Another post from the Cafe of Naked Men (and Women)

This time I am sitting facing the Wall of Naked Men on DVD-- a lovely view.

Yesterday I took a bus to Segovia. This came about because I had mentioned to Sara (the artist) that my mother had suggested that I go to Avila, because it's where Saint Teresa of Avila is from. (Um, yeah.) Sara said that she thought Segovia would be of more interest to me, since it has an "aqueducto."

"Ooooh!" I said. I have a thing about aqueducts. (They're cool! You should see the one at Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto!)

"And it's famous for cochinillo." (Suckling pig.)

"Oooooh!" This despite having just read British children's author Nina Bawden's The Peppermint Pig, purchased at a used bookshop in Madrid, in which four children are very, very traumatized because of their idiot mother's decision to raise the pig fated for the butcher as a pet and name it Johnny. That book also features the exact same plot point that appears in Little Women: a girl from a family with upper-class aspirations but currently fallen upon hard times, who loves babies, goes to visit a poor family of the lower class, cuddles a sickly baby, and is stricken with scarlet fever and nearly dies, and the sickly baby does die. I guess the moral is "Don't cuddle poor people's babies, or you'll get scarlet fever."

So yesterday I went to Segovia, which is famous for a cathedral and the Alcazar, a palace which was replicated in Disneyland. The aqueduct is an ancient Roman one, and all the guidebooks claim that you get a great view of it driving into the town, and it is enormous and impossible to miss. I did not see it coming into town, and the bus station was singularly lacking in helpful maps or signposts reading "This way to the famous aqueduct."

So I looked around, saw the spires of a cathedral, and started wandering in that direction. Then I glanced down an alley and saw, in the distance, the unmistakable arches of an enormous Roman aqueduct. I trotted down the alley, walked up a flight of steps, and suddenly was in a big plaze with the aqueduct looming above me, the plaza, and the entire town. It is built of immense gray stones fitted together so precisely that no mortar was used, even in the arches-- which is amazing, when you look at those great rocks suspended overhead by nothing but geometry. The arches framed a blue sky, and clouds, and the specks of birds flying by.

It was about three by then, since I had gotten up late and then had a hard time finding the bus station. In what has become my ritual, I asked for directions and got a long explanation which I only understood in retrospect. (In this case, "There is no 'bus station' per se-- there are a bunch of mini-stations scattered all up and down this road, and you need to know which bus company you're looking for." Since everything is done later in Spain (Lawrence amused me yesterday by referring to 7:00 PM as "mid-afternoon,") I realized that restuarants would now be open for suckling pig.

I wandered around till I found one with customers and appetizing smells, and ordered the lunch set menu. These are posted outside, with a choice of three to six courses for appetizer and main dish, sometimes with bread, a drink, and dessert included. I had cantaloupe and Serrano ham (which I am rapidly getting addicted to) for an appetizer, a mini-bottle of red wine (I had attempted to ask for a glass, but that was what I got) and a plate with three big hunks of unadorned suckling pig in a pool of its golden juices, with crunchy skin atop white meat so succulent and tender that you didn't cut it, but used knife and fork to pull it apart in shreds. (The pig fought back at one point, flipping a piece over and splattering my shirt with oil that I am, even as we speak, attempting to remove with specially purchased stain remover.) Followed by an orange that was presented unpeeled on a little plate.

Between the wine, the suckling pig, and the sunny afternoon, I was more inclined to take a nap then walk to the cathedral and Alcazar when I emerged from the restaurant in a satiated haze. In fact I sat down for a brief rest in the sun beside the aqueduct, and was alarmed to see that fifteen minutes had passed between blinks.

I did make it to the cathedral, which, like Narnia-in-the-wardrobe-, was bigger on the inside than the outside, with all the lines sweeping upward to the intricately carved ceiling, and every inch of it proclaiming, "Behold the glory of God above!"

At the Alcazar, which was indeed oddly familiar because of the Disneyland replica, I was waylaid by one of those elderly men who enjoy hanging out at tourist attractions to educate the tourists. I interrupted his semi-comprehensible spiel about Saint Teresa and the Knights Templar by asking him about a cliff in the distance-- was it a natural formation or a quarry?

"Oh, that. It is... um... it is two thousand... um... what is the word...?"

"Anos?" I suggested. (Years-- pretend my computer has a tilde-- as written, that means "butt.")

The idiocy of that suggestion brought the correct word to his mind. "Kilos," he explained. Either two thousand kilos of rock was mined there to construct some houses, or else there was a landslide and two thousand kilos of rock fell on some houses, I am not sure which.

Then I returned to Madrid for dinner at Sara's house, with Sara, Lawrence, and two friends who are professional translators. It was really fun, and Sara cooked a delicious vegetarian paella, which she served with two types of red wine and a homemade liquor made by steeping the fruits of the madrono (missing tilde) tree in anis. However, it did not taste like anis, which I despise, but like sweet aromatic brandy. She had made green tea truffles for dessert, with white chocolate centers rolled in bitter matcha powder for contrast.

Sara and I are going out for a girls' tapas night tonight, so there will no doubt be more food-centric reports later.