Warsaw in a Weekend: Pigs’ Knuckles and Pushiness

Our trip to Warsaw started with a bit of shoving the moment our plane landed. A woman roughly elbowed her way past my husband in the aisle, only to stand immediately and peacefully before him. After deplaning, I went to the first available lady’s room, a small two-staller, in the terminal. When I attempted to leave my stall, I was blocked by a six-foot woman. She was an immovable mountain. I could neither get around nor through her, and we settled for a staring match. I looked up at her, and she stared flatly down at me as if I were a bug she couldn’t bother to squash. However, if she wanted to pee she would have to let me pass. Begrudgingly she shifted her body a few inches aside so I could squeeze between the door and her shoulder, out of the stall to the sinks.

“I think this is just how Poland will be,” I said when I met up with my husband outside.

Throughout the trip, delivery men with boxes in shops or trolleys of goods would shoulder roughly past, one so hard that despite my leaning heavily into a chilled freezer of dairy products, he bruised my shoulder. I figured the people of Warsaw might just be extra shovey, like this was their cultural thing, and they wanted to make their physical presence felt like bullies do in elementary school. When we walked down an otherwise empty street, two repairmen leaning against a wall beside busted sidewalk muttered and stared darkly. One leaned out to do a theatrical dry spit in our general direction.

“Huh,” I thought. “Well, that sucks.” I don’t know if it is because my husband is Asian or I do not appear Polish with my dark hair and summer tan. Still, whatever it was, a tiny sampling of people throughout our quick weekend trip wanted to make sure we knew we weren’t welcome. I’ve read that xenophobia is an issue in Eastern Europe and looked up more on the experiences of others in Poland. There was a general buzz about people being shitty to foreigners who didn’t look Polish, so this is a thing to consider if thinking about a trip there.

The rest of our trip was met with a cool, courteous aloofness, which is fine by me. Even a bitchy checkout clerk where I purchased yogurt could not affect my day. She must have perfected resting fuck-off-and-die face from birth. I grew up around a similar sour, threatening-hillbilly-face in the Ozarks, so as long as I got my yogurt, I didn’t care if she disapproved of me.

The way I see it, I paid for my ticket and benefitted the economy, so I’ll just take my pigs’ knuckles and borscht and get on down the road, thank you.

We went on a bicycle tour on our first full day. A humorless man directed us to pick out a bike by gesturing at them, but our guide Magda was very informative. We learned about the city’s history, riding through the area of the former ghetto where several hundred thousand Jews were herded into only a few small blocks, forcing multiple families to share single rooms and slowly starve until they were removed to death camps. Thousands of Polish people worked to assist their Jewish neighbors in those horrific times, and many were also complicit or active in helping the Nazis. It is a complicated history that some in the government wish to suppress. In 2018 the Polish government attempted to make it illegal to say anything about the country’s history that would suggest any complicity in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors. The consequences were up to three years in prison. The international outcry against the law saw parliament tone it down to a civil, finable offense without the threat of imprisonment.

Little remains of the ghetto. When the citizens heroically attempted to overthrow the Nazis in 1944, the Warsaw Uprising was met with the city’s total annihilation by Hitler’s orders. No opposition would be tolerated. 85% of the town was destroyed, and 200,000 people were killed. It is hard to imagine the complete devastation when looking at the bustling riverfront, modern buildings, and charming street cafes today.

We cycled past statues of mermaids, one striking beauty beside the river displaying her shield and sword as the city’s protector. Despite being far from the sea, the legend is that a lost mermaid was caught in the river. Stories vary, but the fisherman argued over what to do with her and left her with one man to watch over her while they called others to witness their catch. She convinced him to free her with a promise that she would always protect the city. Unfortunately, she didn’t do such a great job if WWII is an example of her abilities.

Still, her fierceness is displayed throughout the city, from statues to refrigerator magnets for tourists.

Old Town.

Cycling through the old town, we are reminded that it isn’t that old. Despite appearances, it was rebuilt entirely and identically after WWII when the city was leveled. Most of the structures date back to the early 1950s. The exception is the Royal Palace. One lone corner withstood the bombing and still displays chunks of missing stone where bullets struck. The palace took longer to rebuild and was not completed until 1984 via donations.

The Royal Palace.

Warsaw has produced many great minds in science and music. Copernicus sits handsomely before the Staszic Palace, holding an armillary sphere. A reconstruction of what he might have looked like from his recently recovered (supposed) remains does not resemble the GQ-cover ready version in bronze.

A dreamy version of Copernicus.
Forensic reconstruction.

Madame Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, better known in Warsaw as Marie Salomea Sklodowska-Curie, was born and raised in Warsaw but left for more opportunities in Paris for her studies. There, her radioactive body was buried in a lead-lined casket.

Born in the city but dying in Paris, the most celebrated citizen, Chopin, wished for his heart to be returned to his beloved Warsaw. His sister smuggled the pickled organ back in a jar of cognac. Every few years, a man’s job is to go around and check it with all the other human bits in jars and under glass at churches around the country. Sealed forever in the same glass jar containing cognac and air from 1849 Paris, the heart remains unchanged. We later attended a beautiful Chopin performance, watching the concert pianist deftly bang out some of his greatest hits. Witnessing his fingers flit over the keys was mesmerizing and transformative, the music lifting me to other places in my imagination. The man sitting beside me brought me back to Earth, though, punctuating the lulls with a whistling nose.

Pigs’ knuckles!

We returned our bicycles to the unsmiling attendant and stopped at a sidewalk café on our way back to our apartment for some pigs’ knuckles and veal. A cheerful woman brought us plates piled high with food and two large beers. We didn’t let a couple of shoves and sour faces ruin our first day in Warsaw, and neither should you if you intend to visit and experience this unusual, historic city.

The Church of the Holy Cross where Chopin’s heart rests.

General Tips:

  • The more you travel, the more often you encounter those who disapprove of your presence for their own reasons. A dry, theatrical spit in the air, a steely glare, even a shove, yet most people are still sufficiently friendly. If possible, don’t let the actions of a handful of jerks ruin your experience of a city. If not possible, quickly move on to a place more receptive to your presence and tourist dollars. No need to invest time or money where you aren’t wanted if you don’t have to.
  • Try and learn a few words of Polish before you go. I attempted to learn them when I was there, but they were challenging to pronounce.
  • Eat the pickled herring, the pigs’ knuckles, the potato pancakes, the borscht, the tartare, the pierogi, etc. Wash it all down with an excellent Polish vodka. Polish food is exceptional and unique—more on that in my next post.

Hot Time in the Vatican: On Crowds and Collections

We arrive early for our prepaid tour of the Vatican, hopeful of bypassing some of the crowds. Lines are forming along the outer walls, and hundreds of tourists assembled with guides in small clusters dot the sidewalk across the street. The heat rises, and many dart into a restaurant to get something cold to drink. About a dozen others are in our group, and I chat with a couple from Dallas. Even though we recently lived within 40 miles of them in Denton, we quickly ran out of things to say.

“They can tell,” I think. “They know I had a Beto sign in my front yard.”

When in Rome, it is necessary to see the Vatican. I rarely say it is mandatory to see anything. Still, given the historical power structure and influence of the Catholic Church, it is necessary to see the obscene display of wealth combined with the glorious art and architecture in this vast complex. The outer walls were constructed to be impenetrable, reminding us that the Vatican and its
rarefied inhabitants needed more than spiritual isolation from the public; they needed protection. Today there are less than 500 passport holders for Vatican City, the smallest country in the world. Once inside, we go through the mandatory screening for any explosive devices and continue into display areas for artifacts from across the globe.

There are loads of people, and then there are massive crowds, and then there is the Vatican. The shoulder-to-shoulder density is difficult to describe. Most photos of any heavily touristed site manage to eliminate them by editing or angle to suggest an absence of humans. I do this myself because sharing photos with crowds would be all you see. The truth is, we see both. When you are there in person, you are constantly walking the line between observation of the gilded architecture, exquisite art, and expansive gardens everyone lined up to see, and the awe-struck sweaty masses, whining, coughing, and farting their way through it. These crowds are cropdusters, aware the wall of humans will make it difficult to pinpoint who just released a silent but deadly one.

Gallery angled/edited to eliminate people.

The Gallery of Maps, a gilded floor-to-ceiling display of details from throughout Italy, is a good example of the type of photo editing done to suggest no one else is there. We walk the long hall like everyone else, gape-mouthed and focusing on the minor details in the paintings and elaborate patterns in the marble floor, but are swept along in the stream.

Actual crowds cropped from the image.

The Vatican Museums house one of the world’s largest art collections, but the sculptures are often bypassed for the more famous rooms. Hot, tired, gassy people tend to want to get it over with, and they make a straight line for the more easily recognizable or shiny, such as the Sistine Chapel. You can see everything from the realistically carved nutsacks of life-sized goats (in a hall devoted to animal statuary) to the iconic Laocoon and his two sons, permanently fixed in a death match with snakes.

A boxer glares into the distance, ready to fight whoever knocked his penis off.

You also get some room to move in these marble spaces, albeit briefly.
The first time I visited the Vatican, many years ago, the Sistine Chapel was under restoration. A Japanese television company bought rights for professional photography and filming for a few million dollars, so a photography ban was instituted. The money helped fund the restoration; the exclusivity contract expired in 1997.

The entry was more awkward then, a narrow, low door, and as I waited at the sill for a tour of six people in wheelchairs to pass, a German tour guide wishing to stay on schedule saw me as a barrier and tried to push me through into the chapel. The tour guide was strong, and I fell face first across the lap and armrests of a startled man in his wheelchair.

Today it is even more crowded. The security guards demand no photography and require silence. They kept the no photography rule from the 1990s (cameras on phones are unlikely to cause any damage from a flash). Still, the added silence and absence of bursts of light have a purpose. This many people crammed into this chapel, all talking excitedly and taking pictures at once, would raise such a din that any attempt to observe the chapel for its intended purpose would be lost. As it is, the dense crowds whispering and sneaking photos do this anyway, but I often turn to scan those admiring the chapel ceiling. There is a guilelessness and beauty in their upturned faces.

Our guide loud whispers, pointing to Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, “This is where Jesus, he get’a his revenge.”

I did not sneak this photo.

He gives us five minutes to walk about on our own, and then we gather again near the exit. We file out through the small door I was forced through many years ago and move on through the remainder of the complex to the outside, where we are supposed to walk to see St. Peter’s Basilica. We are 4 hours into a 3.5-hour tour, and with the heat climbing and no water, our guide is losing our interest. We ask how long it will be, but his answer is vague. He stops again beside the outer curve of the open arms of Bernini’s colonnade to welcome the masses. The stones and pavement beneath our feet are like walking on lava, and we drift into the shade of a nearby column.

“I don’t give a shit anymore,” my husband whispers. “Let’s leave.”
“Are you sure?” I said. I have seen the basilica before, but I want him to have the whole experience.
“We can always see it next time,” he said.

As the guide talks about Bernini, we do something I had never done before on a tour because the heat and overtime made it seem necessary. We slid off into more shade and then more until we are free from his radius. He doesn’t see us leave. I glance back at our red-faced tour group, and most make mournful eye contact, looking at us with longing as we free ourselves.

We walk past the open arms of Bernini’s colonnade; a lone, stooped woman chants a dirge-like call for alms, and we hop a cab rather than face the metro again. I give the driver a 50 euro note at the hotel and wait for the change. My husband has already stepped out. The cab driver takes the 50 and quickly flips it for a 10. He waves, demanding more money.

“Wait, what?” I said.
My husband gives him another 50 through the cab window as I get out, and before I know it, we have been scusi’d for the first and only time in Rome. *See my earlier post: Love and Hate in Rome, for an explanation of this term. https://theblissabyss.com/love-and-hate-rome/

We down water and take a long nap in our chilled hotel room. Dark and still as a mausoleum. While the Vatican crowds are stressful (and so is getting scusi’d), the art major in me thrills to see the famous works in person again. I can become absorbed, if only for a few seconds before someone jostles me. We all have to learn to do this when we travel: carve our own interior space out to “see” through the tourist hordes while also reminding ourselves to catch the glints of complete joy and awe in the individuals around us. It’s beautiful.


General Tips –

  • Get a skip-the-line ticket whenever possible, but be aware there may still be the line for entry.
  • If you find yourself thinking ugly thoughts about humanity because of intense crowds, look at the faces of people as they enjoy the sites. There is much to love there.
  • Carry extra water, if allowed.
  • If you are feeling overwhelmed go to a cool, dark private place and rest.

More Reasons to Return to the Ancient City of Cadiz

During the days, we walked in the shadowy streets or strolled through gardens along the water’s edge. The water kept pulling me back to it, the gem-clarity and sky-blue color so inviting on a warm day. I peer into it, looking for silver glints of fish or at the sandy bottom for treasure, just like when I was a kid. I have always been fascinated with the sea. I can imagine the many ships setting sail from this gorgeous city for thousands of years, hoping to return laden with cargo. Like those hopeful ships, we already plan our return in every conversation.

On our last morning, I go to a café by the central market for hot chocolate and churros. This is not a hot chocolate like you are thinking – the thin, brown water with a few sad marshmallows bobbing in it produced by a Swiss Miss Packet. Instead, this is a hot cup of rich, thick chocolate sauce to dip your churro in, like a deep-fried donut stick. The café is busy, and locals are packed into the tables, eating their churros slowly, taking their time to visit. The service is also slow, something many Americans struggle with. Maybe they don’t like the look of us as tourists in their space? Most likely, we are experiencing the Iberian crawl, the pace at which services are rendered, because nobody is trying to kill themselves just because you demand a churro or another glass of wine. They also don’t expect tips, especially not on a small item.

The waiter is hustling between the tables even so. While we listen to the chatter of other diners, small birds flit around the high ceiling, the windows and doors thrown wide to the beautiful day. My husband didn’t want hot chocolate but wanted to accompany me. He doesn’t have a taste for sweets, and neither do I after a few bites. It is too rich and sugary for my breakfast, but delicious nonetheless. I would want this on a cold winter evening, tucked in by a fire, but the Spanish dig into these first thing in their late mornings.

We walked past stalls of fresh fruit, iced fish, and some serving platters of paella in different styles in the market. We stopped there on our first day to slam sangrias and try each paella. They looked so enticing, and we craved anything new. The oily texture of the rice combined with shrimp and mussels to create flavors that varied according to the base.
Black paella, for example, uses squid ink to create the color and flavor, giving it a gummy appearance. If I’m being honest, on a plate, it looks a bit like something you would be served in prison in hell. Like a demon shat it out to order. If I am continuing to be honest, the paella we made in Valencia was superior in taste, texture, and consistency (but that is where it was invented) compared to what we had at the Cadiz Market. This isn’t about how fantastic Valencia is, though. I celebrate Cadiz.

We ate it, initially excited about the opportunity, then tongued the roofs of our mouths to try and remove the oily residue.

Do you ever get so excited by the idea of something that when you are there, you have to pretend it is as cool as you hoped it would be? It is like you spend six hours driving with someone to their grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. They are describing their favorite dishes and you begin to share in their anticipation, only to find chopped-up Wonderbread stuffing with apples and raisins and a thin, brown gruel from a can they call gravy. But, you shut up, eat as much as possible, and declare it wonderful. Upon arriving in many beautiful cities, I felt that way after sitting down to the wrong first lunch.

I didn’t finish my paella. “There’s the food tour,” I said, as an excuse, like I was saving room.

On my birthday the next day, we cycled around the entire city. This is not a long journey because the town is small, but on this ride we saw stone walls of forts, sculpted topiary gardens, a blaring speaker at the entrance to the city for some event that had already occurred, docks, tumbled blocks of retaining walls, the cathedral with its faux gold dome of yellow ceramic tile, and the city readying for holy week with stands for the devoted to sit in and watch the processions.

Before the church, people bottlenecked due to the added seating, and a woman blew bubbles and enticed children to pose for money with a giant teddy bear. As we stood beside our bicycles, a passing man muttered at us gruffly as if he wanted to walk right through us in the large square. Our guide shrugged. “We are not in his way,” she said and smiled.

In an enclosed street nearby (El Callejón del Duende – Goblin Alley), so narrow you can touch either side, we learn smugglers and lovers used to meet. Now it is decorated with potted plants and garden gnomes, preserved from the curious by a gate.

Next door is apartments, a weeping virgin displayed on the wall, and a free entry to the Roman ruins of a theater revealed after a building burned and the city decided not to rebuild over it. The tunnel beneath is strangely beautiful; you can almost imagine the crowds cheering above you.

At candy shops, we see the penitent displayed on tins; the colors of their capes defines the brotherhood they are affiliated with. The sweets seem menacing, but it is a style of dress that’s been around since the 16th century, ripped off later by the KKK. The hoods (capirotes), originally used during the Inquisition as punishment, are meant now to ensure attention is not drawn to the penitent as individuals but rather to their public act of piety and atonement.

We stop at cafés for cold, crisp wine or chilled gazpacho and grilled fish. For our remaining time, we wander and taste, dipping into inviting pubs with darkened doorways for a beer and trying to greet mostly indifferent dogs, hoping they will want to be friends. Before the crush of the holy week crowd, we see families enjoying the beach, photographing their children in dresses and playing soccer, seeking the perfect picture to commemorate this time in their daughter’s life.

It has only been a few months since our visit, and I want to return to Cadiz for more than five days. I want to stay for months, a year, maybe the rest of my life. You cannot visit Cadiz without wanting to stay longer, without imagining yourself on that beach, in that café, greeting the bartender at the pub, getting to know the name of neighborhood dogs. You cannot see that glorious gin-clear water without hoping the currents bring you back again and again.

General Tips:

  • Add smaller, less-frequented cities to your travels. You never know where you will fall in love with next.
  • It is OK if something you have been anticipating turns out not to be that awesome in person. Chuck the disappointment and move on to new discoveries.
  • In case I have not yet made it clear, I love Cadiz. I hope you get the chance to visit it and fall in love as well.

Love and Hate: Rome

Trevi Fountain

“Prepare to be scusi’ed,” I told my husband as we readied for our trip to Rome.
“What do you mean scusi’ed?” he said.

The last time I was in Rome, I was a kid with a backpack, staying in the cheapest places and counting how much money I had to get through the week. I was also relentlessly scusi’ed. One man after another followed me on the streets, extolling my great teenage beauty and asking to have dinner – NO? OK, then drinks, then lunch, and finally just a coffee before politely excusing themselves and wishing me a good day after all requests were rejected. In the United States, I would have been called a stuck-up bitch after I declined the first invitation. That was not the kind of scusi I meant, though. I meant the kind where children would swarm us, pieces of cardboard covering their untrained hands, as they shouted “Scusi! Scusi!” and asked for money while groping to get their fingers on a wallet.

The cardboard was like training wheels for pickpockets and could be used to sit on in between marks. The Romans warned me nonstop about beggars and pickpockets. They showed me how to threaten the approaching children by shaking an umbrella or fist when surrounded and avoid engaging with them in any way. I saw men threaten the children with raised fists on the street, and they would scatter before getting their hands in any pockets. When I held my umbrella like a bully stick, the children would fall away, and their voices dropped from high-pitched pleading to a normal conversational tone, like they were standing around the water cooler while they waited for the next mark.

At tourist sites, I saw women breastfeeding babies, calling out in a chanting singsong for alms, and then trading the baby off for the next shift, a new woman plugging her teat into the baby’s mouth while the other went to have a cigarette. Once, on a late train, an eight-year-old child traveling alone sat across from me, waiting for me to fall asleep, smiling and smoking a cigarette. I wrapped my luggage strap around my arm and smiled back, remaining awake until he got off the train.

“Scusi” was the first thing you heard right before you were ripped off. We watched a video about the beggar children of Rome to illustrate what I meant for my husband.

“Shit, I don’t want to get scusi’ed,” he said.
“Nobody does,” I said.
“Why do we even have to go to Rome?” he said.

View from our hotel rooftop.

We were meeting some friends in Tuscany later that week and had to fly into Italy somewhere. Rome was a reasonable choice, and since he had never been there, I felt it was essential for him to see the historical sites.

Whenever I use the word historical, I think of my father who refers to the local historical society as the Hysterical Society.

We arrived in Rome in late May, the temperature already climbing well into the 90’s with the crowd numbers. One drastically different thing from when I was a kid was the teeming masses of humans. Piles and piles of tourists. Sweaty, tired, and reddened by the sun and heat. It was going to be a hysterical few days in Rome.

We took a cab to the city center where we would be staying at the U-Visionary Roma Hotel. There we had a quiet, blacked-out, tomb-like room lined with beautiful, chocolate and cream veined marble and cursed with insufficient lighting. I tried to dress by the window’s light without anyone in the building across the way seeing. At the front desk, we asked for directions, and the clerk asked how everything was. “Dark,” I said. “I know,” he said, frowning. “Everyone says so.”

Our hotel room’s dark and luxurious toilet.

Rome is dense, complex, flavorful, and crowded. A cacophony of history and convergence of international tourism crowds. It is a must-see for any traveler and stressful if you do not plan accordingly for swarms of people and heat. My last time there as a teenager was wonderful and sufficiently stressful that it had been decades since I returned.

We set out from our room, looking for an excellent place for lunch. We quickly discovered we were just a few blocks from the Trevi Fountain, which was packed with people shoulder-to-shoulder to try and get a glimpse or sufficient space for an Instagrammable selfie. Security guards wait to holler at anyone who dips a toe. We often had to squeeze past this bottleneck to explore the city. One day I stepped into a Bennetton there to look for a shirt. When I went to try it on, the dressing room was blocked by a collapsed, red-faced American on the floor, her equally reddened friends fanning her for support. I put the shirt back and stepped outside.

“Did you find anything?” my husband asked.
“I didn’t want to shoulder past a woman in physical distress to try on a shirt,” I said. “It just wasn’t that amazing of a shirt.”

Dense crowds surround the Trevi Fountain.

From our central location, we explored the twisting streets and then the broad avenues along the river, taking in the immense history of the place. Whenever I am in an ancient city such as Rome, I scan the faces of the people we pass on the street, looking for evidence of the past. The same faces in the statues, the profiles on coins. In their veins courses the blood of emperors, of conquerors, and the inventors of linguini and gelato. We owe much to the Italian people and to their history. As an English major, these great, ancient cities resonate with the stories and plays of the past. Even if you aren’t a big reader you have seen countless films set in this beautiful city. Like seeing a familiar face in an unfamiliar place, each corner you turn may bring a tinge of recognition if not outright delighted surprise. You KNOW what you are there to see but actually seeing it in person, even for the first time, has layers of deja vu.

One thing missing from this visit was the beggar children and pleading women, trading off nursing babies. Although it was a relief not to be scusi’d relentlessly, or have to physically threaten children to keep them from rifling through your pockets, I found their absence unsettling. “What did they DO with them?” I wondered aloud to my husband.

To be continued in Rome: II…

Hazy dusk over city rooftops.

General Tips:

  • Prepare yourself mentally for the crowds. This can help navigate the crush of humanity and press of sweaty bodies against yours if you, like me, tend to avoid crowds normally.
  • Secure your belongings carefully, especially in crowds. Don’t wear small backpacks accessible via zipper or clasp; ensure your purse closes firmly. Wear it crossbody and in front. Do not put wallets in any open pocket where a hand could slip.
  • Break up your day with a cool respite. A nap in a cold hotel room, a gelato in an out-of-the-way spot. Any place where you can find some peace and relief from the heat.

Eating Cadiz

The cheese of my dreams, topped with an asparagus jelly, coupled with shaved pork and a squeeze of lemon.

We were supposed to meet our food tour guide by a massive ficus tree near the beach. As we were later told, the legend was that three nuns were sailing through the city, and one became ill, causing them to disembark for treatment. They carried four ficus saplings with them, and the sick nun recovered, so they decided to leave the ficus trees to the city to plant. I looked it up, and it was two nuns, and the sick one didn’t survive. This wasn’t the correct location, as the nun’s tree was in a garden a few blocks away. It is more appealing to think she survived and the ficus gifted in gratitude rather than unloading a dead lady’s luggage.

Ficus tree.

There’s often a distance between the facts and the storytelling, and what is embellished or removed says more about the storyteller than the tale. Whatever their source, the trees are remarkable for their breadth, undulating trunk structure, and 200-year-old story. We arrived ten minutes ahead of time, and as the minutes passed (due to the width and mass of the trees), my husband wanted me to walk around them to see if our guide was waiting on the other side while he waited. On the other side, there was no one, but I could look toward the beach and the people walking their dogs in the golden light.

This is a new concept for us, hiring someone to take us from bar to bar to eat and drink, something we require no particular assistance with on a regular day. I used to be the kind of person who would say, “Never, I want to organically explore the city and food! I want to DISCOVER it myself!” As if I was the first person to eat tapas or set foot on Mars. I would walk up and down the narrow streets, peeking at menus or into darkened doorways, trying to use my forensic skills to determine where would be best. Not the empty place with the one sullen waiter in a stained shirt, smoking a cigarette. Not the crowded café with bright picture menus with every passenger of a recently arrived cruise ship in their pedal pushers and dumb t-shirts. I wanted someplace the classy worldly version of me would eat, like out of a movie with laughing, beautiful women in lipstick, big hats, and sunglasses having lunch with languid, handsome men in linen suits.


When “discovery” works, you go up a small alley to find a café with a garden terrace and delicious smells. A matronly, cheerful woman, assured in her culinary expertise, slapping down plates of fried fish and pitchers of sangria. However, you often wander around until your feet are sore, your throat dry, and your stomach is rumbling.

Maybe you Googled all the best tapas bars only to discover they are closed or a long walk away. You start to eye the Cadiz sampler platters slapped in front of hungry cruise passengers with envy. Even the hamburgers begin to look good.

Discovery is excellent, but it is nice to have a guide. I suggest doing this initially to get a quick taste of some of the best the city offers and get advice for exploring after. If you can budget for it and the reviews of the food tour align with your vision, then why not book someone who can give you that experience and immediate insights into the local culture and lifestyle?


Tortillitas de camerones on the left, a shrimpy, savory fried mess made with chickpea flour.

Our guide arrived shortly after, and we headed for our first stop, Casa Manteca. Tapas is a serious business in Spain, and though the restaurant had yet to open, we positioned ourselves at a table outside. It would fill quickly, she told us, and within fifteen minutes, every outdoor table was occupied, and a line had formed. She ordered a crisp white wine from the Barbadillo vineyard and shaved pork with slices of crumbly dry cheese and asparagus jelly. All was served on waxy sheets of paper. The pork was flavorful and delicate, shaved so thinly you could see lights and shapes through the fat. The cheese and the asparagus jelly paired the mildly sharp texture with the sweet, summery hint of the garden. She also ordered a tortillitas de camerone. The tapas of Cadiz takes on many forms, but this defining dish resembles a savory funnel cake with tiny shrimp. It is good, but I cannot stop thinking about that cheese and jelly. 


Sometimes I will brush my teeth, walk to the grocery store, or stare at a pigeon – and the cheese with asparagus jelly will come to mind. I will take that memory out and hold it close to me, give it some sunlight and a light dusting, a powerful hug before releasing it. That is how good that cheese and jelly was. Spank bank-level cheese.

I will take that memory out and hold it close to me, give it some sunlight and a light dusting, a powerful hug before releasing it. That is how good that cheese and jelly was. Spank bank-level cheese.

Judias con ahumados at El Faro.

Our guide told us about the history of each dish we ate that night, how it was served, and why, plus answered any of our questions about the growing popularity of the city and her own experiences living there. She described a tightly knit community where people liked their parties and where the tourists abandoned it for much of the year except for the summer heat when they crowded the beach. This week, in late March, we ran across no tourists outside of perhaps Spanish ones in any of the restaurants or bars we visited.

Our next stop was El Faro. The crowds were forming here, and we opted to stand in a corner with high marble shelves to eat from rather than wait for a table. There we were served a white bean dish with salmon (judias con ahumados) and onions drizzled with the best olive oil I had ever had. The olive oil’s light, earthiness accented the salmon’s richness.

Acedias – small fish local to the area.

We also ate a variety of small, fried local fish (acedias) you chomped down head to tail, and soaked in vinegar – boquerones y vinagre. Added to this was a boiled potato and tuna dish – papas alinas. Finally, we topped the evening with a glass of sherry from a nearby town, swirling the golden liquid in our glasses and staring into its depths.

Sherry from Jerez de la Frontera.

After dinner, we wandered through the streets back to our hotel, and I paused to photograph a full moon looming over an ancient church. There is a quietness to the streets, a calmness like it is waiting for you to return, inviting you to stay. Cadiz can make you want to linger there, not only for its architecture and gin-blue water but also for the freshness and variety offered in the tapas. I know we will be back to sample all of it many times.

General Tips:

Flamenco in Cadiz

Rarely, the first flushed encounter with a new city can leave you lovestruck. This is akin to the lightning bolt of love at first sight of a person. Something in the eyes, or how their body moves, the sound of their voice, how they occupy their space and seem to radiate a connection to you. For a city, the architecture, the quality of the light, the way the air smells and feels, the sounds of people laughing, an old woman sitting quietly in a sunlit park, or the quirky head tilt of a dog on the street – all these can contribute to that almost giddy feeling that you are in for something extraordinary. The initial walk through Cadiz from the train station to our hotel was enough to convince me I was smitten, and the following days assured this place would be unforgettable.

It isn’t that there is any one defining characteristic of Cadiz except for its small size and bone-deep history. All the elements of a place combined craft an intoxicating city I want to get to know well. I saw us vacationing together, buying a house, and waking up each morning to the smell of bacon in the kitchen and a fresh cup of coffee on my nightstand. I would someday get to know every street, every quaint little café. We would laugh when we told people about the time we first met. That was Cadiz and me. Rose + Cadiz 4 Eva!
But did Cadize like me? Like, really, really like me? In a word, no. Cadiz was just the same old Cadiz it had been for almost 3500 years. I was nothing to the city but a dumb tourist who showed up at a flamenco show with my castanets in a sack, only to leave them under a table.

I wanted those castanets as a memory of my time in Cadiz, where famous flamenco dancers were born and bred. I demanded them as a birthday gift from my husband. While walking, we found a music shop, and I leaned over the glass counter and picked out cheap, oval drops of plastic held together by a leather cord. The man running the shop showed me how to dangle it from my thumb and beat out a rhythm.

“I’m going to play the shit out of these,” I said to my husband, picturing myself sashaying around the house accompanied by the relentless staccato of my feelings. Ole!

We wandered through the narrow streets until we found the address for our flamenco show. The Cadiz region gave birth to flamenco and boasts the most famous dancers. Even if it reeks of a tourist trap, you owe it to yourself to go. The doors were closed, so we stopped at a small grocery for beer across the way. Leaning against the warm stone walls in the street, sipping our cold beer, we watched people walking past for holy week. The corner of the building was braced by a canon reimagined as a cornerstone and protector from damage. You can find many canons from the old forts used in the corners of buildings. With holy week, the streets were filled with families to see the processions and the penitent in unsettling tall, pointy hats concealing their faces. Occasionally you could see an eyeball peering out from beneath their hoods as they carried large candles and glittering statues of the Virgin Mary. I am from Arkansas, home of the current head of the KKK, and when I see pointy hoods and people carrying flames and religious icons, I cannot help but experience an involuntary shudder.

At the flamenco show, a small event of about a dozen people seated in an old and intimate basement, soft, golden light under curved stone ceilings, we sat with our complimentary sherry and Iberian ham with slices of Manchego. A woman with jet-black hair and a sinewy man, both wearing heavy eyeliner, were introduced by the musicians. The music had the woeful intensity of a call to prayer, the singer’s voice rising and falling in despair, clapping his hands for percussion. When the woman danced, she banged out the rhythm with her feet on a slightly raised wooden platform, her heels striking the floor with precision and energy. At the same time, the expressions shifted on her face like light on water. She went from happy, to hopeful, to inflamed with desire, to dashed to the darkest pit of woe and longing within each dance. She danced with such ferocity and grace as if she was sadly fucking the floor to death with her feet. I love you, her body said as she moved, I hate you. Oh, you make me so sad.

She seemed to be looking inward, staring into an abyss only she could see, alone except when she made eye contact with the male dancer. Then, she turned away as if she could not gaze too long into his face. He moved with cat-like grace, his dance just as ferocious as hers, but he alternated between looking at her and stealing glances around the room. With such a small crowd, he managed to make direct, lengthy, and longing eye contact with every person in the room, so intense that you felt like you had to turn away and cram appetizers in your mouth, break the impact, only to look up while gnawing a jaw full of ham and still see him eye-banging you. “Oh, yes,” his eyes said. “You cannot escape my heat.” Then he would smile slightly, having won the staring war, and go back to banging the beat on the floor with his nimble little feet. When he danced alone, the woman clapped in time and shouted a half-hearted “Ole!”

After we left the dance, my husband and I discussed the eye-fucking we just received and how amazing the dancers were. I thought I would enjoy it, but I did not realize how impressed I would be. This is something tourists do. How cool can it be? They were mesmerizing, so sad, so beautiful. Artists. It was half an hour before I remembered my castanets.


“They will find those under a table and think I’m a gigantic dork! Like I thought I was going to join the show!” I said.

In a way, though, I did want to. I wanted to feel what it was like to dance like that. To own a floor and a room with just the click of my heel on oak and the elegant flourish of my wrist. Oh yes, I’d think, as I glanced at the audience, you cannot escape my heat.


General Tips:

  • Beware of holy week in any Spanish city. Interesting to see but very crowded.
  • Leave your castanets at the hotel room.
  • Don’t use ham as a defense against intense eye contact from a flamenco dancer. It won’t work.

The Trips You Don’t Take

Dusk in Tuscany.

I was supposed to be in Florence this past week, and today my train tickets to Pisa,
connecting to Follonica, go unused. About a 20-minute drive from the station, a villa where we were supposed to meet friends sits atop a hill, olive groves and vineyards radiating out from its stone walls. From there, you can see Scarlino and the remnants of a castle on a mountain, the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Island of Elba, where Napolean was exiled. There is a large, saltwater pool, and I know, at this moment, swallows lightly skim the surface to dip their beaks. My cover photo for this website is from the porch there at dusk, and the light takes on an unreal quality as ethereal and golden as any painting. Our friends are there now, making new memories and sending photos of my favorite ravioli from a restaurant in Massa Marittima nearby.

Favorite spot for ravioli in Massa Marittima

Since having COVID in January, an x-ray turned into two CT scans turned into a lung biopsy
scheduled during our week in Tuscany. Hopefully, it will just be scarring from COVID. Still, travel is unwise and adds stress to an already stressful situation. The first day
or two after the recommended biopsy, I felt myself vibrating with anxiety and utterly
disinterested in interacting with others. I curled into the fetal position and held my old bony
cat to my chest. I wept quietly in my office and studied ways to distract myself, Googling too much about cancer. Then Googling how to distract myself and calm the fuck down with a biopsy looming.

The continuity of staying home provided more relief from anxiety than I expected. Like an activities coordinator, my husband treated me kindly, asking what I wanted to do with unusual cheer. This level of cheerfulness had happened once before when we lived in Texas. At that time, I needed a hysterectomy due to what would prove to be benign fibroid tumors. I took advantage of this to go to a water park I’d always wanted to try with a lazy river. It turned out to have far more appeal from the highway than the actual experience. As we floated around the same bend repeatedly, I asked him, “You’re being so nice because of the tumor, aren’t you?”

This week, in Porto, we go for long daily walks exploring new spots along the River Douro and the ruins and flowers that cradle her dark green waters.

We discovered ducks.


The ducks congregate on a floating dock near a park and the grassy banks of a creek that
flows into the Douro. On the first day, we counted fourteen ducklings, but their numbers are
declining daily. Either from dogs or tough luck or because this is a spot they visit rather
than linger in. Two large ducks sit under a blue boat but will come waddling out to
investigate if you squat to talk to them. My husband urged me to pet one warty-
headed duck and I resisted the imposition the first day, but the duck allowed
it the second day.

From there you can walk down to a sandy beach where people sometimes camp, and a park
with picnic tables and a café. Back up the river toward home, there is a small café sitting
with a view of the river and the giant pillars of the Ponte Infante Dom Henrique. Between the Luis I Bridge and this one, numerous ruins of stone buildings are sinking slowly into the river. Staircases go to empty spaces, overgrown with morning glories, and frequented by stray cats and rats. Cruise ships nestle in against the shore, and buses sometimes crawl up the narrow streets to haul tourists to see sites in Porto.

A few runners, walkers like ourselves, and occasional cyclists frequent this way. Still, it is uncrowded and peaceful to watch the boats churning up and down the river, carrying tourists to view the bridges. Sometimes we see a motorboat with people drinking beer, and we can hear a distant “woooooo” when someone lifts their arms in triumph from the boat in a Look at Me, Motherfuckers! pose. Fishermen dangle lines into the river, their long poles clamped to the concrete wall. I never saw one catch a fish until today. “Parabens!” my husband said as we walked past. The man grunted something without looking up, unhooked the fish, and whacked it against a rock.


Porto is a city of ruins, so when we cross the river, we walk through the community gardens
built on their foundations along the train track. There is always someone tending a garden,
napping in a hammock. Once, we saw two young women, playing with their pet
hedgehog while a young man played them the saxophone. You can walk through the old, retired train tunnel while trains rumble past above.


Amidst the flowers and fruit trees, the figs growing from every orifice, scattered trash that someone has tried to gather together to remove, as well as signs reminding people not to take a shit in their vegetable patch.

There is a long climb up steep hills each time we head home. I stare at the
cobblestones beneath my feet and focus on moving forward, gasping for air and trying to maintain a good pace. We step out of the way of tuk-tuks carting tourists from the Serra do Pilar overlook and down to the waterfront in Gaia where port wine warehouses lay dark and loaded with oak casks, ready to pour for tastings. The tuk-tuks give us a glimpse into the passengers’ lives, the sour expressions of those either tired or unhappy, or the laughing of friends enjoying the city. My husband moves ahead of me; whenever I look up, he is stopped, looking back and waiting.

When we get home, I shower, eat lunch and survey the terrace garden. Our peppers have not
sprouted yet and perhaps never will. Cats keep knocking the pots over. The orange tree over our fence is laden and unplucked, the fruit drying on the branch. Last year the cleaning ladies from the Social Security office next door got out with mops to knock them down, gathering them in buckets. This year no one is interested. I go inside and lay back down, hug the cat to me like the day before and like I will tomorrow, and daydream about putting all the uncertainty behind and the places we will go.


General Tips:

  • Stay home if the idea of travel adds anxiety and stress to an already tense situation, even if you have a fabulous trip planned.
  • Do what you love to reduce anxiety. Long walks to visit ducks, playing video games, baking a pie, writing shitty poetry – whatever works for you. Just because you didn’t go on a trip does not mean a staycation cannot be relaxing.

Getting Older in the Ancient City of Cadiz

Cadiz is often used in films set in Cuba.

“Want to go to Cadiz for your birthday?” my husband asked.
“Where?” I said.
He said it lispy like his tongue was swollen: “Gaaaaadeeethhhhhh.” He repeated, emphasizing the lisp.

“What?” I said.

He then described the city established over 3,000 years ago and the oldest
in Europe, located at the southern tip of Spain.

“That can be your birthday gift,” he said. It is to be my 55th, and I feel as ancient as I have ever felt. “Sure, why not,” I said. I didn’t know shit about Cadiz.

View of the tip of Cadiz.

There is comfort in going somewhere you don’t know shit about. There are zero expectations. No films or commercials to superimpose on your experience, no memorized articles or checklists of things to do.

No one had ever told me anything thrilling about Cadiz before. When I mentioned where I was going for my birthday, everyone had the same reaction. “Huh?”

We took a 55-minute flight from Porto to Seville and then a train to Cadiz. The ride
took us through the brown and golden countryside, rolling hills and villages, and past an occasional Quinta resembling something from a spaghetti Western. Once, I saw a man walking along a fence line with a handful of freshly picked carrots, a tan and white terrier prancing beside him. We ate Pringles and drank Coke Zeroes while we watched the countryside roll past.


As we approached the city, the grasslands fell away to marshes. There I saw trenches
dug since Roman times to gather sea salt, old yellow ruins of huts sitting isolated in the damp grasses and flamingos.

“Flamingos! Fucking flamingos!” I blurted out. I have never seen flamingos in the wild, and this still seems one of the most fantastic things you could ever hope to witness staring out a train window.

Walking along the waterfront parks.

The final stop in Cadiz is at the harbor and from there you can easily walk into the
central historic district. We pass through shady gardens and narrow, clean, cobbled streets to reach our hotel. Huge wooden, studded doors big enough to keep trolls out swing into the vestibule for a courtyard, once open to the sky but now glassed in. A capped well sits in the middle. The historic buildings here mainly were former merchants’ homes, with large central courtyards. Now they are apartments, offices, and hotels like ours but retain the same architectural features.

Central courtyard where we stayed, a former merchant’s home.

After dumping our luggage, we set out for the central market, passing shops, bars, and
many dogs along the way. Dog after dog after dog. One person told us there were more dogs in Cadiz than people under 25, making it a more attractive place for canines than young humans seeking a job. I wondered how they managed to keep the narrow, cobblestone
streets from filling with piss and poo, but the city has a firmly enforced requirement. All dog
walkers must pick up any poo and carry a water bottle to hose down wherever the dog directs its urine. We doubted this, having grown accustomed to dog walkers in Portugal pretending their dog’s poo didn’t exist, a shameful thing they wanted to put behind them.

One of the many furry citizens of Cadiz.

The central market contained vegetables, fruit, meat, and seafood stands. We aimed
for the sellers of paella and sangria, eating a sampling of multiple types before we walked over to the main beach in Cadiz, an intimate half-moon of sand hugged by stone fortresses, the protected harbor scattered with softly rocking, anchored wooden boats. We learned Halle Berry once emerged from the water here for a scene in a 007 movie, and all the locals hovered to get glimpses of her in a bikini. An older man approached me, speaking in slurred Spanish. We politely listened until he described something quite animatedly that required jerking off motions with his hand.

Where Halle Berry emerged from the sea in the James Bond film Die Another Day, and where a drunk man made jerking off motions at us.

Returning to our hotel, we noticed a small pub with locals drinking beer and eating tapas across from our entry door. People were there every morning, drinking beer at the street window for the remainder of our stay.


We spent a quiet evening working, but by the next day, we were ready to explore more
of the city. Walking along the sea wall, through the parks and gardens, and watching the parade of dogs who passed us on every street felt intimate in such a way as to be familiar. Cadiz isn’t just old; it feels old. So old that, even if you do not believe in past lives, you suspect you may have been there before, perhaps as a Roman soldier, a merchant, a sailor, maybe even as an old drunk making suggestive motions at couples watching the sunset. The narrow streets among the merchants’ homes create corridors branching out like nerves to the sea, and many of these homes still retain the lookout towers to view arriving ships. It is easy to get lost.

Tunnel beneath the ruin of Roman amphitheater.

We stumble upon one of the free exhibits of the ancient Roman ruins beneath the city. Their only request is to know where we are from. Inside, transparent boardwalks crisscross the protected remnants of a fish sauce factory. They once processed fermented fish guts into a salty sauce called garum, popular with ancient Romans. The ruins displayed a few clay pots used to store the sauce. We stopped to view a cartoon of an ancient Cadiz fisherman hacking up fish to make the sauce while a sexy woman danced. The garum dance is one that my husband and I are still doing occasionally. In it, we raise our hands over our heads and slowly gyrate our hips and our hands counterclockwise. The dance signifies, “Hell, yes. Praise be. We are rich in stinky sauce and good fortune.”


After the ruins, we walk up to the top of a famous watchtower, the Tavira Tower. The
towers were built in the 17th century, and there are 126 of the originals remaining, speckling the city. There is a six euro fee to ascend Tavira, but from up top you have a spectacular view of what the merchants once saw when they watched ships come in. There is also a camera
obscura, showing you an inverted 360-degree view of the city you can view for an additional
fee. Up top, we linger, looking out across the roofs, the many towers, and the rounded gold dome of the cathedral. I imagine waiting here for my ship to come in, spying on my neighbors doing the same. Today, as no doubt in the past, the rooftops are where people hang their laundry due to the shadowy streets. On one roof us, an apron-wearing woman, her hands on her hips, stares out across the city as we do. Her laundry will dry quickly in the direct sun and breeze.
To be continued….

View from Tavira Tower.

General Tips:

  • Try going someplace you know nothing about and resist the urge to research heavily prior to your arrival.
  • Experiment with smaller cities that aren’t high on the tourist radar.
  • Whenever possible, take the train.

Montserrat: The Abbey Ain’t Where It’s At

We bought our train tickets from a vending machine at Placa Espanya station that morning. The ticket included a choice for the tram or the funicular up the jagged mountain to the abbey. We chose the tram for the WOW factor. When the train arrived, we rushed on board to grab a seat as other tourists pushed ahead.

I always feel a level of discomfort before getting on a train. It is evidence of my anxiety and OCD tendencies and is difficult to dispel completely. Is it really the right train? How do we know for sure, aside from constant assurances from signage and everyone standing there waiting to go to the same place, that it is the right train? Not until it is well underway and heading to our destination do I feel like, yes, dammit, this is the correct train. Sometimes I take out my phone to briefly watch the comforting blue circle making progress across the map. I then settle back, watch the villages pass by, and think about what we will have for lunch. I come from people who always anticipate what will be eaten next and how this will be accomplished. I liked listening to the sounds of the train and the many languages surrounding us, and I grew sleepy with the soft rocking.

When we arrive at the mountain’s base, we get in line and wait for the yellow tram to pull up, positioning ourselves in the front with a full view of the mountain ahead. The tram lifts us gently, swaying up the mountain in a stomach-dropping ascent. It is stunning and terrifying in a good way, leaving our knees shaky when we disembark. Up top it is the total commodification of the Benedictine history and worship. A shop sells expensive cheeses, meat, and bread for picnickers, and a cafeteria fuels a steady line of tourists wishing to spend big bucks on sandwiches and cake. We stand in line for our sandwiches, and other Americans around us demand to know where we are from. No matter what we tell people, they always seem unsatisfied with the answer. “Arkansas, huh.” “Wisconsin, huh.”

Saint Jerome in Meditation, Caravaggio c. 1605

Signs advertise the best painting hanging in the abbey museum. “Oh shit, they got a Caravaggio,” I say. “You want to see it?” my husband asks, but I don’t when I see the line into the museum and the additional 32 euros for us to enter. I’m not cheap, but I get sick of paying for everything I witness at a certain point. Plus, we have been drifting in crowds, craning our necks to see things all week, and my calves ache from standing on tiptoe. With regret, I release this Caravaggio from my needs. We go to the church to see if we can take a peek inside, but this is an additional 6 Euros per person. I don’t recollect it being this crowded or every building having a price tag when I was here 14 years ago. Still, memory is selective and consistently inaccurate. We decide against the 24 euro to see the house of god.

“The monks and priests were the original gangsters,” I said to my husband. “Look at all they built and are still raking in based on soul shakedowns.”

The view from the mountaintop is stunning with the valley furling out below. You can take a funicular up to the very top for a fee, of course, or go on foot to one of the many stations of the cross ringing the mountain. We look around and head for a cross erected on a rocky outcrop. The in-laws opt to go part of the way, and I walk ahead with my husband. Here people push baby strollers uphill and pause to take pictures of different statues and seating points. A figure of a nun looks at us in disgust; her face is sour and darkened with time and weather.

I struggle to catch my breath. The effects of Long Covid and lungs mottled by the infection. I have a second CT scan scheduled in two weeks, and I am tired of feeling tired and gasping, but I love this walk. It is beautiful here beneath the pines. People always relax as their numbers dwindle. They smile as they pass, and soon we step out onto the point where the iron cross stands. A few parents with strollers are trying to get their babies arranged for photos. One man balances his baby near the base of the cross. Another holds his baby with a view of the abbey behind them. We stop short of the cross for our photo opportunity, and I present the abbey in the distance with a Vanna White flourish of my hand.

Behind curtain #1 – Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey

The iron base of the cross is ringed with locked declarations of love, fluttering ribbons, initials scrawled in paint or marker, and stickers. Everyone has to leave their mark on everything now to show they have been there. Looking across the valley, I think about what it was once like to come up this mountain on foot and what people hoped to find at the top. If they knew how to spell, I’m betting they still scratched their names in the dirt and stone.

We all have the impulse to underscore our existence through children, deeds, or a rusted lock with our lover’s initials.

We head down to find my in-laws waiting on the path and return to the tram station. We are all tired and looking forward to a long nap in our hotel rooms’ chill, sterile darkness. On the descent, we are alone except for two young Japanese women who stand nervously at the back. My father-in-law teases them, and they smile and laugh politely at his jokes about the height, the swaying tram, and the old cable until my husband tells him to can it. I brace myself at the front of the tram, staring into the abyss. Far beneath us is a river and a resort with a swimming pool. Cava tours are popular here, and I wish I was in that pool now with a chilled glass.

Before we get back on the train, one thing that is the same as my last visit 14 years ago is the small garden shed serving drinks near the tracks. Vines twine over our heads to make a roof permeated by sunlight that dapples the worn plastic chairs and tables. I have a beer, my husband a Tinto de Verano, a kind of adult Koolaid for hot days. Then we go to the platform to find a calico cat picking its way across the tracks.

Tagging, stickers, and locks of love on the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice.

When the train arrives, we are ready. My husband was unsuccessful in befriending the cat, who treated us with natural suspicion. On a half-filled train, we return to Barcelona, getting sleepier with the hour. This is our last night with his parents, and we are on to Valencia the next day where we once dreamt of moving. I don’t know how many more times I will return to Montserrat, but I hope next time it is with stronger lungs and better sandwiches.

Tips: 

  • Plan on a hike and pack a picnic.  The views are worth it.
  • You don’t have to tour every building or exhibit there. The real beauty of the place is the scenery and vista.
  • Tinto de Verano – half red wine, half Sprite and a slice of lemon. Chuggable on a hot day.

All in the Sagrada Familia

My husband is working, so I am taking my in-laws to Sagrada Familia. We met them for a few days in Barcelona, a stop-off on their European tour, and I arranged daily excursions. We visited Park Guell earlier in the day. Afterward, I napped for too long in the chilled, blackout dark of a Sheraton hotel room, compliments of my in-laws. We hop in a cab because I got the time wrong for our tickets, which say we will only be allowed inside if we are less than half an hour late. Even with the cab, we will arrive 40 minutes past our start time. On the ride, I think about how much I have screwed up this experience before we even get there. “I don’t know if I have enough cash!” I blurt, rifling through my purse to find a way to pay for our trip. My mother-in-law has some, and I tell them we can at least look at the outside if we cannot get in. This is my second time visiting the cathedral. Still, the memory feels like another life, another person, like something I saw in a movie. As I remember it, that other person was an idiot.


Exterior under constant construction.

We are over 45 minutes late. The guard looks at our tickets at the entry and checks his watch. He glances at us, then looks at the tickets displayed on my phone again and his watch a second time. We don’t say shit. We adopt the silence people possess when there is an understanding that we have screwed up, but we hope no one will point it out. We stare calmly back. He waves us in. Whatever, he seems to shrug; thousands of people amble through this place a day, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling and stained glass, so a few more latecomers won’t matter.

Sagrada Familia is a religious fantasy, a meeting hall for aliens, a glorious immersion in color, and surprising features carved in stone. Even turkeys share the entryway with saints. Turkeys. Globs of rock and masonry melt into the exterior like a drip sandcastle. Inside, the columns supporting the ceiling contain egg-like finials, and staircases look as if they were made by an insect slowly building the structure from masticated remnants of limestone, all drippy and smooth at the same time.

Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus and Donkey.
Entry
Turkeys

Over the apse, the ceiling lifts into a cone-like shape resembling lace. In this great room, I imagine stately creatures drifting about in shimmering robes, chittering or singing in notes too high for our primitive ears to hear while they decide the fates of other planets.

At this moment, the organ lays into a tune best suited for Dracula’s castle. We are thrown back into the bony grasp of the old religion, feeling the layers of time and modernity combined with the tinny music and kaleidoscope of light. At one end of the massive space, a cubist Saint George glowers down at us. His blockish head is solid bronze. At the other end, an emaciated Jesus, his ribs casting shadows on his stomach, dangles on a cross under a lit-up umbrella like a Cirque de Soleil performer being lowered to their starting point. He is sad and small as he gazes upward as if he is so very over all of us below him.


A $30 ticket buys you entry. Massive numbers of people flood through Sagrada Familia daily for a good reason, but the influx strains the experience too.

While they advise covering your shoulders and knees out of respect for the church, it is not enforced. Young women posing for their Instagram or TikTok show much more flesh. One woman smiles for her videographer while she preens in a red and black bustier and ass-cheek short crinoline skirt best suited for a Wild West whorehouse. Positioned by a staircase before one of the many stunning displays in stained glass, she twists one knee inward as if her naked legs dangle uselessly, like a puppet.


Please note: I will write about behaviors in public, but I will not photograph individuals without their consent, especially if the whole point is to analyze their brand of foolishness. We are all foolish. I’ve done plenty of silly things and worn stupid outfits myself, and Lord willing, I will continue to do so.


Although absurdly dressed, she is lovely, but her expression is as blank and sweet as a doll. Her fans may crave this when yanking it to her latest content – an absence of evidence of a sentient being. The whole look clashes with the stained glass behind her, even if it highlights her thigh gap. Other women have constructed outfits of flowing skirts, midriff-baring tops, and up-to-the-taint short shorts. After fixing their hair or lip gloss, they gaze up at the light filtering through the colored glass, practicing expressions of peace. Faint smiles, closed eyes as they lift their faces to receive the benevolence of the universe, or wide-eyed astonishment as if suddenly recognizing the face of god.

It is a tender god who loves, accepts them, and approves all of their social media choices, their expressions say. A god who whispers to them, “Sherry, you need to do a yoga pose right here. Right now.

Mostly, this makes them look smug and silly amongst the thousands walking past. But their photographers, either reluctant boyfriends or professionals with more than a phone to assist them, capture them from many angles, and they continue to occupy space that most of us are too polite to walk through. A few venture through shots, rolling their eyes or muttering, “Fuuuuuck this” under their breath.


The young women will make these photos marketable. In them, they will be beautiful, beneficent, sexy, or circumspect. They will radiate the light of well-being and certitude.

I also know I don’t take as many photos of myself as I used to because, for various reasons, I now resemble a toad. I imagine myself, toad-like, smirking in the golden light that flows over my face and chinless neck as I gaze up at my god. What god would condone what I was selling?

The density of influencers, the vloggers interspersed with regular tourists snapping a picture, become the teeming base of how you experience Sagrada Familia, like standing on a swarming anthill while looking at the Mona Lisa. Luckily, they cannot genuinely detract from the immense beauty of this space.

There are signs asking us to respect the worshippers in a particular area near the dangling Jesus, forever ready for his acrobatics. Still, no one is praying. Here, tourists chat and rest their feet from walking on stone all day to see the sites, looking up to snap more photos as they stretch and take a swig of water.

“This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen,” my father-in-law says. My mother-in-law is also awestruck but comments on the sometimes excessive exposure of the ladies. I agree because even if I don’t possess the faith that built this place, I cannot help but believe in following the most basic rules to experience it. “Can you imagine them letting someone make this today?” she says. “There’s nothing really about worship here, though.”

The cathedral is still in process; the years ahead will see it completed by 2026. Maybe.

Maybe not. Walking outside, more ladies are posing on the steps, and we walk around them to get a better view of the façade, backing up to the fencing that keeps those lacking tickets out. We don’t want to rush out of the cathedral as I often find myself doing in crowds. We want to stand our ground and enjoy it, believing everyone there was touched by the light we all saw.

General Tips:

  • This is one of the few sites I suggest experiencing organically, meaning don’t have a guide telling you what every object is or how to view it. You can read about the architect and structure in advance and look up individual aspects you are curious about later.
  • Sagrada Familia books far out, especially during tourist season. Buy your tickets online in advance directly from the cathedral’s website: https://www.sagradafamilia-tickets.org/en/
  • Cover your ass. No one needs to see that here, even if it looks good in the afternoon light filtering through the stained glass windows.
  • The crowds are intense. Do only one crowded thing a day to avoid being overwhelmed.