The Highway Men

Sarasota... Tampa... Miami... Madrid... Lisbon

Hey..there was a picture or three of the grandchildren visiting on that camera sim card.

We've been up for 40 straight hours now. The Miami flight left late so we missed our Madrid connection and sat around the airport for seven additional hours.

According to NPR:

If you traveled by way of Florida's Route 1 in the 1960s, you might have encountered a young, African-American artist, selling a lushly painted oil landscape from his car. They weren't allowed in galleries during Jim Crow segregation -- but motels, office buildings and tourists would buy their vivid works.

Together, they formed a loosely associated band around Fort Pierce, Fla., that came to be known as The Highwaymen. At $20 a painting, they made their way out of agricultural jobs like citrus-picking and defined the cultural look of an era.

The Miami airport has a brilliant display of dozens of these paintings in the International Terminal.

Lisbon is very nice. We have big plans to eat at a Fado and ride the double decker tour buses and see the old neighborhoods and castles.

We're right by the train station, so we'll do a daytrip to Sintra.

Palm Sunday in Madrid

Madrid, Spain

We spent our last day in Madrid with a visit to the Palacio Real, former home of the Spanish royalty. The thing is ridiculously huge and opulent. You can see why the Spanish Empire turned into a corrupt empty shell. Between the palaces and the cathedrals, they were spending all their pesos on the wrong stuff. They should have been upgrading their weapons, armada and army.

Even the weapons and suits of armor in the Royal Armory are engraved in ridiculous detail. They could have made 20 suits of armor with the man hours that went into engraving one metal suit for a horse.

The big cathedral by the palace has a parade of people carrying palm fronds and singing. In the plaza between the two monster buildings we hear two men playing good classical guitar and synthesizer. We buy their CD for a souvenir.

We wander though the middle of the city walking about five miles to see the Thyssen-Bornemisza art museum. This is near the El Prada and has lots of Picasso, Gauguin and Degas. A nice way to end.

Our dinner, on the sidewalk, lasts until midnight. We share an arugula salad, a bottle of wine, grilled chicken breast and flan.. In the morning we catch the train to Seville.

Dateline Madrid

Madrid. Spain



The 767 on the trip over had a new seatback entertainment system. I watched three episodes of "Breaking Bad" and the new Jim Carey flick, "Yesman" and "The Day the World Stood Still"...even so nine hours is a long flight. We took a taxi to the hotel and the driver turned off the meter at the destination. It read 31 Euros, but somehow I owed him 45 euros anyway. We had read that the taxi drivers rip you off. The Metro ride would have been two Euros, but I was tired.



We took a nap and then reconoitered the Metro to the Atocha train station.


This morninig when we got up at 6:30 and dressed for our train ride to Toledo, we were surprised to find that the tickets are for tomorrow. Breakfast at the hotel was fantasticismo...croussants, ham, cheeses, jelly, butter, Cafe con leche, fruit and yogurt and hard-boiled eggs. We went to the El Prada art museum, primarily to see Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights"



Double-click on the photo above to get a better view of something really twisted...After that we strolled the big park to the East of the El Prada...


This is a building in the park called the Crystal Palace.



We wandered around last night looking for the tapas we had heard so much about. No luck on those but we did find a place that had a lot of pig legs hanging on the ceiling...we ordered red wine and an Iberian platter of pig things...they were very tasty...we're a little jet lagged and slept last night from 9-12 and then 4-6...tonight should do the trick...Mrs. Phred is taking an afternoon nap right now...tomorrow Toledo.





The plazza next to our hotel has a nice statue of Don Quijote (Quixote), his horse (Racinote?) and his buddy (Pancho?) and mule. Maybe I'm thinking of Zorro? Our hotel is on the Grand Via...it seems to be a shoe shopping district...the room electricity only works when a card is inserted in a slot...the shower is poorly designed and runs all over the floor...its a 4 star...we're on the eighth floor...I smoke on the balcony and consider head shots with my M-1 on the pedestrians far below...wind and elevation complicate things...my admiration for Whitman's work in the Texas Tower goes up several notches...