Muchacho Polaco

We had a work event at Top Golf last Friday. This is an annual event and quite fun.

We have three varieties of agave in our front island. All three varieties regularly propagate, so we get free ones to add to the collection. I transplanted seven this afternoon.

This is the Agave Americana. They get quite large. This one is about 5 ft tall and 7 ft wide. We had a lot of these in our house in Sonora.

I think this is Agave Weberi. They are really nice looking and have a lot of little ones that pop up regularly.

The best of the bunch are these Queen Victoria agave. We have four of them now. To buy them locally at this size runs $300 each. We seem to get 1-2 new ones per year.

It wasn’t easy getting these up because the soil is so rocky and difficult to dig in.

We had a nice meal for Easter brunch last Sunday and Charles and Julie’s house.

Madrid remains our favorite city in Spain. The buildings are so grandiose and seem to go on forever. The city is alive with thousands of people moving through every street and alley. It is holy week so it is even busier than usual. We had a really nice hotel right in the heart of the central historic district.

There is so much to see and Yun loves to shop (I am of the opposite persuasion), so she had a lot of fun doing that. I had a lot of fun drinking beer and enjoying the clamor.

The central square is enormous and quite the sight to behold.

We had lunch at a restaurant hundreds of years old. I had albondagas and it was glorious.

We spent hours at the Thyssen Museum (near the Prada museum). We saw paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, and Dali (clearly was insane).

And then another bar of course – this one opened in 1908.

We had such a fun time on this trip. The journey and timezone difference was exhausting but certainly worth it. One thing we were able to take advantage of was our global entry passes. This allowed us to mostly skip through the TSA checkpoints and skip all of the lines at customs coming back. We got through in under 30 seconds versus the 1-2 hour lines for the others.

On our return we got stuck in Dallas for more hours than anticipated due to thunderstorms. Fortunately there was a Capital One lounge that we have access to that was really nice – free food and drinks (with great meals and an endless variety of snacks), along with showers, relaxation rooms, and a gym. This was a relaxing and enjoyable way to endure a long layover.

Granada was a fascinating city with much to see. I think we walked more here than anywhere else.

The main site was the Alambra, a castle up on a hill overlooking the city. We left our hotel at 7am to make the 1 hour hike (uphill and mostly in the dark!) to get to it. We arrived in time to watch the sunrise over the city.

The castle itself was pretty impressive. We spent hours touring through it.

Granada was not unlike Sevilla or Cordoba. We spent our days wandering through the city visiting various stores, eating very similar meals, and enjoying the wonderful weather. We found a place for paella one evening but weren’t too impressed with the food itself. The location was filled with interesting sights and sounds.

We spent hours one evening and a bar named after Kafka. They had great wine and it was a popular place.

The coffee here is mostly a joke. But there are a lot of tea options. We went to a tea store today here in Granada with thousands of options.

Great city. Cordoba was nice, but no comparison. We arrived by train.

Since our phone don’t work here, we downloaded maps of each city. That has some value. However, when typing in our hotel as destination, it insisted on taking us the route a car would take. Roighly two hours later of walking, we finally made it. We were exhausted.

Seville is an amazing city with a lot to see and do. We walked endless miles. We saw a palace with Moorish architecture. Pretty neat. There was a garden maze. It was easy to get lost.

One more day would have made things easier.

We made it to Cordoba without any problems. Arrived to Madrid and took local train to Atchoa station. From there we took a fast train south. It was comfortable. I slept nearly the whole way. We walked from the train station to our hotel. It should have only taken 15 minutes, but things get confusing. GPS is awful in the city. Our hotel is comfortable. We are alone on the 4th floor. There is a bar on this floor where you can help yourself. Real nice.

We took 3 hour nap. Then toured around a part of the city, mostly to find food. We had a nice dinner then it started to get cold and rainy.

We got back early and were in bed by maybe 8. I’ve been up since 2 am and getting a lot of reading done. It’s almost 4am now and I’m ready for breakfast.

We are in Chicago now on our way to Madrid. We should arrive in roughly 8 hours and then will catch the fast train south to Cordoba. Three days in Cordoba, then three days in Seville, three days in Granada, then remaining days in Madrid.

We each had our own row to try and sleep.

Orlando was up this weekend for a quick visit. He came alone as his kids do not have visas. On Saturday we had a dinner with friends.