Fixing A Hole

Learning to stand I guess with my dad and mom in my grandparents' back yard, Normanton.

35 years ago, my family emigrated from England to the United States. I believe that experience growing on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean is one of the many advantages I enjoy in life, most of which were provided to me by my parents. Even today, my American family is very very small. My dad, mom, sister and I have been supplemented by a brother-in-law and a niece. That's it. That's all the family I have here. The rest of my relatives all live in England and primarily in the county of Yorkshire.

I love my adopted home and I'm proud to be an American. I believe I had an immigrant's love of this country. Not that life in England is significantly different than it is here, but I believe the United States offers me more opportunity than anywhere else in the world (not that I've been everywhere else in the world) and the diversity of culture, history and natural landscape makes this country one that can be discovered over and over again when you thought you understood the place completely.

Despite the fact that I am an American, part of me will always be English. It's where my roots and my family history are. Since we arrived here in July 1979, I have been back to England probably far too infrequently. I believe I am the least frequent visitor of our original four family members, having only returned four times: twice when I lived under my parents' roof in 1982 and 1985, then twice on my own in 1997 and 2007. Today, I am making visit number five.

Forced smile. Early 1970s. Castle Donnington.

I speculated in my birthday post this past June that the second year of my five year project to see more of the world would likely be one of filling in gaps in my past or in my American experience. So rather than jetting off to new continents or walking on glaciers, I will likely spend some time in the last half of 2014 and the first half of 2015 catching up on some things that I have missed in the places I have already been. I see this trip as the first piece to solving that puzzle. 

I believe there are English experiences that I have missed in my first 11 years and my four return trips. Some are nobody's fault: I was either too young or not interested enough at the times when I was in country to get to them. Others I've had the opportunity to do and just couldn't be bothered or didn't try hard enough to get to them. So in the next week and a half, I intend to check off some English "bucket list" items, if you will, that have so far eluded me. I'm hoping to do most of these from London.

I also believe that I have not engaged my ancestry in a significant enough way. I am here today because all the people ahead of me made it in some way. I intend to dig into that past, even if just a little bit. I'm likely not going to do it thoroughly enough for some but I figure any little bit helps. So for this part of my quest, I'm going to have to head up north to Yorkshire for a couple of days. I'm sure I could spend weeks, months or years doing this. I'll have to make do with a little more than two days.

Going back home tonight and I'm feeling good about it. I can't wait to step off the plane at Heathrow. There's an uneven night of sleep sitting upright in coach between then and now.

Me and my sister in the back yard of our house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

Death In The Early Evening

Just like I did with my trip to Germany last year, I've saved my most (and I guess only) disturbing post about my trip to Spain and Morocco until the very end. Last year, it was my trip to Dachau that I reserved for last; this year it was my trip to Las Ventas bullring to watch a series of bullfights, if you can call them that. Whether you agree with the practice or not (and after having seen one in person I have to say I see little value in this), the experience of attending a bullfight is undeniably Spanish and that's the reason I had to see one for myself. I can only truly judge for myself that which I have seen in person. Like me or dislike me for that if you will.

Based on my experience at Las Ventas, the short story behind bullfighting from my totally uneducated point of view is this: man armed with sword gets together with his friends (who are also armed with knives on poles or other sharp instruments) either on foot or on horseback to torture a confused and scared animal before they finally decide they have had enough fun with the beast so they just kill it. It seemed cruel at the time and it still does two months later. But what happened in the bullring that night in Madrid was confusing to me, so I thought I would research and write down the rules, then write about my experience. And then never repeat that experience.

As I have come to understand a bullfight is a ritual which is ordered and structured and the various men involved in the event each have specific roles to play. This doesn't change the cruelty of the thing; I'm just explaining. The entire event is a corrida and the corrida is carried out by a group of men known as toreros, consisting of a matador and his cuadrilla. The matador is the lead man charged with fighting (and mostly killing) the bull. The cuadrilla is his entourage, consisting of two picadors and a group of banderilleros. A corrida consists of several bullfights, six of which (two per matador) are supposed to result in a bull's death.

An individual bullfight is divided into three parts; generally speaking it's a beginning-middle-end sort of thing (the entrance followed by the fight followed by death). I guess I could have figured this tripartite structure out by sitting in the stands that night but it was very confusing at first figuring out what was going on. The first couple of bulls we saw didn't die but were instead ushered out by a herd of cows after what I now understand as the first part of the event, whereas others were tormented further before ultimately being put to death.

Las Ventas Bullring

Bullfighting is all but dead in Europe. There are only three countries where this sort of thing continues: France, Portugal and Spain. Of all the bullrings in Europe, the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid is the most prestigious. And of all the times to visit Madrid to see a bullfight, the best time to go is during the Festival of San Isidro, an annual event starting in mid-May celebrating the patron saint of Spain's capital city. The Festival is celebrated by a month of bullfights which are held each day at Las Ventas and which draw the best matadors to the bullring during those 30 some nights. As it turned out, my trip to Spain happened to coincide with the Festival, so I guess I had plenty of nights to choose from and the so-called best matadors.

Las Ventas is an historic building which seats about 25,000 people. It was opened in 1931 after the previous main bullring in the city proved to be of inadequate size. It is constructed mostly of brick and is decorated in the moorish style with ceramic tile accents. The place is no luxury arena. The seats are stone and you are packed in really really tight on all sides. The stone seats were actually pretty comfortable; the lack of space in front and behind is not. You really have to sit bolt upright in your spot to avoid kneeing the person in front of you in the back and to prevent the person behind you from doing the same to you.

Seats in the arena are generally priced based on proximity to the ring and whether the predominant exposure of the seat is in sun, shade or both. The seats closest to the ring in the shade are the most expensive, with the exception of a few luxury box type seats in the rear of the arena. I guess those folks don't sit on stone or one of the cushions available for rent at the arena. We opted for shaded seats and I'm glad we did. I would not have wanted to bake in that place under the hot Spanish sun. We also found the process of purchasing tickets on line very confusing. We ended up getting seats from a ticket broker just because it was way easier to understand.

The opening ceremony of the corrida.

Since this was going to be the only bullfight of my life, I made sure to get there early so I could take everything in. The place filled up slowly but sure enough by the time the first fight started, the entire arena was pretty much filled. My emotions at the start of the fight were a mix between anticipation and dread. I'd prepared for my trip by reading most of Ernest Hemingway's book Death in the Afternoon, which is his non-fiction account of how wonderful bullfighting is. Some of his descriptions made an impression on me but I honestly couldn't see myself feeling the same way he did in his book. I'm pretty confident I would not get along with Hemingway.

The only other notion I had before sitting down and watching a bullfight was that I would pretty definitely be rooting for a spirited showing by the bull complete with a goring or two of the matadors. But my vision of what might happen was significantly different than what actually happened. The majority of the bulls really stand no chance. They are totally set up to fail. As I mentioned before, there is a spot in the event where a bull can be ushered out of the arena by a herd of cows (and presumably spared?) but the euphoria of one bull getting away with its life is quickly dashed by the bullfight organizers as they throw another animal out into the ring. Eventually, there's going to be one that's not that lucky.

An individual bullfight starts with the entrance of the bull and the initial sparring, for lack of a better term. Even though we were sitting several rows back in the stands, I could tell these animals are big. Like really big. And at the beginning of the fight they are barely wounded and pretty darned angry. I hestitate to use terms like bravery to describe what happened on the night of May 25 at Las Ventas but I know from watching that night that I don't want to ever come across an angry 1,000 pound bull when it's just me and him in a dusty circle. There is real danger for the banderilleros, even if they do have some gates in the outer wall of the arena to duck behind.

This part of the bullfight was actually the most enjoyable to me, probably because it almost seemed fair and actually involves some skill. At a couple of points, two of the younger banderilleros obviously looking to prove themselves took on mostly healthy bulls solo in the center of the arena, guiding the bull past their bodies with their pink capes. Hemingway discussed the obligation of the bullfighters to stand still when guiding the bull past them. Moving is not an option in the eyes of the audience. And thinking about that proposition could actually cause some admiration.

Does seven on one seem like a fair fight?

After a short while getting the bull to chase their pink capes, the banderilleros retire for a time and the picadors enter the ring on horseback. The picadors are the first men in the fight to draw blood and from here on (unless somehow they are spared) it is really all downhill for the bull. But the bull does have a moment of hope, unfortunately at the expense of the horses. Compared to the banderilleros which have toyed with the bull to this point of the fight, the mounted picadors represent a significantly larger and less agile target for the bull to attack and after the tormenting so far, the bull is good and ready to attack something and hit it. The horses are blindfolded (which I guess prevents flight at the horns of a massive pissed off animal) and heavily padded, which prevents them getting disemboweled by the bull. I'm not kidding on that last point. Hemingway described the disemboweling of the horses in his book. I am sincerely glad they wear a significant amount of padding these days. That would be something I do not need to ever see.

Each picador is accompanied by a banderillero and the reason why became obvious in a fight when the bull raced towards one of the mounted picadors only to have the pink cape waved in front of him right before he hit the horse. I am quite confident there would have been significant damage to horse and rider if this hadn't happened. As it was, the second bull of the night had a horn snap right off when hitting the horse and we saw a horse almost toppled by a bull. These bulls are fast and they dip their horns low when reaching their target and swipe up when they hit; it's easy to imagine a horse being ripped right open by a bull's horns. I can't imagine how painful it is for a bull to lose a horn all at once but I really don't want to imagine how painful a disemboweling is.

Ultimately, the picadors have their effect and serve their purpose and they leave the bull in a hurry, with blood streaming down its back. At this point, the animal is confused, scared, frustrated and tired. It was not uncommon to see the animal just move away from all the men in the ring just to get away only to be led back into combat through repeated pestering and taunting. Most of the animals were breathing heavily in obvious discomfort and a few urinated likely out of just sheer terror.

That marks the end of the first part of the fight and at this point there seems to be some sort of judgment made by the crowd on the bull's fate. I should mention that (unlike us) the crowd was not just sitting there in shocked silence. I guess maybe you get numb to this sort of stuff after a while? The manipulation of the animal's movements by the banderilleros and a few falls by one or two of the bulls yielded applause and jeers from the crowd. But after the picadors left, there was a general buzz around the arena directed to a ceremonial box in back of where we were sitting. The man at the center of the box it seemed was the determiner of the bull's fate at this point by waving a handkerchief. Red for death; green for life.

It's odd to talk about sparing a bull's life based on its bravery like you see gladiators being judged by the emperor of Rome in Hollywood movies but honestly that's what happened. Those bulls that were spirited and challenged the banderilleros were cheered by the crowd and I believe the people around us were asking for the bull to live (such as I understand from my non-Spanish speaking perspective). A green hanky wave meant the release of a herd of cows to entice the bull to leave the arena and I guess freedom. Five of the nine fights we saw that night resulted in the bull leaving the ring alive. I'm not entirely sure what happens to these bulls, but I hope they live.

A red handkerchief meant something entirely different and much grislier. If a bull was deemed fit to fight on for the amusement of the crowd, the fight continues to the second part. The second act of the fight involves men on foot sticking the bull with sharpened pointed blades attached to brightly colored sticks. These things are called banderillas (not to be confused with banderilleros). The men who stick these items in the bull's back stand directly in front of the bull and entice it to charge at them. When the bull gets really close, they step aside and jab the bull with the banderillas, which remain in the bull's back looking colorful and drawing blood continuously until the end of the fight. This process was repeated until the bull had anywhere from two to six of these things in its back. Now it's even more confused and hurt and I have to imagine it's feeling the night is not going to end well. So ends part two.

From this point on, the matador takes center stage and it is his responsibility to finish off the bull. For this phase of the fight, the matador abandons his large pink cape and swaps it for a smaller red one and a sword, which at the beginning of the fight is ceremonial. Notwithstanding the fact that they are facing a weakened animal, the stuff these guys do in the ring is insane or inane, whichever you prefer. These guys stand so close to the bulls with the capes so close to their body and control the animal's every movement. If there wasn't blood flowing from the bull's back and I didn't know this part of the fight would end in death for the bull, I'd actually be impressed by the skill displayed.

The abilty of the matador to focus the bull's eyes on him but not allow him to charge and then make the animal concentrate on the cape and make him charge was impressive. I don't understand why this isn't the event. It would be a hell of a lot more dangerous and entertaining and it wouldn't result in the senseless death of an animal. In the most brave/foolhardy display that night, one of the matadors actually passed the cape behind his body and kept the animal feet from him and then made him charge once the cape was free of his body. It was actually somewhat amazing.

As dangerous as this part of the fight is for a matador, we eventually understand that this just wouldn't last that long and that eventually the matador would change his toy sword for a real one. When he does that, the task is to stand in front of the bull (like in the photo above) and make him charge, sidestepping the charge at the last possible moment and slide the sword down into his body and kill him in one stroke. Only one of the bulls we saw killed that night died that way. The others took multiple attempts, which was really sad to see. Once that killing stroke is rendered, the final kill is delivered with a small blade to the brain and it's all over. The animal being dragged out of the arena is honestly one of the most cruel things I have ever seen.

Then the whole thing is repeated. After a while, it's upsetting and numbing and you just don't want to sit through any more. I don't get why people don't stay away. They couldn't be all tourists like me.

It's difficult for me to say that I was glad I went to a bullfight while in Spain. It wasn't exactly enjoyable. A large part of me can't imagine why this sort of stuff still goes on in the twenty first century. It is completely senseless and brutal and serves absolutely no purpose. I do think, however, that I got to see something uniquely Spanish and from that point of view, I considered it sort of a rite of passage that I couldn't miss. I am also quite confident when I say that I will no way in hell ever do that again.

Our bullfight experience that night lasted two hours and 20 minutes. We left early; enough was enough after the fourth kill. I probably didn't need to see that many but we honestly thought it would be over once each of the matadors had one kill and we just didn't split quickly enough after the third kill. I suppose that there were two more bulls killed after we left. 

I will say that we got some of what we were hoping for. We were pleased to see some spirited showings and one of the bulls did actually outsmart the matador and draw blood. After one of his last charges past the cape, he whipped his head around and caught the matador in the leg, knocking him to the ground. He then went for the kill but his attempts to further wound the matador were foiled by him rolling and a pack of banderilleros coming to his aid. Too bad, I suppose. Although seeing a matador get killed wouldn't make me any happier.

I imagine that was the last corrida I will ever attend. But before I close I would feel remiss if I did not memorialize the bulls who died that night. Some of the bulls are named in the program handed to you upon entering Las Ventas so we recorded the names of three of the four killed. We didn't get the fourth. I hope that Astillo, Aguacero and Costurero are resting in peace along with the one whose name I didn't quite get.

Churros Con Chocolate

In my first year writing this blog which records my five year plan to see more of the world, I visited Europe three times. In June and July of last year, I visited Germany and Austria for a little over a week. Five months or so later, I took a three day trip to Iceland, which is an interesting spot to visit around the winter solstice. Then this past May, I took a long overdue journey to Spain. Not too shabby for a 12 month period. I picked up more stamps in my passport in the last year than I did in during the lifetime of my previous two passports combined.

In an odd twist of fate, each of my trips to Europe in the past 15 months has featured some sort of touchstone junk food related experience. I use the word "odd" because I generally think of junk food as some sort of uniquely American phenomenon. Turns out I'm sort of wrong. In Germany, I had the best pretzels I have ever had, gorgeous crusty outside but delicious inside lightly salted twists of dough served alongside a scrumptious spiced cream cheese mixture. The best I had were at Andechs Abbey about two hours south of Munich. They alone are worth the train ride and taxi ride to Andechs. If your taxi driver is listening to a radio station that plays "Macarena" back to back with Eddie Rabbitt's "I Love a Rainy Night" well that's just a bonus.

In Iceland, my junk food fix was satisfied at a hot dog stand where an estimated 50% of all Icelanders have eaten at some point in their lives. I love hot dogs; I'd eat them every day if I thought it would be remotely good for my health. And this one was good. I could have had another two or three. My 4 pm in the dark (after sunset) snack with all the trimmings in downtown Reykjavik made me feel like a native, especially with a  little snow floating in the air close to the freezing cold harbor after a fruitless whale watching (or not watching) trip.

Quite often, food forms the basis of some sort of focus when I travel but I swear I don't seek out junk food specifically. But sure enough, in Spain it happened again. One thing I had to try in Madrid was a breakfast of churros, which is essentially the Spanish version of a donut, although not so much. And if you are looking for churros in Madrid, the place to go is apparently Chocolateria San Gines.

Now you don't have to go to Spain to get some churros. The first time I ever heard of these things, which are essentially extruded pieces of dough fried in hot oil, was at a doubleheader in San Francisco's Candlestick Park featuring the home Giants against the (now Washington Nationals) Montreal Expos in May of 1998. My friend Steve and I were playing hooky from the AIA Convention for the afternoon and, from our sheltered existence in upstate New York, had no idea what the churro vendor was shouting about. We didn't try churros that day, but I'm sure they would have been good. I think the last time I had churros in northern Virginia where I live, it was at a grocery store, and they were pretty forgettable.

There's a big difference between a NoVA grocery store churro and one in the heart of Madrid, or so I hoped. I picked Chocolateria San Gines as my churro vendor of choice because they have been making these fried sticks of dough for over a hundred years. Since 1894 precisely. That's right, folks: this place has been cooking churros, which are basically their principal dish (their online menu features chocolate with six churros and chocolate with two churros and that's it!), since before Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union. They have survived a couple of world wars (although admittedly there was not a lot of conflict in Spain during those wars) and an almost half century long dictatorship. They must be doing something right. So in my first full day in Madrid, I headed out early for some breakfast.

Churro eating strategy: early and late.

Chocolateria San Gines is located on Pasadizo San Gines, right around the church of the same name. The journey south from our hotel on the Gran Via was itself an endeavor which made the churros waiting for us at the other end that much more rewarding. Madrid is not a gridded city so the 20 minute or so trek south featured a series of lefts and rights, some backtracking and a whole lot of map consulting to get to the street where we would ultimately find the Chocolateria. The last left we took onto the street revealed the view at the top of this post: a narrow alley with a simple neon sign above a doorway advertising the restaurant.

A short walk down the alley (there's really no other word for it), a right and a quick left into the restaurant revealed a white tile and dark wood room packed full of customers with waiters hoisting trays of churros with chocolate and cups of coffee either around the main room or out to the street to tables with hungry customers in the alley. To the right is a winding staircase down to a basement level and seeing no available tables, we hurried downstairs into the cellar to grab a seat and waited to be served. Soon after we were seated, we were presented with two orders of six churros with a cup of hot chocolate each.

The churros I've had in the United States are sweet, like most desserts over here I'm finding. They are typically rolled in sugar and occasionally cinnamon right after frying, which gives them a taste which needs nothing extra to make them usually delicious. But the ones at Chocolateria San Gines are not rolled in anything; they stand on their own as fried dough and rely on the hot chocolate for the full churro experience. Now, just like the churros, the hot chocolate is not the drink we get at home but instead is a sort of bittersweet chocolate dip or thin syrup used to coat the churros before eating. You don't want to be sipping on this stuff; think about drinking a cup of nacho cheese or something, but not quite as disgusting. The combination of the unsweetened dough and the less than American type sugary chocolate is a decidedly less sweet breakfast than we would ever get back home. Not what I was expecting exactly but a fantastic start to the day without being overly cloying or filling.

The process of getting maximum value out of your churros con chocolate requires some thought. At the beginning of the meal, the cup of chocolate is full, meaning dunking your churro in the liquid yields a generous two to three inches of chocolate covering the eating end of the churro. But as you dunk and dunk, the liquid level goes down (and there's nobody there offering refills) so getting maximum chocolate value in each bite requires a different strategy, namely breaking of pieces of churro and saturating them in chocolate before each bite. I figured they gave you a spoon for a reason and this is probably it. This is the part of the meal that is the best and if I'd been thinking about it, I would probably have just eaten all the churros this way. Hopefully the dozen or so people reading this can learn from my mistake.

My churro experience in Madrid was brief but it somehow felt authentically European. Maybe it was the tight cellar packed with people eating the exact same dish in some strange show of solidarity or something. I'm convinced that I fared better underground; it made the place feel more rewarding after the treasure hunt type journey we took to get there. I'd recommend a trip and then a lot of walking to work off the six sticks of fried dough before you are ever really awake. I swear I'm not looking for junk food, but I'll be happy if every trip to Europe features one of these types of experiences.

The line when we left. Somehow I seem to have a knack for getting ahead of lines. No wait when we got there.

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes

Pilgrimage to San Isidro's Fountain

My trip to Spain this past spring was a long time coming, but it ended up being a lot different than I imagined it would be. I had contemplated (without doing any research, which is always dangerous) a few days in Barcelona to see Antoni Gaudí's buildings, followed by maybe a few other cities. Madrid, Bilbao and Seville probably with maybe a day trip to Tangier, Morocco. As it turned out, the only city other than Barcelona that survived the planning process was Madrid.

When I made the decision to spend three days in Madrid, the only attractions I could highlight as must sees were Pablo Picasso's Guernica and the Museo Nacional del Prado, which I probably conceived as the same thing. They aren't; Guernica is in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia about a 10 to 15 minute walk south of the Prado. But in researching Madrid and art in Madrid in particular, it became obvious that I should go see some of the works of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (hereafter in this post just referred to as Goya), one of the great Spanish masters whose work has not traveled far from Madrid. 

If there's a place in the world you can get immersed in Goya's work, it's the Prado. So knowing absolutely nothing about what I would find there, but armed with what I like to think is some understanding of the history of western art, I set out for the Prado on the first day I arrived in Spain, which happened to be a Saturday night when the museum is open until 8 pm. The Prado itself is not an enormous museum but it's big enough. It is arrayed as a series of enfillade rooms along a floor plan which is about four to five times as long as it is wide. My arrival at the museum just before 6 pm revealed a line of people almost the entire length of the building and my heart sank a little. I'm English and so queuing is sort of in my blood but the length of this line was ridiculous; it would likely take forever to get in.

Turns out the Prado is free after 6 pm and once the hour hand struck the bottom of the clock the line disappeared quickly; it took all of maybe 10 minutes to get from the back of the line to the building entrance. They were just handing out free tickets as fast as they could. For an unknown museum that held works by a guy I may or may not like, this was a great start. The first thing I did when I got through the door was to grab a map and find out where the Goyas were hung. It appears from looking at the Prado this morning while writing this post that the Prado is no longer free after 6, but is instead half price. I feel even luckier now than I did the day I visited.

The main spine of the Prado on the entrance level runs from the circular entrance hall down almost the full length of the building to an octagonal room, before the sequence of travel deflects the visitor into a series of side galleries. The first encounter with Goya's work is in the aforementioned octagonal room, with the next five galleries off that room also dedicated to Goya. So not wishing to waste any time, I fast forwarded past all the rest of the art hanging in the building and headed down the building to see what the Goya fuss was all about.

The Family of Charles IV

The centerpiece of the octagonal room at the south end of the Prado's first level is the painting The Family of Charles IV. The painting hangs on the wall that terminates the building's axis so it is the most prominently displayed work for anyone entering the room. The remainder of the walls hold vignettes or studies of some of the family members in the main painting; practice sketches if you will for the final work. The date of the final work (shown above) is the year 1800.

So re-stating the fact that I like to think I have some understanding of western art...what's the big deal? I had read that one of the hallmarks of Goya's works was the warts and all nature of his painting; that he refused to deliberately edit or change his works to cater to someone else's idea of what should be shown. From written accounts, this seemed to be especially true of his depictions of historical scenes when Madrid was briefly under Napoleon's rule in the early 1800s; his paintings showing the struggle between Napoleonic troops and ordinary Spanish citizens were allegedly shocking because they refused to sugar coat what really happened those couple of days.

Knowing all that, I expected his paintings of Spain's elite to be less beautiful and composed and I imagined any physical defect of his subjects would be pronounced. What I saw on the wall of the octagonal room was a nice painting of a royal family. To me, this was not worth raving about. Maybe among his contemporaries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Goya employed techniques heretofore undiscovered in depicting light and shade and the human form but to me, this was not brilliant. I moved on hoping to find something better.

The series of five galleries to the south of the octagonal room holding The Family of Charles IV are completely devoted to Goya. Almost all of the paintings in these five galleries are portraits or religious or allegorical works and almost all were commissioned. In these commissioned paintings, I found nothing that I was hoping to find, namely a move away from strict representational paintings of people or imagined biblical figures.

There were, however, a few non-commissioned paintings in these five galleries that showed something different; they were small works depicting carnival characters in slightly surreal surroundings. There were also hints in the captions near each work that Goya's mental state was becoming less stable with age, brought on by the onset of deafness or maybe something more severe. I headed downstairs, hoping to find something great, or at least the gruesome scenes of the cruelty of Napoleon's forces exerting their power over the residents of Madrid.

The Third of May, 1808

The Third of May, 1808 (shown above) is one of Goya's most famous works and it can be found in the Prado's zero level in the southeast corner of the building. It shows the execution of some of Madrid's citizens by French troops and was painted in 1814, right after the French had been sent back north. The painting has a companion piece, The Second of May, 1808, which shows the events of a day earlier, a scuffle between the same French troops and some Spanish citizens who objected to the rough handling of the Spanish royal family in their removal from the royal residence. That scene, like the one on May 3rd, ended in French troops killing Spanish men.

Like the religious and portraiture works by Goya that I had seen earlier in the day, The Third of May, 1808 was a commissioned work, in this case for the government of Spain, and while I'm sure the image was shocking in the early 19th century due to the gore on full display, I was not impressed. I am sure the actual scene was far worse. I am also pretty sure that Goya was not on hand to witness it. Another disappointment.

Now in my rush to get to the highly anticipated anti-Napleonic works, I had bypassed gallery 67 of the Prado, which is the last Goya gallery in the building and therefore my last chance to be impressed. In backtracking to visit that gallery, everything I thought about Goya from my visit so far changed instantly.

Duel With Cudgels

I had learned earlier in my visit to the Prado that deafness and maybe some other diseases or conditions had changed Goya's mental state. An acquaintance of Goya's at the time reported the painter hearing voices as his hearing deteriorated and modern day post mortems attribute Goya's conditions to one or more of a series of strokes, paranoid dementia, brain trauma or even lead poisoning. This change in mental state is reflected in a series of paintings labeled Fantasy and Invention, a few of which I had seen in an earlier gallery upstairs at the Prado (the carnival folk in slightly surreal settings).

In 1819, Goya bought a house outside of Madrid and effectively retired, isolating himself from the world and pretty much everyone he had ever known. The house was known as Quinta del Sordo and was named after the previous owner but the rough translation to "house of the deaf man" fit Goya perfectly. Although he retired from public life, he didn't stop painting. While living in his new house until his death in 1828, he painted a series of 14 paintings directly onto the plaster walls of the houses. These works, known as the Black Paintings for both the predominance of that color and their dark nature, are in gallery 67 of the Prado. And they are absolutely amazing.

Pilgrimage to San Isidro

The Black Paintings remained at Quinta del Sordo until the 1870s when they were removed from the walls of the house and transferred to canvas and hung in the Prado. Understandably, the works were damaged when transferred and repairs were necessary which some feel irreversibly changed the paintings. Nonetheless, the contrast between these works and the rest of Goya's paintings in the Prado is striking and obvious. The realistic portrayal of the human form is gone; figures are hunched or twisted or otherwise grotesquely displayed. In some cases, they are levitated unnaturally.

The overall demeanor of the paintings is restrained chaos and emerging madness, a reversal of the calm, heroic, stately nature of the rest of Goya's paintings hanging in the galleries. The range of emotions on the figures' faces in many of the paintings is astonishing: I read insanity, laughter, confusion, fear, rage and hatred rather than any other emotion which speaks to the higher nature of humanity. There is conflict, shame, horror and a sense of things ready to go horribly wrong in these works, even in the painting depicting a dog swimming in water; the sense is that the creature is in the middle of the ocean and there's no way he's going to make it to shore.

The Dog

There are two paintings depicting pilgrimages to San Isidro among the 14 paintings. In both works the train of pilgrims seems like they are either being driven cruelly by some unknown tormentor or that they are caught up in something they don't quite understand. The faces of some of the people seem confused, or blissfully happy but totally unaware of what they are doing. There is another painting which depicts two men beating each other with clubs. It is plainly obvious by the expressions on the two men's faces that one of them is not going to escape the fight alive.

In perhaps the most famous of the 14, Saturn Devouring His Son, the titan Saturn is engaged in cannibalism of his son in response to a prophecy that his own son would one day overthrow him. The action makes no sense; it is so extreme a response to a prophecy that Saturn himself seems halfway between madness and rage and at the same time we sort of pity him. The eyes popping out of his head and his hands clenched with rage around the body of his own child are terrifying.

Saturn Devouring His Son

My favorite of the 14, The Great He-Goat or Witches' Sabbath, is completely fantastical. A great crowd is gathered to look at a half-man, half-goat figure who is depicted only in shadow profile, so it's actually unclear if the figure is a mix of man and beast or in fact a man just wearing some sort of goat mask. The crowd appears to be variably venerating and fearing the figure; some can't seem to look away despite being shocked and horrified while others seem to be in comfortable adoration. It's dark and creepy and sinister and everything the earlier Goya works in the Prado are not. The transformation of an artist's subject matter in a few years is amazing.

The exact date of these paintings is of course unknown because nobody actually saw the progress of these works except Goya himself but they were obviously painted between 1819 when he bought his house and his death in 1828. As works of art, these paintings are so far ahead of their time. They are truly modern in the sense that they aren't strictly representational. The figures painted are not depicted necessarily physically correctly and their facial features are often distorted or their bodies merged through the painting technique with those of their neighbors. But the emotion, again mostly very dark emotions, are there throughout.

I honestly had no idea what I would find at the Prado and my expectations for any artist painting in the late 1700s and early 1800s were very low. But I'd go back to see these again, and not just when the museum is free or reduced price or whatever the admission policy on a Saturday night is nowadays. These works truly made an impact on me. I'm putting these works on my favorites list. Gallery 67. Remember it when visiting.

The Great He-Goat or Witches' Sabbath

The High Atlas

Marrakech is located a little more than 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean in about the north-south centerline of Morocco. Directly north a few hours by car is Casablanca, a port city sitting right on the Atlantic, and Rabat, the capital of the country, is a little further north up the coast. In the south of the country is the western edge of the Sahara Desert, one of the defining geographical features of northern Africa but when you are in Marrakech, there is no hint of the Sahara. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of dirt and sand, but the Atlas Mountains, which run to the south and west of Marrakech, protect the city from the advancing desert, which has been spreading south across the continent. I knew before I departed Madrid for Morocco that I wouldn't be close enough to the Sahara to see it, but I also knew I wanted to see more of the country than just what the city of Marrakech had to offer. The Atlas Mountains seemed like a perfect day trip. They were.

One of the great advantages we had staying in Marrakech was the staff in our hotel, Riad l'Orangeraie. In addition to offering traditional world class comfort right in the center of the old city, the Riad also offers a series of day trips to guests of the hotel. One of the suggested excursions was a day trip across the Atlas Mountains and back which sounded like just the right day out to see another side of Morocco. We decided to spend our second day in country taking this trip as a break from the city. After an early rise and an amazing breakfast, we loaded ourselves into a car, complete with personal driver, of course, and headed west.

Our ultimate destination for our drive that day was the old city of Ait Benhaddou, a ksar on the other side of the mountains themselves. The city (and I used this term very loosely) was established centuries ago along side a former caravan route which traders used to pass from ancient Sudan en route to Marrakech. In 1997, the city was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its importance as an exemplary example of both a Saharan settlement town and for its earthen construction technique. The site is well preserved today because it has been used as a movie backdrop for a number of Hollywood films and series, notably (for me) Gladiator, Game of Thrones and Time Bandits.

The topography around Marrakech itself is fairly flat, but you can see the mountains from within the city in the not so far distance and after driving past some luxury hotels with gorgeously manicured golf courses (NOT what I went to Morocco for), the land starts to get a little rougher and you start heading uphill. Pretty soon, after passing through some residential neighborhoods and past some industrial type buildings, you leave civilization behind (such as it is in Morocco) and are climbing into the Atlas Mountains. 

Stops along the way: cafe and argan products store...

…and couscous fields and farms.

It's a good three to four hour or so drive to Ait Benhaddou so for a significant while heading out there (and then the same amount of time heading back), you are alone with the mountains and the few other cars and trucks that are making the same trip over the hills. The only signs of people you pass are Berber farmers either in their fields or selling crafts on the side of the road or roadside cafes which are sort of the Moroccan versions of convenience stores: a spot to get a drink, a quick bite to eat and to visit the bathroom (with a tip for the bathroom attendant, of course). 

The road to Ait Benhaddou twists and turns along the natural ridges of the mountains, reaching its highest point at the mountain pass of Tizi n'Tichka (pronounced tish-ka, for short). The views are incredible. There are places in which you can see no evidence of man's presence on the planet other than the road you are traveling on, which is a refreshing change after the madness and chaos of the medina in Marrakech. The panoramic photo function on my iPod camera seemed made for these types of views.

In traveling over the Atlas Mountains, it becomes pretty obvious fairly quickly how much of the Moroccan economy is focused on small farms and tourism. There's literally nothing else you pass on the road to Ait Benhaddou that provides any indication of how people survive. Two of the main staples of life in Morocco were on prominent display during our drive. Couscous, the grain that grows on man-made terraces in the mountain landscape, was evident in fields on just about every farm we passed, tended by Berber farmers using donkeys (aka Berber taxis) to both work the fields and travel from field to field. 

The other staple, argan, a nut native to Morocco and no other country in the world, is not eaten as a fruit but is instead used to make oil for cosmetic and food use. As a restorative skin and hair treatment, argan oil is sold worldwide by international corporations in stores like Sephora at fairly exorbitant prices ($48 for a 1.7 ounce bottle). In Morocco, the same oil is hand ground and sold by women's collectives in the stores and stalls you pass when driving through the mountains, along with argan honey. If you look closely when on the road you can see collections of beehives in what look like white cardboard file boxes in the grassy areas on the sides of the mountains.

Driving through the mountains reminded me very much of driving through the American southwest, particularly New Mexico, which is touched by the Rocky Mountains in the north central part of the state. Like New Mexico, the foliage in the Atlas Mountains is limited and the red, brown and yellow colors of the earth are pretty spectacular. When I drove through New Mexico a dozen or so years ago, I remember thinking that if you took away the road I was driving on, I would see pretty much the same thing as the first white visitor to that part of the globe. I felt the same way about this part of Morocco.

Ait Benhaddou.

After a few beautiful hours, we finally reached Ait Benhaddou. The city these days is pretty much like a museum. There are few residents who actually live in the unheated/cooled, unplumbed Berber houses (although some do). The city fills up each morning with people moving in for the day to sell rugs, crafts, paintings and other items and they go away at night back to the place where they live. There is a ten foot or so wide unpaved path that winds around the town and up the top of the hill. The whole place is made from earth and reeds, with the exception of the stone building at the top of the hill which our driver and guide described to us as having a ceremonial function for the ruler of the city, which as we now understand it was a rotating selected position among all the citizens of the ksar. 

The place is worth an hour or so visit; it's not that big to spend too much more time than that unless you really get into looking at everything for sale there. Having our driver with us to explain for us what we were seeing and to take us to some spots we might miss was essential; way better than just roaming around for ourselves. That didn't work that well for us in the Bahia Palace in Marrakech. Ultimately, we didn't end up buying anything from any of the stalls (traveling light) but the carpets are authentic; we watched someone making a piece of one for a few minutes inside one of the buildings in the city.

For me, the worst part of any driving destination is the trip home, and the return four hours or so trip back to Marrakech was no exception. I mean, you have already seen everything there is to see because you've already passed it once so there's no sense of anticipation or discovery. But there's no way around it and there's no alternate route through the mountains. I'm glad we were in a small car; some of those roads are small, especially when passing trucks or other larger vehicles. We came around one corner to find a truck in our lane negotiating the turn. There are no guardrails on some of these roads, just a few hundred feet drop five feet or so away.

I'm also glad we sprang for a driver, rather than just renting a car and making the trip ourselves. The driving part wouldn't have been that bad, even as narrow and twisty as the road was. But the five traffic stops by the armed police or the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie that we passed through would have been a little more alarming. I can speak French well enough to order a sandwich or a beer and maybe ask for some directions or carry on a light conversation, but I think trying to articulate to an armed man what I was doing driving through mountains would have been a different story.

I couldn't really have been happier with our day out through the mountains. The day excursion did exactly what it was planned to do: get us to see another side of Morocco that we couldn't really experience in person from inside the medina walls in Marrakech. Overall, I feel I could have used a day or two more in Marrakech but there's no way I would sacrifice our day driving in the Atlas Mountains.