that mean you’re going to be getting a dog soon?” asks my youngest son every time I gush about dogs.

Who can say? But meanwhile I will continue to vicariously enjoy the canines surrounding me. And you? Are you a dog lover? Any pooch-related questions about Spain?

An early date, walking through the park with their beloved canine friends, discussing whether they could make it work with all 4 . Or not. I’m just guessing!

And as always, if you like my writing, please check out (and tell someone about) my novels here.

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New Vocab and a Visit to the Spanish National Museum

Well, it’s looking like our furniture and household goods won’t get here until mid-October at the earliest. So, onto more adventures!

One of the things about living in another country whose language is different is that you have to learn a lot of vocabulary. I’m fortunate in that I learned Spanish quite well when I lived here for 11 years before. But every now and again I encounter voids of vocabulary words and phrases that are revealed by my sudden necessity for these, and which allow me to therefore increase my fluency. This past week, for example, a sharp pain in my mouth presented me with an opportunity to expand my repertoire to include phrases such as canal radicular (root canal), corona dental (crown), dientes quebradizas (brittle teeth) and so on.

I was really frightened of going to the dentist—it frightens me in the US too, but even more so when I also don’t have the tools with which to express the matices, the subtleties, of what I want to say. But circumstances being what they are, I was forced to make an appointment.

The nice thing about Tres Cantos is that nothing is really that far away, and the super nice thing about where we live is that the dentist’s office is literally a four-minute walk from my front door. And I got really lucky—my new dentist is wonderful! We had a nice chat, she took some all-around X-rays and got to the root of the matter, pun intended, so wish me well with the endodontista tomorrow as we discuss the impending extracción and implante.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about my weekend jaunt into Madrid to explore the MADbird fair, (MAD being short for Madrid, haha!) The annual 3-day fair was about nature tourism throughout Spain showcased in a series of about 20 wooden stalls. Most had representatives from different provinces in Spain who highlighted why birding in their province was the coolest thing ever. They had detailed maps of where to go and brochures on lodgings and other fun outdoor activities. Soon, my husband and I were laden with pamphlets about places we can’t wait to explore!

Standing on Paseo de Recoletos with a large tree frog in the background.

SEO, the Spanish Ornithological Society, (like the National Audubon Society and the American Birding Conservancy and the American Birding Association, all rolled into one) was one of the event sponsors, and they are the ones who sent us information about this fair. They also showcased pelagic (ocean) birds and told of their troubles as they get ensnared in fishing nets and get killed, thus raising the public’s awareness so that we can demand more safeguards. They had a wonderful photographic display of the beautiful birds that can be found on, or just off, the Spanish coasts.

There were also a few stands with bird and nature gifts, and we got some really cool bird mugs!

Bird mugs with both the Spanish common name and the Latin name of the birds.

The MADbird fair was set up on a street called Paseo de Recoletos, just outside the National Library of Spain, a truly impressive building which we decided to explore. Guarding the entrance of the library are five humongous stone statues, each a literary (and literal) giant, many of whom are holding enormous books.

Looking up at the National Library of Spain as it is guarded by large stone literary giants and defenders of literary knowledge
King Alfonso the Wise, with a huge book tucked under his seat

One of the five guardian dudes was none other than Miguel de Cervantes, dressed in his ruff and tights! Very cool.

I gotta say, it’s not a bad look. Do you think tights for men will ever come back into fashion?

The statue of Lope de Vega, another hugely important Spanish author, stands in the center of the doorway, and I am going to have to learn who the other three people in the statues are.

Robes that must be clutched do seem hazardous to wear.

The Spanish National Library houses over 30 million texts, mostly from the 1700s on, but its collection also includes books from much earlier. Some of these rare and very old, hand-written and illustrated books, called incunables, are on display, in cases that are climate-controlled and tamper-resistant, and you can get quite close to admire them and stare in wonder. In the picture below is a tiny example. It’s about 2 inches wide and 3 inches tall, and its a book of poetry, written in the 1300s, and transcribed and illustrated in the 1400s, before Columbus discovered America.

This tiny book has been around for over 600 years ago, and contains poetry written 700 years ago.

Hand-transcribed and drawn–isn’t that awe-inspiring?

And there is also a reproduction of a letter Cervantes wrote.

To see the writing of such a great author is so interesting

The library houses rotating exhibits focusing on different authors from around the world. The exhibit that just finished was on Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921), a woman who wrote more than 500 stories, poems and novels in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many focusing on women’s rights and the societal problem of violence against women. She lived in and set most of her stories in Madrid. I had never heard of this literary giant, but I bought one of her books and so far, it’s very good.

The current exhibit is of Dante (1265-1321). In it I learned that, unlike other authors from his time-period, we do not have originals of his writings, but rather only copies and translations, made over the centuries, and stored in at least 19 different museums around the globe. The thing about Dante was that, living in Italy, he refused to write his later works in Latin which was the standard language for scholars at that time, and this made his contemporary intellects and the powers that be, very angry. At that time, Italy was not a united country (neither was Spain or Germany, for that matter) but rather a series of kingdoms, each with its own language. Dante was trying to reach the common people, (and he was involved in a lot of political uprisings to unite Italy, for which he was ultimately exiled) so he chose the language of one of the kingdoms to write in, and this later (and partly because of his writings) evolved into the main Italian language. But because of his struggles with the established rulers, he got in a lot of trouble and his works were destroyed and/or lost. Different researchers have made it their life’s work to try to read the earliest documented copies and translations of his writings to see if they can get as close as possible to what Dante’s original words and meanings were. Anyway, I’ve glossed over a fascinating history and hopefully this is enough to get you interested in learning more about this amazing writer.

Inside the National Library of Spain, this was the entrance to the Dante exhibit. Menendez y Pelayo is another great Spanish author.

So many books, so little time!

Anyway, what was your favorite part of our visit?

And as always, if you like my writing, please check out (and tell someone about) my novels here.

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