OK, so the initial point of this blog was to give me a simple way to write down a few memories of our recent trip to Spain. My problem is that for me, "a few" seems like it must be more like several thousand. As a result, to avoid writing a book about our time, it seemed easier to write a bit here and bit there to set down some of the memories. Also, I wanted to avoid the "we did this, then we did that, then we did that" approach to writing it all. The idea was to write a vignette here and there about this or that. Still, there has to be a little bit of a listing of places and sights. That's what today's post is. Here it is:
On the evening of 8/28/09 after work, we left Las Vegas for the home of Lisa's sister, Jennifer, in Albuquerque. It was a drag to have to leave at that moment, because Lisa's niece's boyfriend, Arturo "Tudy" Crespin, a local profesisonal boxer, was having a fight that very night in right here in Las Vegas. Boxing is a popular sport around here. We have fights here off and on at the fieldhouse of the local university. Also on the card that night, the main event, was Holly Holm, who I take to be the most famous female boxer out there. Not only is she a good fighter, she's also, um, a "knockout" in the other sense of the word (look here: http://www.womenboxing.com/NEWS20082/images/9999holmsanders061108pressmao33.jpg) She had a rematch grudge match against some lady she'd beaten before. Tudy was making his return after his first loss as a pro. Also, Tudy's sister, Amanda, was making her debut as a pro. The fight had some interesting angles from my point of view. I've never seen any formal boxing match. I've never seen women boxing. There was sex-appeal. There was a friend of mine boxing. It was right here in town. There was a lot to see of interest.
But we missed the fight because we had the first of three flights spanning 20+ hours departing Albuquerque early the next morning. To make matters worse, I had forced Lisa to follow my usual transatlantic travel regimen of slowly acclimating to earlier and earlier awakenings each day before we left. By the time we left, we were used to getting up at 4:00 a.m. each day. This made swimming easy in the morning, but it also required early bedtimes, which made staying up late for a fight, driving to ABQ late, getting up early, and then traveling for over 20 hours a bad idea. To me, anyway.
BTW, Tudy won. Holly won. Tudy's sister lost. Full story here: http://www.lasvegasoptic.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?080+article+Sports+20090830231935080080004
I should also point out that in addition to being a professional boxer, Tudy is studying engineering at New Mexico State University. I find this a very interesting juxtaposition of two life paths don't seem to intersect that often.
The picture up at the top of all this shows me and Lisa outside of Jennifer's house at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. on 8/29/09. We're well-rested and ready to go with all our luggage. As you can see, we are Rick Steves-certified for two weeks of travel with only a pair of small knapsacks and two wheeled carry-ons. No luggage-lugging for us!
Our first flight was in a crop-duster-sized, tin-can jet to Houston. Inexplicably, they let us carry on our luggage even though there was no room to store it in the cabin. The overhead bins were of the size to hold a small purse. There was no room under the seats for our bags. It was one of the planes in which I have to pass through the cabin all hunched over on account of dimensions best designed for midgets. I suffered, we crammed out luggage under our feent, but I was still strong on account of good rest. I'd show you a cell phone picture of us crammed into our seats, but those things take such crappy pictures there is no point.
We arrived in Houston two hours later without much additional strife to begin our four-hour-seemed-like-four-day layover. There is not much to do in the Houston airport besides eat and walk around. Lucky for us, Lisa's son, Marcos, had recently flown through this same airport. He had told us of a Pappadeaux's restaurant there. We were lucky to spend an hour there eating oysters and something else that I can't remember. We got a chance to practice using one of our favorite new Spanish phrases: "la de la verguenza," which translates, more or less, as "the one of shame." This term refers to the last morsel of food on a plate of shared food. It is common in Spanish culture to go out with a group of friends to a bar or a restaurant and order several plates of food for communal enjoyment. The very last piece of food on a plate is called "la de la verguenza," implying that the person eats that last morsel has no shame and is a bit of a pig. When you get to that last bite, everyone is supposed to argue, "No, I'm not hungry. You can have it." Or, "God, I'm stuffed. It's all yours." Finally the pig of the group (usually me) reaches out and snarfs it down. I have a lovely, highly non-flattering photo of Lisa eating la de la verguenza from out plate of oysters, but again, it was a crappy cell phone photo and not fit for additional distribution. For the rest of the trip, we had great fun arguing over la de la verguenza. I think I won the argument more often than not.
After the oysters, I recall hours of wandering the airport before we finally started the jostling for position to board our Air France flight to Paris. I do recall being approached by an Air France representative who warned us that was a weight limit for carry-on luggage. At the time, we were probably on the edge of what they allow. Luckily, they didn't hassle us anymore before we boarded. However, this issue of weight limits for carry-on luggage would come back to haunt us later. Hopefully, I'll remember to write about it sometime.
The flight to Paris has already been summarized here: http://floyderdog.blogspot.com/2009/12/zolpidem-thats-ambien-to-you-non.html
We had a quick connection in Paris to Madrid the following morning. The connection was made a bit tighter on account of some airport construction combined with some confusing shuttle-buses, but we made it. We had our first taste of inflated Euro-prices when we saw airport croissants for the equivalent of $8. They looked good, but we didn't have time get money and stuff our fat little faces. Plus, I was too cheap to pay that price.
Our final flight was from Paris to Madrid. This flight was mostly agony by that point. It's a bit of a long flight--two hours, but it felt much longer in my tired/excited/sleep-deprived state. I mostly recall the excitement of passing over Bay of Biscay into northern Spain. Did I catch a glimpse of one of planned destinations, San Sebastian below? Maybe. Did I spot La Sierra de Gredos? Or La Sierra Guadarrama? Probably.
We made it.
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