Menorca, what a fine way to end a trip

Well here I am, the last stop of the trip. And did I ever arrive at the right time! But you´ll have to skip down a few paragraphs to find out why. Or read all the way through.

I finished my stay in Madrid as I planned, visiting all the interesting places to the west f my hotel. Again, I stayed away from the museums, and just wandered around seeing the sights. I did go in one museum, as it was a church, and I wanted to see the inside of it. Church for part of the day, and museum for the rest. With very limited hours.

I won´t bore you with the names of the places I visited. Suffice to say that there is enough in Madrid to keep you busy all day long for several days. And I could have easily spent several more there and gone into the city in a little more depth.

I got from Madrid to Barcelona with no problems. If I didn´t know where I was, I could have sworn I was traveling through southern California for most of the trip. There were a few spots that reminded me of the north central AZ landscape and a few that looked like southeastern AZ. The last segment was along the coast, and it could well have been CA´s central coast along the southern portions of Highway 1.

Within an hour or so of my arrival in Barcelona, I was settled into a hotel. The Barcelona Tourist Info Center helped on that. More on the TI later. I used the metro to get around town, and found it to be very easy and efficient. And the metro staff are really helpful, as are the Renfre (Spain´s railroad system) personnel. For some reason, I adapt to the underground systems much better than I do surface transportation. I guess that may be because there´s nothing to distract me from finding my station, such as scenery, buildings, etc.

I decided that with just one day in Barcelona, the Hop-on Hop-off bus tour was the best choice, so I signed up for one. It did get to see most of the highlights, I guess. Not too sure, as there wasn´t a great deal of info on Barcelona available at the TI.

The highlight was a visit to the Sagrada Familia. It´s a church designed by the architect Gaudi. If you can believe this, construction started in 1883, and has been going on ever since. It´s scheduled for completion in 2020. Doesn´t seem like anything should take that long to build, does it? I didn´t take the inside tour, as I´d seen it about 8 years ago. Besides, I´ve been inside buildings under construction, and they aren´t all that interesting. But the outside is really something to behold. When I get around to posting some photos again, I´ll be sure to include some. Quite the sight!!!

Another stop on the bus tour led to a tram ride to a view site. The waiting line for the tram was about a block long, and the tram could probably hold about t a half block´s Worth, so i decided to hike up the hill. For you BVS folks, think of the first portion of Jacaranda. For the rest, it was all uphill. But worth the view once I got there. I sat in an open air bar, had a soda, and marveled. The aforementioned Sagrada Familia stood out prominently.

Other than the above, the most memorable parts of the Barcelona stay was "Rambling La Rambla". La Rambla is a long, wide pedestrian street from one of the main plazas, Catalunya, I believe, to the Marina. I don´t think it ever has less than 100,000 people in it, or so it seems.

A comment or two about the TI´s. The one in Madrid was OK, but could have had a bit more information about what each of the locations they mentioned was about. Nearly all they provided was the name, opening hours, location and price. The best descriptive info I found was in a booklet in the hotel room. For some reason, the TI was stingy with maps. The first I got didn´t do much for me. So I asked if there was a better one. There was, and they gave me a copy, but it still didn´t identify much. So the third time, I got the good map, but all the descriptive text was in Japanese. So with that and the hotel info, I got by.

Barcelona was another story. With the exception of the very good help in locating a room, they were not much more than a shill for the bus tour company. No booklet of any sort describing the highlights of the city. The map they provided was a poor quality map of the entire city, with only the major streets identified. When I paid for the bus tour, I was given a better map, primarily highlighting the stops the bus made, and a booklet describing those stops. When I asked for a better map, they told me I could buy one in their gift shop. I did, but it still didn´t compare with the free maps all the other TI´s I´ve been to offer. Do you think I´m disappointed with the Barcelona TI?

And part of it may simply be that in Spain, I didn´t have my Lonely Planet guidebook. Lonely Planet has been my companion on all my international trips so far. This time, I left the European one home, as I had one on Scandinavia. Big mistake. The European one covered Spain, and I think it would have helped a lot. Next time, I won´t be without one. Does this sound like a testimonial? Lonely Planet, are you listening?

And now I´m in Menorca. After an uneventful flight across the Mediterranean, Pepe met me at the airport in Mao, or Mahon. From there, we headed straight for his home in Ferreres, deposited my luggage and headed for the town center. There had been a fiesta for the last several days, and I arrived at the finale.

There is a horse breed unique to Menorca. A beautiful all black horse, and today´s celebration centered around the horses. Pairs of riders rode into the town square dressed in formal riding attire, peaked hat, black coat, white shirt, bow tie, riding boots, you get the picture. The band played, the crowd cheered, and the horses pranced and reared in the midst of the crowd. Quite a sight to behold! The Spanish name for it is "jaleo". I´ll put photos on the blog as soon as I can. Probably the most exciting day I´ve had on the entire trip. I wish I could adequately describe it, as it´s something to see. Something like the bulls in Pamplona, but the horses aren´t chasing anyone. Almost as if the people are chasing the horses.

The local drink for this celebration, at least is called the pomada. It´s made with gin and lemonade, proportions vary, depending on who mixes it. Pepe introduced me to several friends, and they offered pomada. Fortunately, we didn´t get to meet too many friends, and the portions were small.

After a break to join up with the rest of Pepe´s family, Magdalena, son Eder and daughter Marina, and have a bite to eat, we went back to the town center. One the stage in the plaza, there was entertainment, clowns, dancers, magicians, you name it, all by the same three performers. Then, to the carnival. We didn´t get back to the house until almost midnight. Did we sleep well? I´ll let you figure that out.

Time to close for now. Pepe has graciously let me use his computer with it´s high speed connection, so I´ll try to post a few photos. Hopefully, there will be one or two of the jaleo good enough to post.