León

Peg woke up at zero dark thirty and got me down to SeaTac. Headed off losing my luggage in Charlotte by asking why my baggage claim didn’t say Madrid! Made it to gate D 18 before realizing I wanted D2. There’s a little Starbucks above a lower terminal in the D wing that was entirely deserted at 5 am, so I had a nice quiet breakfast sandwich without a mask. Going to say I was in the 2% of people who were masked, less in CharlotteBoy it was nice to be only sitting 2-4-2 across in Premium Economy, rather than 3-6-3 in coach. Madrid airport makes any airport in the US seem tiny. It serves incoming flights from Africa, South America, Europe and North America. Mistake número uno….I should have budgeted a few days in Madrid. Besides obviously missing the Capitol of Spain it would have also buffered a late flight, but I was entirely on time. A mile at least of linear moving sidewalk, made it to a bathroom, then four long escalators to an underground train, then up three long escalators, to a Disney maze into passport control, past the four heavily armed soldiers, down two escalators, another maze to Sanitation control to check my Spain issued QR code/health form, had it pointed out that my vaccination card was not EU (which was in the QR code), another maze to a nurse who glanced at my vaccine card in the most cursory way and passed me to baggage claim. Each maze had 20-30 Spanish ladies to keep you headed in the right direction or down the correctly colored line. Got my bag and found my first Spanish amigo, Hector. Hector lives in Léon, but drives his Prius taxi to Madrid. Wow if you want to have a total crack up, watch two guys, neither of whom really speaks the others language try to have conversation during a four and a half drive at 120 km/hr on a windy 2 lane highway racing huge trucks and the odd BMW. Hector has agreed to drive me on Domingo (had to look it up) through the icky side of industrial Léon to a much nicer start in La Virgen. The last hour and a half was through the vaunted Meseta a vast stretch of wheat fields and A LOT of enormous windmills. My impression overall was very similar to driving around Davis or the Northern Sacramento Valley. Large swathes of some purple flower and I lucked out…the poppies are blooming everywhere like mad and they are generally redder than ours.

I had enough energy to try to walk accidentally happened upon the cathedral and found the Wise Pilgrim recommended Four Lions brewpub in search for the local wheat beer called zerep. Unfortunately they didn’t have very much in terms of a selection I chose an IPA since most of the others were a more common large distribution brand. I got pan y jamón as an included tapas. A lady started choking and I was able to help a little. On the way back I got talked into a tapas and wine dinner by Ishmael and Tyrep (from Turkey)Read more