And if I bring a little music I can fit right in

The room is beautiful and quiet. We lay on the bed with our eyes toward the ceiling, neither one of us getting to our feet. There's a bathroom with fresh towels and a shower with hot water. It took us a second to figure out how to turn the lights on, the woman at the desk had to tell us to put the room key in the light switch. The room was illuminated in an instant. There were side table lamps that extended out of the walls, a large round bulb that was mounted in the ceiling, and several recessed lights all filling the room with a soft white glow. We laid there for a while enjoying the calm and the crisp sheets our hands at our sides or on the others arms. BJ discovered the mini bar and the tiny diet coke in a glass bottle. There were no grocers in Madrid, no bodegas or fruit stands. Where did these people get their food? Don't they cook for themselves ever? We eventually left to explore the rows upon rows of restaurants and bars that made up the city. We had a beer in a cafe and then found a place that seemed a bit quieter than most. I ordered the day's special- a trio of toast- one with ham, the other with spanish casserole, and the third with a blue cheese mixture. We drank very large San Miguel's and took funny pictures of each other. I got pretty drunk and started in on my usual, "I love you I love you I love you" routine. At one point I steadied myself long enough to make the trek to the bathroom in the back, and again pretended to soberly walk back. I'm sure it was obvious but BJ let me be drunk and didn't make fun of me for it. On the way back I wished for a beligian waffle dipped in chocolate, like the one in London. It had this doughy texture like it hadn't been fully cooked and the chocolate ran down your fingertips obscenely. That was perfect late night food. But here there was only a walk back to the hotel and a minibar to be raided. It was final, madrid lacked the proper late night snack joint but it made up for it in cheap beer and cold wind.

The door to the sun

The Madrid International Airport looks like it was designed by Ikea for giant sized travelers. There are giant circular lights hanging from the warehouse style ceiling, one row right after another as far as the eye can see. We pass glass encased escalators and walk over a buffed cement floor. I just woke up- BJ says I slept through a period of turbulence, three countries, and some snow capped mountains. I was awake to hear him order a coke and maybe rest my head on his shoulder for a while but other than that I fell asleep in London and found myself awake in Madrid and the labyrinth that is their airport.
We took an escalator to a wide open space, line to customs, escalator, escalator, bus to terminal, escalator, escalator, bus to terminal 1, moving walkway, wide open space, lost again, ask for directions, el metro no esta aqui, bus to terminal 4, escalator, metro station, train to puerta del sol.
I sat down and put my hand in his. I guess I wasn't expecting the casual way in which he spoke to the security guard or how easily we navigated the entire maze or how delicious that chocolate bar was that I bought from the pescoe in nottinghill. But it was all true and I was filled with a pride that kept me awake the rest of the day. That and the knowledge that upon arrival to our hotel there would be hot showers and a building titled "El Museo de Jamon" (The museum of ham).

We are here, this is our stop. We gather our things and step off the train and make our way to the stairs, being careful to follow the signs. Salida, this way. Up the stairs and into the sun. Men push flyers at me and I use my skills from growing up in Manhattan to ignore their advances. The square is huge and we stop to look at it for a second. Streets feed into it like tributaries carrying cars and people to and from it's core. No one is speaking english. No one is wearing sperry topsiders. No one can be in love more than us. This is Spain and it's frustrating and exciting and we're lost again. BJ is starting to get sick, he said he had a cough in London but it's getting worse now. And every second that we prolong our not finding the hotel is making him wheeze and cough and wipe sweat off his brow. We walk up and down streets looking for the one that leads us to clean sheets and towels. We ask police officers, but their answers only serve to confuse us more and it's not clear if we're ever going to find a place to lay our bags down. It's getting dark and the lights of the city are coming on. The Plaza mayor leads us to our destination and I give BJ a high five and kiss him on the cheek. He is the navigator and translator, I am the cheerleader. Spain is unlike anything we've seen before.

Rothko and Respite

We walk two by two down the sidewalk. We all read the "Look left- Look right" signs before crossing. It saves us on more than one occasion. It's raining now and my toes are getting wet through my shoes. They say it's cold here, and I say they're right. London acts as the frame to our pictures. Micah and Abby are there in fine form, one hand on top of the others with matching black jackets. Once in a while she'll push him near a puddle but he never leaves her side with the umbrella. He is her shelter from the slow gray drizzle and she is the one that makes him smile.
Across the bridge and over the river is the factory where we look at art. I put my hands behind my back and lean in. BJ cocks his head to the left, and then to the right. My feet are beginning to ache, but at least now they are warm and my socks have a chance to dry out. The Rothko exhibit is dark and quiet, each wall is covered by massive canvases of blocked color. We sit for a second, enjoying the respite and the smooth wooden bench. Across from us a man and a woman mirror what we remember to be the perfect first kiss. He places his hand on her knee. She tosses her hair back and then rests close to his face. He smiles at her and she smiles back. He seems to stop talking in the middle of his sentence as all momentum shifts to each of their noses moving closer to the others. And then it begins, his lips on hers in a sloppy uncomfortable action that forces me to believe that when first kisses work, they must be treasured. Here was the perfect setting, and the delivery fell short. Next time you find yourself on a benign walk to the car, you should take the love of your life with you just to see where it leads.

Summer will come with al green and sweetened ice tea

It was a Sunday, that's why there was no one on the roads at 7 in the morning. Is that runner an american wearing purple leggings and orange shoes? I stopped at the Church of England just to look in and see if there was any activity. It was dark except for that gray falling from the stained glass. I ran through empty streets and past quiet homes with Aston Martins parked in the drive. This was the material wealth in a country rich with culture and I wasn't sure that I belonged in either. The houses are all white and sit in rows of ivory save for the occasional miami pink one. They have red and green doors and three stories of fortitude. Men in tweed jackets begin to emerge- strolling by with rolled up newspapers under their arms and pleasant nods of good morning. A woman at the bus stop cheers me on, "There you go love, way to stay motivated past new years." I ran until I wanted to walk, and I walk until I wanted to eat. Back at the hostel I had breakfast with a man named Teddy. He was there doing research on his graduate dissertation on the history of evolution from 1850-1950 in the National Archives. We talked for a while about his life in the world of academia. And at the end of it, I felt like I knew everything about him. Undergrad at Duke, raised outside of Atlanta, wears tortoise shell glasses. I think I might look him up when I get back to the states. A new day has dawned and weary travelers are making their way downstairs for rice krispies and glass cups of hot coffee. Meet you down there.

Hey isn't this our song? That one time we were dancing?

This place is beautiful. I keep saying it over and over again in my mind. This truly is a grand adventure. Yesterday lasted for some forty hours or so. Micah fell asleep in the British museum sitting up somewhere in the Enlightenment exhibit. We saw the Jade masks of the Aztec empire, the ones that I read about as a kid and had been imprinted on my mind. The British Museum is awesome. And free. But mostly awesome. It spirals around a massive atrium that extends past reality and lets this incredibly white lite filter through. We saw the Rosetta stone encased in glass and holding every secret of hieroglyphics on it's sacred surface. I thought about crying when I saw it. I remembered the stamp sets with the ancient symbols and the books my mother got me for Christmas that recounted the time of the pharaohs. And there it was in all of it's massive glory. I thanked it before moving to the next room and hoped that the whole thought of crying bit was from exhaustion (If not, I'm queen of the nerds).
The vast amount of priceless pieces were breathtaking, and captivating, and awe inspiring and a thousand other words that could fill this notebook and my days for years. I haven't gotten used to looking right before left at the street corners. Last night Abby and I shopped at TopShop- just like Sienna Miller, sans the smoking and the skinny jeans. We all sat on the steps of the National Gallery as the night wore on, praying that we would catch the proverbial second wind and make it a little longer. Micah and Abby yielded to the pressure that sleep deprivation seems to put on ones body but BJ and I soldiered on, undeterred by the mere mortal need to rest. We bought a cheap bottle of wine, a smoked salmon sandwich, and found a quiet corner on which to relax and enjoy our first night in a new world. We watched the earth's shadow slowly blanket the moon in total darkness while men in cable knit sweaters and women in pea coats snapped pictures of the first lunar eclipse I ever saw. A man named Marion Plohgeski- I mean a very drunk man named Marion Phlohgeski engaged us in a very close, very loud conversation about coral gables, and sarasota, and flying planes. It was time to go and we headed back to the hostel and our bunk beads.

-Written the morning of March 4, 2007 at 8:00 London time.

There will be pictures to illustrate and more to come.