Hola España !

Hola España

Vijaylakshmi Barua

The date was September 7th ,2019. We landed in Madrid’s Barajas airport at exactly 10am, only to discover that our luggage hadn’t quite made it .An anxious enquiry at the help desk revealed that it was on its way in another flight from Moscow and we would be reunited with it by noon. Hot, sticky and tired, we commiserated with another couple from Hong Kong who were similarly sans luggage, and pondered on the perils of travelling with Aeroflot. Little did we know then that it was not the last surprise they had in store for us.

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A walk later that afternoon took us past the massive grounds of the Royal Palace and on to the Plaza Mayor, a pedestrian square surrounded on all sides by staid 17thand 18th century buildings. Not too interesting, so we headed out to La Campanya, a small restaurant supposed to serve up some of Madrid’s best bocadillo calamares ( calamari sandwiches ). The calamari are fried in the open kitchen right in front of your eyes in a vat of olive oil to hot, crunchy delicious perfection. It’s traditional to pair this with beer, but I opted for some of the freshly squeezed orange juice that seemed to abound in Madrid. Generous platters of patata bravas and tangy olives rounded up a great meal. Another short walk and we were in the Puerto del Sol, Madrid’s drawing room. It was 7pm and absolutely packed with people, buskers and performers. Lively and buzzing, the Puerta del Sol is where all visitors will end up at least once during their stay in Madrid.

It was during the city tour the next morning that Paul had his wallet picked, and lost all the money he was carrying and his credit card.  He realized he was missing his wallet only after we had got off the Hop-on-Hop-off bus at the Bernabeau football stadium stop and naturally  that put an immediate dampener to the day. Till this day Paul is convinced it was the handiwork of the elderly woman who had sat next to him on the bus.

The day had started badly, but we were in Madrid and it was impossible to remain despondent for long. We immediately had the card blocked, and a stop at the chocolateria San Gines for a reviving cup of their hot chocolate and churros sweetened the rest of the day considerably and even perked us up to indulge in some shopping in the trendy stores along the Gran Via. Window-shopping, that is .

 Located almost in the centre of the country , Madrid is ideally placed for day trips to nearby places. We elected to visit Segovia because it was the closest, seemed liked an interesting little town with a Roman past, and the local gastronomy was supposed to be top-notch. By noon we were gazing up in awe at the town’s impressive Roman aqueduct. It is a stupendous piece of engineering ,still standing tall and proud some 2000 years after it was first constructed. Segovia was an important Roman outpost in the Empire’s Hispanic territories in the Iberian peninsula and the aqueduct was constructed to bring water from the mountains 15 kms away to service the garrison.

We wandered through the centre of town, a pleasing hodge-podge of old and new buildings, then down a narrow street through the former Jewish neighbourhood and on to the Alcazar of Segovia. I wanted to explore the interior of the castle but Paul was beginning to get impatient. Clearly it was time to break for lunch. Any decent guidebook will inform you that the suckling roast pork of Segovia is the culinary highlight of any visit to the town, and for once they were right. It was a simple roast ,crisp on the outside but tender within, and definitely worthy of the hype.

Madrid has a trio of world-class museums all located along the same avenue ,but we had time and inclination for one only . The Prado is Spain’s equivalent of the Louvre, though on a much smaller scale. It is the place to go for your fix of Spanish artists, for the large number of Velasquez and Goya. Gazing at endless portraits of stiff military types and regal ladies is not exactly my cup of tea, but the museum was also holding a temporary exhibition of some of Rembrandt’s works, on loan from the Rijksmuseum. I have to admit I quite like the Dutch Old Masters with their heavy oils and dark backgrounds, their scenes of mercantile activities and domestic serenity.

We emerged from the Prado to scenes of excitement . People had lined up along the barricaded road manned by police ; it was the Vuelta in progress. Though not as famous as the Tour de France, the Vuelta is nevertheless Spain’s premier cycling race. The final laps are run along the Passeo del Prado and culminates at the Madrid town hall at the end of the avenue where the prize distribution ceremony takes place.

Over the next couple of weeks we would travel across Spain without any hiccup, but we could never have anticipated missing our connecting  return flight in Moscow, or having to spend the night locked down in a Moscow hotel room with our passports in the custody of surly hotel staff and the corridor  guarded by a big scary Russian who knew no English beyond a curt “No !”.But that, as they say, is another story.

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