Settling In, part 17

We had worked out a plan for their visit. They would spend a few days letting me show them around Madrid, then they’d fly to Barcelona on their own and poke around there. They’d travel to Granada, and then to Málaga a few days later, and I’d arrive there by plane at the same time. We’d rent a car, stay in Marbella, on the south coast, and look around the Costa del Sol, and we’d return by plane to Madrid for a couple more days. I had chosen to fly rather than drive to Málaga for the usual fear-generated reasons: What did one do on a seven-hour solo drive in Spain? Where would you eat? Would there be lots of gas stations on the way, or would you have to be very careful about fuel? These questions turned out to be really silly—a seven-hour drive in Spain is pretty much like a seven-hour drive in upstate New York—but I still didn’t understand how such things worked.

In any case, we spent a few adventurous days together in Madrid. The next day, Sunday, Mike and the girls and I went into Madrid together to have brunch with my folks at that beautiful restaurant in the Palace Hotel. My mother was gushing.

“This is what a hotel should be!” she said. “It’s the most elegant place ever! The room is huge—even the hallways are gigantic! The service is perfect!” She was also in ecstasy over the free shower cap—much bigger than the chintzy motel kind, which squashed her hair.

We had an extra-good brunch because there were lots of American-style choices on the menu, which made the kids happy. And then we decided to take advantage of our excellent location and visit the Thyssen-Bournemisza art museum, right across the street.

It was gray and rainy, but we had just a short walk around to the Thyssen’s front door. It was a new museum housed in a spectacular palacio—a small palace (or gigantic mansion) right on the Paseo de la Castellana, the main boulevard of Madrid.

The museum existed because its namesake, a still-active German industrialist and art collector, had married a former Miss Spain, and she had persuaded him to give his collection to her country. I had heard that there was a good bit of deal-making involved with this—that he offered to donate the collection only if the Spanish government provided an appropriate building for it. The collection itself was reputed to be first-rate art by second-rate artists and second-rate art by first-rate artists, but in the restored interior the government had provided it showed beautifully, with perfect lighting and soothing pink tones on the walls. The arrangement was sensible, too—you took an elevator to the top floor and worked your way down, starting with the medieval works and ending in the modern period. The basement housed special exhibits that changed every six months or so.

We made a fairly quick pass through the museum, mostly because of the kids, though they did pretty well—there wasn’t too much religious art for them, and they were glad to be with their grandparents.

When we left the museum it had stopped raining. “Are you up for a walk through the old part of the city?” I asked.

“Sure, let’s try it!” Dad said. The hotel was just a few blocks from some of the tiny streets of old Madrid. All the stores were closed, but there was some fine window-shopping to do. We passed a well-known store that sold only capes and saw many antiques shops. Bars and restaurants were doing a brisk business in the area—“Retail stores keep limited hours here,” Mike said, “but you can always buy a drink!”

Now and then Dad took a pause and waited for his leg pain to subside. “Do you want to go back?” I kept asking.

“No, I’ll be okay,” he replied. “I’ll let you know when I want to go.”

“We can always catch a taxi to the hotel, too,” I said.

“That’ll be fine,” he said.

The Madrid taxis were wonderful—small white cars, each with a wide red diagonal stripe on its side. They cruised the city in great numbers. Placards hung on the inside of the windshield to let pedestrians know if a cab was available. Taxi drivers were almost always honest and friendly. You heard about the occasional airport scam—overcharging newly arrived tourists who had no idea what a trip into the city should cost. But you also heard about the great services the taxistas performed, like picking up medicine from the all-night pharmacy and delivering it to your door when you had a sick child, or reliably transporting kids to school on a regular basis.

Mike had a British colleague who had once carelessly left his wallet in a taxi. The wallet contained hundreds of dollars in two or three different currencies. He assumed he’d never see it again, but the next day the Spaniards in his office offered to call the taxi association for him. They learned that someone at the association had heard there was a taxista who had found a wallet, but the man was out sick. Still skeptical, the Brit figured the driver was off on a vacation with his money. But a day later the association delivered the wallet—and all its cash—to the Price Waterhouse office.

We made it as far as Plaza Santa Ana before Dad finally got tired. “I’m ready for that taxi now,” he said. We hailed a cab, and he and Mom returned to the hotel for a rest while the four of us retrieved our car and went home.

The next day, with the kids in school, I thought I’d try to take my folks down to Toledo, about 45 minutes south of Madrid. I’d gone by train in April, so this would be my first try at driving there. I waited till the rush-hour traffic into Madrid was over and easily scooped Mom and Dad up from their hotel.

Having my dad as a navigator made the trip easy, and we reached Toledo in less than an hour. I had no idea where to park the car, so I just followed my nose through a gate in the walls of the old city and drove up a hill until I saw a big blue sign with a white P on it—that meant “parking,” though the actual Spanish word is estacionamiento. Another Spanish mystery. We left the car in a two-level parking garage and began walking down the hill to find the cathedral. Dad was walking well. “I am better on the downhill than the uphill,” he said.

We walked through the cathedral and took a look at the famous El Greco painting, Burial of Count Orgaz, at the tiny church of San Tomé. There was a crowd trying to see the painting, so we didn’t get a great view of it. We continued downhill, walking past shops and houses in the narrow streets. We stopped in to see two synagogues—Santa María la Blanca, which had obviously been converted to a church at one time, and the Sinagoga del Tránsito, which had recently been refurbished and reopened as a museum. Santa María la Blanca was small and empty, but its pure white walls were beautiful in the light that came in through narrow windows. And the Tránsito’s restoration was impressive—the sanctuary was decorated with colorful, intricate designs originally created by the Moorish artisans who had built the building.

I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the overall direction of our walk, which had been uniformly downhill. The parking garage had been at the very peak of the city, the cathedral well below it, and the synagogues still lower. As we left the Tránsito I realized with horror that there was no way Dad could walk back up that steep hill. He came to the same awareness a moment after I did.

“How do we get back up?” he asked me. “Can we catch a taxi here?”

I knew that this was not a big enough city to have taxis cruising the streets for passengers. There would be a taxi stand at the Plaza de Zocodover, which was the town’s main square, but that was far uphill from where we were. “I don’t know,” I said, my stomach sinking. “Let’s walk a little further down and see what we find.”

We continued downhill for a while, walking into quieter residential streets away from the tourist areas. I looked around in panic for some way back up, but there was nothing. Then we reached a wide road that appeared to circle the town, and in a flash I saw a taxi and stuck out my hand. The car stopped in front of us.

“Podrías llevarnos al garaje al colmo de la collina?” I asked the driver—can you take us to the garage at the top of the hill?

“Sí, por supuesto,” he said—yes, of course. So we got in. I was giddy with relief.
“No es lo normal conseguir un taxi en la calle aquí,” the driver cheerfully volunteered—It’s not the usual thing to get a taxi in the street here.
“Lo sé, lo sé—eres un milagro para nosotros,” I said, laughing—I know, I know, you’re a miracle for us.