We took Jeannine back to see all the things we had seen and liked. We visited the cathedral and something was going on. It was beautiful, all lit up, but we couldn’t for the life of us ever figure out exactly what was going on. We were almost trampled on the steps by six nuns in their flying black habits running to catch a bus. We saw Spanish theater with live Flamenco dancing and singing, girls with long colorful dresses, high shoes, castanets, lace mantillas, boleros, black hats, tight pants on male dancers, guitar players and wine drinking hand clappers. The people all shout “ole” when they like part of it and hiss when they don’t. It was excellent and lots of fun. A packed theater from 10:30 to well after 1 am.
Click postcard to enlarge We drove to Barcelona and met Jeanine who came on a crowded train from Germany. She had to sleep standing up in the ladies john. We went to eat after telling Jeannine that we were always overcharged in Spain and that we had to be prepared to argue. She was charged 60 pesetas for her 15 pesata dinner. The waiter even pointed to the menu that said 15 and told us it was 60. We caused a small sized riot, bigger than usual, but we only paid 15.
We took Jeannine back to see all the things we had seen and liked. We visited the cathedral and something was going on. It was beautiful, all lit up, but we couldn’t for the life of us ever figure out exactly what was going on. We were almost trampled on the steps by six nuns in their flying black habits running to catch a bus. We saw Spanish theater with live Flamenco dancing and singing, girls with long colorful dresses, high shoes, castanets, lace mantillas, boleros, black hats, tight pants on male dancers, guitar players and wine drinking hand clappers. The people all shout “ole” when they like part of it and hiss when they don’t. It was excellent and lots of fun. A packed theater from 10:30 to well after 1 am.
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Click Postcard to Enlarge Madrid itself is quite nice. We have seen the parks and plazas, Museo del Prado, a statue of Don Quixote and Sancha Panza, the old section and the original bull ring, the training school for matadors and Generalissimo Franco’s Palace. Madrid is the most modern city in Europe. We visited the very impressive Alcazar. At one time it was a massive fortress but it was almost totally destroyed in 1936 in the civil war and now almost reconstructed. They’ve left several of the rooms as they were, bullet riddled and have build the inner hall into a huge marble hall containing tombs and gilded memorials of all the war dead We took a 30 mile trip to the Valley of the Fallen, a huge cross on the hill with a Basillica carved out of the mountain below to honor Spanish Civil War dead. Tomorrow we are going to Toledo for the day, Europe’s oldest city, walled narrow streets, home of El Greco and containing so many things of interest that the entire city is a Spanish monument. On the way back from El Escorial, we saw a lot of police and civil guards so we stopped and asked what was going on. He said it was the Generalissimo’s secret and he wasn’t allowed to know. A bit on down the road we were waved to the side and here came 10 black Cadillac convertibles and the big Generalissimo Franco himself. |
A daily diary of a journey in 1962. Please post comments about where you were then on the Background page.
1962 was pivotal. This is the background:
It was a year colored by the Cuban Missile Crisis, an escalating involvement in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights issues, a nascent space program, Nelson Mandela in prison, Betty Friedan's, The Feminist Mystique, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the death of Marilyn Monroe. Archives
May 2011
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