—Written by Ida Emerson & Joseph E. Howard
—Performance by Michigan J. Frog

—§—

Our Boston Terrier Rosie, and that leaky bag of feathers, Chiapas, have begun interacting. Chiapas makes a great show of innocently swinging from his rings, luring Rose closer and closer until she's in range. Then Bam! He nips at her. For her part, Rosie thinks it's all a game and keeps coming back for more.

Thus underscoring Dave Barry's notion: He loves dogs "because they are morons."

Chiapas and Rose form a sort of food chain. I gave the bird a piece of my apple turnover. Chiapas sat on the door to his cage, holding it in one foot and nibbling, most of it falling on the floor. Rosie lurked beneath, snarfing up the crumbs.

—§—

I previously wrote that Chiapas is a talking parrot. His one word is in Nahuatl and sounds like "suckitup" or "buckaduck". Or something. That's all he's said for a week.

So I was surprised this morning when I let him out of his cage and he said, "I LOVE you."

Now, this bird was bred and raised in Chiapas or Oaxaca by non-English speakers. I assume that if he speaks any English, he learned it from his owner, Clint. A tall, raw-boned Texan. Drives a pickup. Wears a cowboy hat. A man's man.

I simply cannot imagine Clint training his parrot: "I LOVE you. I LOVE you. I LOVE you. C'mon, pretty bird. I LOVE you."

Perhaps he'll explain himself in the comments section. We'll see...

Chiapas says "I LOVE you" for the second or third time. I call Jean. "Jean! Jean! Ya gotta come hear this. Chiapas is saying 'I LOVE you.'"

Jean comes in. "Yeah. Right." (Always the skeptic.)

With Chiapas perched on my hand I say, "Chiapas! I LOVE you."

"Puckapuck."

"No, Chiapas. Say 'I LOVE you!'"

"Chuckleluck."

"Honest, Jean. You gotta believe me. He really says it."

"Sure he does. I gotta go now, Sweetie. Things to do. Don't bother me anymore."

She leaves. I glare at Chiapas. He says, "I LOVE you."

This is not happening in chilly weather. Must have been 85º.

It started out as a typical tropical rainy season thunderstorm: intense, violent, noisy. Our Boston Terrier, Rosie, snuggled up next to my leg, shaking as she does whenever there's thunder or fireworks. Poor thing.

Suddenly the courtyard was filling up with hailstones the size of garbanzo beans.

Much of our living space communicates with courtyards through open archways. Ice, ricocheting off paving stones, started to accumulate on our carpets and upholstered furniture. The responsible members of the household broke out mops and squeegees. I broke out my camera.

Twenty minutes later it was all over. I looked around, assessing the damage. Broad-leafed tropical plants haven't evolved to withstand hail. This Plumeria tells it all.

One of my former English students, Arturo, was visiting. He told me he thought that the last hailstorm in San Miguel was in 1980. That would have been before he was born. At this rate, odds are good I won't be around to see another one.

Many allow dining in elegant colonial courtyards. Most offer some variation on Mexican cuisine. Many are moderately priced, so Jean and I can afford to eat in them frequently.

Above, we see Jean in a typical courtyard restaurant. She is negotiating with a little girl selling Chiclets—a typical if sad scene in any Mexican city.

It's a lovely, sunny day. The courtyard with fountain, tiles, and graceful arches creates a serene space for us to relax in. The cast iron furniture, the festive Corona umbrellas, the Spanish-speaking waiters surround us with warm Mexican ambience.

But we won't be ordering enchiladas today.

The dragon statues and the Chinese lantern give it away. We are in the Palacio Chino, the Chinese Palace. The Mexican Chinese Palace, going by the pottery chimenea behind Jean's right shoulder—with a red dragon painted on it. Culture fusion.

We love Asian cuisines. But we've given up on Japanese restaurants, at least in the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro. The delicate flavors of Japanese food doesn't register on Mexican tongues, so sushi bars amp up the vinegar in the rice, overwhelming the taste of any topping. And as I've mentioned before, these places cater to Mexican tastes with offerings such as tekka maki with chipotle sauce (tuna with smoked jalapeño chiles).

Chinese food is another matter. As a couple who lived for decades in the San Francisco Bay Area, our Asian palates are fairly sophisticated, and I can assure you that the menu at Palacio Chino is anything but authentic. However, Szechwan cooking shares many flavors with Mexican food—assertive and spicy, so it's a good choice when you're jonesing for Chinese.

Jean ordered General Tao Chicken. This consisted of chunks of chicken meat dredged in cornstarch, deep fried, coated in a brown, sugary sauce fired up with lots of long red dried chiles. I ordered Orange Peel Beef, which consisted of chunks of beef dredged in cornstarch, deep fried, coated in a brown, sugary sauce fired up with lots of chiles. Oh yeah, the cook threw a few strips of orange peel into mine.

Both dishes were delicious, though surprisingly similar.

We had to wait a half hour for our meal because we threw the kitchen with a request for steamed rice. Plain rice is generally not served in Mexico. Rice, insofar as Mexicans are concerned, is supposed to be served with vegetables mixed in, the way God intended. Did we want fried rice? No we didn't. So they had to cook our steamed rice to order.

We also wrong-footed them with a request for palitos—chopsticks. The waiter spent several minutes looking for some. He finally brought us nice bamboo ones, manufactured in China, presented in a little paper sleeve. They appeared to be intended for the American market, judging from the amount of English on it. Chinglish, rather.

Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history and cultual.

Instructions:

1) Tuk under tnurnb and held firmly
2) Add second chcostick hold it as you hold a pencil
3) Hold tirst chopstick in originai position move the second one up and down

Now you can pick up anything:

For me, there's something comforting about reading stuff in Chinglish. I'm reassured I'm patronizing real Chinese people cooking real Chinese food, and not some "Magic Wok" stall staffed with gum-chewing teenagers named Dawna.

Your better Chinese restaurants don't insult you by offering fortune cookies. The Chinese Palace isn't one of them. My fortune read, "Si lo tienes, muestralo." (If you've got it, flaunt it.)

That's it for now. Have a glonous day.

My expression reflects my reaction to Chiapas having just pooped on my shirt. (Can't complain: I don't think you can housebreak birds.)

Parrots make wonderful pets. They're affectionate, playful and intelligent. In many ways, they're more interesting than dogs or cats. For example, they're moody. At the moment, Chiapas is sulking, because I brought him back from our walk in the park too soon. In his opinion. Brat.

Chiapas is a little grouchy in the morning. I give him a half hour after he wakes up to pull himself together while I fix breakfast. I share a corner of toast with him, and he helps himself to my coffee.

By late morning, his sunny personality is in gear. He wanders around the house, climbs on his cage and a nearby hammock, and rides around on my shoulder. He eats more than I expected: sunflower seeds, fruit, lettuce, crackers and granola bars. He's much more civil with me after I feed him.

And of course, best of all: Parrots talk. At this point, Chiapas knows one word. (Well, he's only a year old. I don't know many humans who can talk at that age.) His one word is in Nahuatl. I don't know what it means. Probably "Eat my shorts, Spanish devil."

Chiapas is a Yellow-headed Amazon (Amazona oratrix) and proud of it. His race has been kept as pets by Aztec kings. He treats me like a servant.

The popularity of Yellow-heads has contributed to their becoming an endangered species in the wild, as has destruction of the wild itself. An estimated 7,000 still live free. Today, trade in parrots is legal only for birds born in captivity, in an attempt to preserve the wild flock. Almost all of the parrots you see come from breeders, as does Chiapas. Hand-fed as a chick, he bonds easily with people.

Well, that's enough for today. Now I'm gonna go play with my parrot.

Or on their mothers' hips. This little girl appears to be receiving cellphone training.

It wasn't just kids who came for the fun.

I hope you'll forgive me for saying this, but at first, I mistook this old woman for one of the costumed dancers.

The festivities started late. Of course. The children waited semi-patiently.

And waited. Note that the boys are holding backpacks. Why would they bring them to a parade?

Eventually a throbbing beat became audible, bit by bit building in intensity. A truck appeared.

The beat became unbearably loud. I felt it deep in my chest. No wonder—the trucks were carrying take-no-prisoners sound gear.

Here we see an array of monster speakers, powerful amps, a professional mixer board, a laptop loaded with MP3s—and a 3600-watt generator. No way the truck's own electrical system could power this rig.

Nobody does amplified sound like Mexicans.

There's something transcendental about immersing oneself in the music, dance, and culture of native societies.

But they couldn't really compete. A shame. I like banda music, but at least as far as El Día de Los Locos, their day is gone.

The dancers followed the music; ten thousand of them, all costumed, all moving to the beat.

Some were on stilts; others wore ten-foot-high costumes. Note the window in this figure's chest.

If you expect political correctness, you're in the wrong country. We got Aunt Jemima...

... and Osama bin Laden, holding a placard depicting a plane flying into the Parroquoia!

To Osama's left, you can see candy flying through the air. The dancers throw candy to the spectators. People with parasols hold them upside-down to catch it.

Kids used backpacks or plastic bags to hold their loot.

Some gringos joined the dancing.

But to me, they seem a little off point. Dressing up in drag misses the playful innocence exhibited by everyone else. Kind of embarrassing.

Three hours later, the parade was over. The little ones were zonked out.

The crowds dispersed, except for the party animals, who would celebrate at San Antonio Plaza late into the night.

In a surprisingly adept coordination of municipal services, street sweepers, with their homemade brooms, were cleaning up litter before the spectators even had a chance to leave.

El Día de Los Locos used to annoy me. It's disruptive and noisy. This year, instead of fighting 'em, I joined 'em. I stood, jammed in the middle of a happy crowd while a six-month-old drooled on my shoulder and a five-year-old clung to my jeans pocket so as not to be swept away by the crowd. I caught candy in the air and gave it to nearby kids. I laughed with their parents.

And like Victor Hugo, the four-year-old grandchild who lives next door to me, I staggered home, exhausted, and took a nap.

—§—

It wasn't always crazy. According to Jesús Ibarra's informative June 15 article in our bilingual newspaper Atención, the tradition of dancing in the streets of San Miguel de Allende began in the 19th Century as orchard workers gave thanks to San Pascual Bailón for a good harvest.

(I'd provide a link, but Atención's website doesn't allow linking to archived articles.)

San Pascual Bailón was a Franciscan monk who once danced before a painting of the Virgin Mary, saying "Lady, I can't offer you great qualities because I have none, but I offer you my farmer's dance in your honor." Perhaps this is why orchard workers chose to dance in thanks to him.

Pascual Bailón has a white light experience.

So El Día de los Locos began as an expression of thanksgiving by the devout to an extraordinarily humble and pious man. Over the decades, it has evolved into this:

More than 10,000 people, many drunk or stoned, dancing through the streets in a parade that takes three hours to pass.

—§—

The day of the parade of the Locos started peacefully enough. Dancers and onlookers alike were going to need cold water, so vendors came to provide it at a good price.

A few guys set up styrofoam-and-salsa stands for people who couldn't subsist on candy thrown by the dancers, but fluids would be the big sellers today.

A couple of people tried selling semillas—sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds—but they didn't seem to be having much luck.

The parasol seller had a field day. It was going to be sunny and hot, so a little shade would be very welcome. Look at the size of the bundle on his back. He sold them all—$25 pesos each. I figure his markup was 400%. Little did I know what the parasols' real use would be.

But the familiar guy selling cheesy foam-rubber map puzzles didn't seem to get any takers. Of course, he never seems to get any takers. I've seen this guy around the Jardín for years, and haven't seen him sell one. Maybe he really doesn't sell any. Maybe it's just an excuse to get out of the house.

The next order of business was: clear the parade route.

Of course, no temporary NO PARKING signs had been put up the previous day. So at least some of these cars were legally parked. But see, you're supposed to know where the parade is gonna go, and not park there on parade day.

The red car was making a howling metallic sound as it was towed. Made my teeth ache.

Of course, just try to get these guys to tow cars on, say, Garita, a narrow street where parking is prohibited, with permanent signs advising motorists of the fact. Savvy drivers know not to try to drive vans down that hill. The five or so illegally parked cars you'll find there any given day will make that impossible.

Some spectators came early, to get good viewing spots. This Celaya half-marathoner has a great one, right on the curb.

As the crowds built, people started stacking up.

Turns out coming early didn't buy you anything at all.

That half-marathoner? He's back there somewhere, as is the curb.

A few lucky people watched from their balconies. This guy profitably used the time waiting for the parade to start, brushing his teeth. He must have spent fifteen minutes brushing. I'm pushing it if I spend two.

After the parade started, his friends came out to enjoy it with him—and his minty fresh breath. I may be mistaken, but I think he's flossing as he watches. Guy's really into oral prophylaxis.

In the next post, we'll take a look at all that craziness that happened after the dancing started. And, we'll find out what the parasols were for.

—§—

A month ago, San Miguel was just coming into the hot, dusty season, a great reason to be someplace else. Today, the rainy season has begun. Our timing was perfect. Looking west from the bluffs overlooking town, I can see a cloudburst obscuring my view of the Sierra de Guanajuato.

We've got another couple of months before everything turns green and wildflowers carpet the hillsides.

Prickly pear cactus—is it our Official National Plant? After all, it's on the flag. I take Rose up to the Landeta County Park for an outing, and to get a cactus fix. To assure myself I'm really back in Mexico.

The fruits are ripening. Soon roadside stands will be selling them. Tunas. Gringos call them prickly pears and mostly don't eat them. They're missing out.

They taste a little like watermelon. The beetles know. A bird pecked a hole in this tuna and created a feast for the insects.

I went to Spain for stimulation and excitement. I came home to get away from all that. In Europe, I tried to take in an entire country in one gulp. Here, I can quietly contemplate minutiae.

Yep. In mid-2002 you could buy a euro for $.95. Today it's $1.35. But waiting until the dollar gets stronger won't work. Probably won't happen anytime soon. I'll wait a couple of years though, until the restoration work is completed and the scaffolds come down.

For years, we've visited The UK, France, Germany and others. Spain just wasn't on my radar. When I did think of it, the image in my mind was of a decaying colonial power, responsible for despoiling of the New World, itself crushed under Franco's fascist dictatorship. A non-player on the European stage. My main reason for going there this year was to enjoy a European holiday in a (probably second-rate) country where I now spoke the language.

What I discovered was one of the most exciting countries I've ever visited; a vibrant, sparkling society with a history as deep as any, combined with a 21st-century outlook.

I mean, always on their cellphones.

I'd hate to be the boyfriend. He rows, she talks. To someone else. Who do you think is top dog in that relationship?

What do you do with your weekday mornings? These two young ladies dress up, find a park bench, and drink beer.

I wonder if it's legal to drink from open containers in public spaces? They should be careful or they may be called on by the fearsome Guardia Civil.

They're instantly recognizable in their tricornos, unchanged for more than 150 years.

Trusted and admired today, they once functioned as enforcers for Franco. They still enjoy more powers than police in most democracies. Members of the Guardia Civil were often involved in coup attempts, one as late as 1981.

Munching on sunflower seeds, this tattooed and pierced man looks like a likely suspect to me—someone the Guardia might be interested in.

But appearances are deceiving. He's innocently fascinated with the same puppet show as this little girl is.

Ever been blown off by the counterman at a New York diner? Think waiters in Paris are rude? Think again. I've never met hospitality workers more impatient and uncaring as Spanish ones, and Madrileños are the national champions.

For which reason I felt obliged to include this man in my gallery. He was kind, gentle, patient. His place became a regular stop for us. Here he's bringing Jean soup and me my order of deep-fried whole baby squid.

Don't knock 'em 'til you've tried 'em.

Street musicians abound. This traditional Spanish musician is playing his traditional Spanish erhu (two-stringed violin).

OK. He and it are Chinese. He drew a lot of listeners, and a lot of euros in the open erhu case at his feet.

Speaking of musicians, this little drummer came hurtling by me, banging away.

He looks like something out of Lewis Carroll.

One day, he'll sit quietly in the park, smoking, watching other little boys running around.

Madrid has many, many parks—some of them huge. They're great for people watching on a sunny Sunday.

A father helps his little girls rollerblade; a hokey-pokey master teaches moves to a young couple, their enstrollered baby nearby.

"You put your left foot out..."

The park is great for getting a little physical exercise, or for reading and getting a little tan...

... or for catching a few Zs.

This man, his head resting on his shoe, became immersed in a cloudburst seconds after this image was taken.

Crowds surged for the metro. Pickpockets worked the crush at the train doors, grateful for the good fortune occasioned by the rain. Old, familiar acquaintances by now, Jean and I exchanged greetings with them as we headed for a warm, dry café´.

Occasionally my father would take me on the most exciting of adventures: riding the train to New york City. After an hour which I spent with my nose pressed to the window, we'd get off at the Hoboken Terminal and take the steam ferry across the Hudson River to Canal Street in Manhattan. On the way back, we'd stop in the oyster bar in Hoboken and eat 5¢ oysters until I felt sick, while waiting for our train home.

All too soon, the steam era ended, replaced by diesel-electrics.

Railroads never were the same for me. The change had to come: steam locomotives were inefficient and polluting. But to me they were romantic. These days, whenever I travel to a place that has a train museum, visiting it becomes a top priority.

The Museo del Ferrocarril in Madrid is a good one.

On entering the museum building (an old railroad station), I was greeted by this sweet little 0-4-0 switch engine.

It hardly seems big enough to pull anything, but it was used to make up trains in Spanish switchyards a century ago. The restoration work is exquisite, and typical of all of the exhibits.

A brilliantly executed cutaway locomotive allows the mechanically-minded to examine the workings of a golden-age steam locomotive.

I spent a long time minutely tracing energy flows in this specimen.

The museum contains maybe 20 locomotives and even more rolling stock. It's not in the same class as that greatest of railway museums, the National Railway Museum in York, England, but you can easily spend a day exploring this one.

Like any good railway museum, exhibits cover more than the trains themselves: baggage handlers, for example.

Burlap sacks and brown paper packages tied with rope—a far cry from today's corrugated cardboard boxes with styrofoam inserts. Someone chose to depict the handlers as happy souls, the one on the left with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Verisimilitude at the expense of political correctness. If this place were in Indianapolis, you'd have a concerned parent's group raising hell over that cigarette.

Advertising posters, to today's travelers, seem transparent in their approach to luring customers.

"The courtesy of Spain and the train at your service"—¡Tu abuela! Once you've ridden the railroad in Spain or encountered a waiter in Madrid, you get a whole new understanding of the expression at your service. Or the word courtesy for that matter. In the USA—maybe. In Morocco—absolutely. In Spain—puhleeze.

(The figure in the poster isn't exactly a paragon of masculinity, is he? I mean, just what was the artist trying to say here? And who in Renfe management approved this thing anyway?)

Hundreds of other artifacts of belle époque industry are on display. They don't make 'em like this filigreed magneto telephone anymore. No batteries needed! Just turn the crank and talk. A simpler era indeed. Cell phones work better, but once again, no romance.

On the right, an ornately gilded device for impressing embossed seals into tickets. To discourage counterfeiting.

Much railroad building was financed through a national lottery. You turned the crank of this machine to mix and draw lottery numbers, presumably in front of impartial witnesses.

For some reason, this magnificent Fargo truck is included in the collection.

No plaque or placard explains why it's here, but for my money, you could show it in the Prado and I'd be delighted with it.

Hundreds of toy trains are on display. Not scale models—toys. Overlooked by most railroad museums.

They bring back memories of the Lionel electric trains I got for Christmas. Sometimes, my dad would even give me a turn with them.

Below, a box for a train set—an example of truly awful product packaging art.

Lets face it: Your pubescent sister just isn't gonna show that kind of interest in your train set. She's got other things on her mind. And your little brother in the blue shirt—what exactly is he thinking? Mom and dad better take him to the psychologist before things get out of hand. (Kid looks like Jack Nicholson.)

This is the way a passenger car is supposed to look. Classy. Not like some cheap piece of extruded aluminum.

It's the only thing in the whole museum that interested Jean, standing here checking it out.

The passenger car serves as the Museum coffee shop.

Weird, huh? I mean the passenger sitting at her dining car table with its elegant little lamp, talking on her cell phone—a jarring anachronism.

We visited the Railroad Museum on a Saturday, when admission is free. Got there just as it opened. By early afternoon, families had arrived and the place was crawling with kids. They were having a great time. Their fathers were having an even better time. And it was time for us retired folks to go.

I wonder what this place means to those children? Maybe no more than a museum full of 18th-century furniture means to me: interesting, but not connected to my past. The Museo del Ferrocarril, on the other hand, plays strongly into my childhood. For me, visiting these places is always an emotional experience.

Menu prices in Madrid will take your breath away, especially in the joints that cater to tourists. A sit-down dinner in a typical restaurant often runs $100 for two, without alcohol. One way to beat the cost of eating out is to patronize a taberna.

Tabernas are a kind of bar and they usually serve tapas (snacks), important for sustaining blood sugar levels in a country that doesn't eat dinner until 10-11 PM. I get weak with hunger well before restaurants open in the evening. Tapas bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, and we often eat them instead of dinner.

Their most interesting external feature is tilework, as seen here on the Taberna Tirso de Molina, named for a 17th-century dramatist. Of course, having expropriated his name, the taberna was obliged to include his portrait on the façade.

Unaccountably, Taberna Tirso de Molina devotes the remainder of its extensive tile murals to the spirit of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Other tilework is devoted more to advertising than to bellas artes, but is no less compelling for that. Here's an image from a beer ad.

She looks like a dreamy Maxfield Parrish subject.

Another taberna illustrates 19th-century winemaking; shown here is wine being transferred from fermenting tanks to barrels for aging.

A Santa Clara Valley ultra-premium winemaker I know uses a cast iron pump just like the one above. Claims it doesn't "bruise" the wine like electric ones do.

La Taberna Encantada uses a tile mural for a nameplate...

... and to create an innocent image. Not open when I went by, I couldn't check to see if the place was in fact enchanted. I'm guessing it's dark and full of cigarette smoke, like all the rest of them.

You can fill a day, enjoying the artwork decorating these places. Many are concentrated between the Lavapies area and the Puerto del Sol. It's a kind of outdoor museum, with the advantage over the Prado that the exhibits will feed you.

As far as I'm concerned, a city just can't have too many fountains, and this one makes a pleasant stop for pedestrians making their way from one museum to the next.

Fountains, of course, have water emanating from various nozzles. This becomes problematical when jets emerge from human figures. In the case of the famous Manneken Pis in Brussels, orifice location becomes a joke in bronze. So often, though, it's just awkward.

I mean, exactly what is the artist trying to say here?

These buildings, one 19th-century, one 16th, illustrate the point. Lots of wall, not much glass.

Sometime in the mid-19th Century, cast iron began to replace masonry, allowing designers to open buildings up to admit more light and permit something new for retailers: display windows. Nowhere is this more evident than in Manhattan's SoHo.

I found some cast iron architecture in Madrid; for example, the Mercado de San Miguel.

Not long ago, this place was a bustling hive of small vendors' booths. Currently it is not being used, but I can't imagine that it will remain idle for long.

Most of our buildings in San Miguel de Allende are masonry, and display windows are small. Shops are dark inside, and you have screw up the energy to go inside them if you want a look at the merchandise. In contrast, most of what's inside Madrid's Mercado de San Miguel is visible from the street.

A small cast iron building houses a café on the Paseo del Prado. Diners sitting inside maintain connections with passers-by. No walls to create barriers.

It's an inviting place. The openness of the lacy ironwork makes you feel like you're already half inside the café as you pass by. Why not come all the way and join us?

The ultimate achievements using spidery iron frameworks and glass were the great glass pavilions, of which the Crystal Palace in London was the largest. It was destroyed by fire in 1936, but Madrid's much smaller Palacio de Cristal still stands in Parque del Buen Retiro, just east of the Prado.

Being Spanish, tiles are incorporated into the framework. The shell of the pavilion is almost completely transparent—even the roof.

Like so many Spanish monumental buildings, it's beautifully maintained. The Palacio de Cristal is used today for special gatherings and performances. That it is a working building improves the odds that it will remain a Madrid landmark, and a great place to retire beside on a sunny Sunday.

While we didn't use Madrid's buses, we did appreciate the Mitsubishi ads featuring a Boston Terrier. We miss ours, having left her in Mexico. (Muffled sob. Sniff.)

Taxis cost too much. In Madrid they are rarely less than €10 and can quickly run up to €20-30; money better spent on museum admissions or tapas.

Some people like to take the double-decker buses that circle through tourist-interest areas...

...but they cost a whopping €15.30 per day. Besides, they don't run frequently and you look dorky sitting in one.

No, I prefer the Metro at €0.65 per trip. Plus your average platform wait is around two or three minutes. You can't even get a taxi that fast.

Modern subway trains look nice. Graffiti-proof paint and discontinued use of slashable vinyl upholstery keep cars from being trashed.

The only signs of vandalism are diamond-scratched windows and moronic stickers applied to interior surfaces. (They'll always find a way...)

We spent a little quiet time with a map to learn the system. It just doesn't work to jump on a train and go. While at first glance, metro system maps look formidable, they always yield to patient study.

For example, the red line on the map took us directly where we wanted to go most of the time. Our apartment was toward the upper right; the city center toward the bottom left.

On the Metro, we had the opportunity to meet unique and interesting people.

It's always tough to break the habit of licking your new lip stud. (To my friend Bill R: Lots of single girls in Madrid, Bill.)

Then there's all the free entertainment.

Nothing like a man playing I Did It My Way on his cornet to speed your journey. The machine by his feet added a reggae rhythm. He had us all popping our fingers. Just look at those happy faces.

You buy tickets to ride the subway. Here, Madrid could use a little kaizen—the Japanese improvement process. Below we see a ticket booth in a typical state: Staffed, but out of service.

He's behind bulletproof glass. He better be.

Well, no matter. We can just walk over to the ticket vending machine.

Oops. It's out of service, too.

We could go back to the man in the ticket booth and try to explain the situation. But experienced Metro riders we are, we know he'll just tap his "out of service" sign and motion toward the vending machine.

I have to admit this situation occurred only once in more than two weeks of riding the Metro. But often one or the other ticket vending solution was fuera de servicio and we had to look for another.

(What do those guys do sitting behind their windows? They show all the hustle of a French street cleaner. Or a USPS counter clerk.)

A single ticket costs €1; one good for ten rides is €6.50. Don't lose your ticket. (Our tour leader in Tokyo taught me to keep my Metro ticket in my "happy place" so I wouldn't.)

Fast, efficient, clean and cheap. What's not to like? "But," you ask, "are they safe?"

Well, No.

Between the Paris and Madrid Metros, I've experienced four pick-pocketing attempts, two of them successful. I'd have saved money if I'd rented limos instead.

So why do I do it? Well, there's something empowering in mastering the Metro. Makes me feel like I'm getting a handle on a new city. I get a sense of belonging. With a great show of impatience, I sweep past befuddled tourists squinting at their maps, saying loudly to Jean, " Let's take the green line toward Casa de Campo and transfer at Callao."

And while I did get robbed twice, I beat two other attempts, and the ensuing sense of triumphant satisfaction made the whole thing worth it. It's like people gambling in casinos: They know that in the long run they're going to lose their money. But they do it anyway, for the thrill when they do manage to beat the house.

The tree, the street lamp, and everything to the right of the corner of the building is real. All the rest is trompe l'oeil. A blank wall has been skillfully transformed into windows, awnings, more buildings, and blue sky.

Now let's pull back.

Aw crap! Ignorant little mouth-breathers destroyed this charming work with meaningless scrawling. Others came along and put even more graffiti on top of the old. And someone posted bills on top of the spray paint. Makes me think murderous thoughts.

Madrid is a grittier city than Barcelona. Most Barcelonan spray-can delinquents confine their defacements to freeway retaining walls and roll-up steel security shutters. Not so in Madrid, where almost no wall is sacred. Even buildings along the Paseo del Prado have been tagged.

However, the deterrent of having graffiti artists create special images on security shutters still seems to work even in Madrid.

Wonderful, huh? Salvador Dali with a spray can. I think he would have loved it.

I'm not sure what "official residence" means. The King and his family don't actually live here, so it's more an "official non-residence." Maybe it's like 220 North Zapata Highway, Laredo, TX where so many expat San Miguelenses "live."

"Am I a U. S. resident? Sure am, Podner. Ah rent a mailbox condo in the Lone Star State."

Same deal, except the King's place is nicer than ours.

Juan Carlos uses this pile of marble to greet foreign dignitaries and for various other ceremonies. Oh, yeah. And to make a buck off tourists. Costs €8 to get in the place; €9 if you want the guided tour. (Which, believe me, is well worth avoiding unless you like being herded in a docile group while some functionary spouts mind-numbing statistics.) I bet the place is a moneymaker: Thousands were there when we visited.

Unfortunately, your eight euros doesn't buy you the right to take photographs inside, an annoying policy that seems to have spread all throughout Spain. Being an actual paid guest of the palace, I felt entitled to lift three images from the Palacios Reales website (in Spanish). May I be forgiven if I have overreached my welcome.

The Throne Room

The Porcelain Room. (Where Jean remarked: "Nice clay.")

The Royal Armory.

The palace contains 2,000 other rooms. We, the Great Unwashed, were permitted to see a couple dozen of them. No touching. The rooms we saw were decorated with works by Velázquez, Caravaggio and Goya, among many others. Exquisite frescoes, tapestries and carpets were everywhere. There were individual pieces of furniture worth more than my house.

The Music Room contains five Stradivarius instruments. I wonder if they're ever played, like those in the Violin Museum in Cremona. Keeping instruments like these locked up behind glass is a crime. They were created to be played; they need to be played to stay healthy; and the world deserves to hear them played. Jean and I walked into the Music Room and I said, "Gee. They sure look nice. I wonder what they sound like?" Weird.

Outside, where I was grudgingly allowed to take pictures, we admired the ornate lamps.

Note the lack of graffiti. It can be done, folks.

To the south, the palace faces the Catedral de la Almudena. It's there so the King can get to church when his own private chapel needs cleaning.

This couple took pictures of each other standing in front of it. You can always count on tourists to put a monument in perspective.

(Once I watched as busloads of Japanese tourists visiting the Grand Canyon snapped endless photos of themselves in front of the sweeping view from Maricopa Point. Meanwhile, Chinese gamblers, taking a break from Vegas, were doing the same in front of the restrooms.)

The palace has a museum store that we checked out in case they had any Goya prints for sale. They didn't.

But they did have some extra-long floppy pencils and little spiral-bound notebooks. So you could sketch the interior of the Dining Hall. I mean, if it's allowed.

The Palacio Real de Madrid is just one of seven royal palaces. King Philip II kicked off the second home fad when he ordered this one built in 1734. It's a sort of town 'n' country home, surrounded by lots of open space.

The westward view from the palace is of a garden called Campo del Moro.

Nice view, considering it's in the middle of Madrid. Nobody's gonna build a Wal-Mart near the King's place.

No expense had been spared in making the building like new while insofar as possible retaining its authenticity. Real antique furniture filled the public rooms. You were permitted, even expected, to sit on furniture like the 17th-century bench pictured above.

Below, Jean relaxes in an old leather and wood armchair, keeping an eye on the newly hatched pigeons in the laurel tree just outside the window.

As of now, there are 92 paradores. Mosty are large old properties that have historical significance. While not budget accommodations, they offer truly elegant surroundings at mid-level prices. All of the furniture and fixtures are high quality as is maintenance of the facility. Beds are comfortable. WiFi is available in every room and—unusual for Spain—actually works. You get free razors, toothbrushes and toothpaste without having to ask for them. There are huge, fluffy white towels to wrap up in after your shower. Rooms all have mini-bars with reasonable prices: I bought a coke for the same price as from a vending machine. They have a dining room offering three good meals a day. There's a bar with drinks and tapas for when the dining room isn't open. The staff, government employees (whom I expected to be as customer-conscious as post office clerks), all turned out to be the most courteous, helpful, accommodating hospitality service folks we met anywhere in Spain.

Bedrooms had low, wide doorways. I'm 5' 9" tall, and ours was barely high enough to clear my head.

The doors, I imagine, were made recently, but still use the 17th-century wire hinge design. The bedrooms originally were nuns' cells, and while comfortable, manage to give off a feeling of being cloistered.

In the bar I saw large pottery containers. I asked the bartender what they had been used for, and he told me "Wine storage."

I had trouble believing that. First of all, I suspected that the bulk of each jar was underneath the floor, hidden like an iceberg, which would make for a heck of a lot of wine. And secondly, the simple wooden tops laid on top of the jars would not have kept oxygen out. Any wine stored there would have gone sour in a matter of days or weeks.

Later, driving through the countryside, I saw houses with unburied jars standing alongside. Many were plumbed. Other jars were lying around in groups, as if for sale.

They turned out to be water storage jars and every house has one for keeping a reserve for when the supply is intermittent. The jars are called tinajos, very close to tinacos, the word we use for the plastic water storage tanks atop our houses in Mexico.

When we return to Spain, we'll spend more time traveling through the countryside. And we'll plan our trip well in advance so that we stay, for the most part, in paradores. They are the crown jewels of Spanish hostelry. To check out paradores for yourself, look here.

Almagro's is large, and while lacking shade trees, provides an expanse where children can play impromptu futbol games.

The plaza is aligned east-west, with shady arcades on the north and south sides. In an unusual architectural twist, the arcades are formed by wooden balconies supporting two stories fronted by continuous rows of windows.

The two floors are residential; undoubtedly pleasant on peaceful days (like when we visited), awful during weekends and festival weeks. Stacks of chairs hint at the incipient arrival of weekenders, only an hour's drive away in Madrid.

Note the long, brown beam supported by all those white columns. My inner engineer compels me to comment on details of their construction.

In the 16th Century when these were built, tall, straight oak trees could still be found in nearby forests. Half a millennium later, these old timbers have endured as only oak can, a phenomenon that causes me to wonder every time I see it, whether in an old English stone cottage or a half-timbered house in an ancient German city.

The trees from which these beams were cut were left to dry for years after felling. You can see this today because they have not warped and twisted like the ones in wetter climates such as England. While very long by today's standards, still several had to be pieced together to make the 400'-long arcade.

The beams were joined together using a variant of an old structure called a butterfly. In the photo on the left, you can see a wooden butterfly, on the right you can see one made of iron.

(Sorry. I get off on this kind of stuff.)

An open ironwork belfry supports the town clock bell on city hall.

I don't see these often. Too bad; I think their airy, delicate look is charming. The airy, delicate communications antenna behind the belfry does nothing to enhance the structure's beauty. Why the hell do they do stuff like that? San Miguel has antennas sprouting all over its colonial buildings. They would be every bit as effective sprouting over the ugly Gigante building at the edge of town.

And while I'm bitching, look at the telephone line strung across the town square in the first photo. Almagro has gone to a great deal of effort and expense to preserve the town. Why allow someone to screw it up?

Almagro looks as much like a colonial-era town as possible when you have cars and electrical lines and election posters.

A note to San Miguel's Architecture Police: This is the way a colonial city is supposed to look. White. That palette of earth tones we're restricted to using: they didn't have paint in those colors in the 17th Century. They had white. That's all. Our brick reds and ochers and yellows and browns are lovely. OK by me if everyone cooperates and uses them. But don't be talking about authenticity to justify your regulations. Authentic is white.

Jean and I sat under umbrellas at a café in the square and drank cokes. (Two bucks a pop for eight ounces—the standard price in Spain.) Next to us sat two local women talking. Once in a while, one of their children would check in, then run off to do more kid stuff. Neighbors would stop by, and ask if they had seen this person or that, or would just sit and gossip for a bit before going on with their day.

It seems like a nice, safe town. Small children have the run of the plaza without parental supervision. People walk their well-behaved dogs without leashes. Reminds me of growing up in a small town in New Jersey.

And unlike their reputation in Mexico, policemen seemed to be genuinely concerned about the welfare of citizens.

In this benign atmosphere, no threatening or dissolute characters live. And wonder of all wonders, there's no graffiti.

After shooting, I noticed the nest on a roof ornament.

A nesting pair stood guard over what I assumed were baby storks, although they weren't visible.

In another part of La Mancha, I finally got to see chicks. They were in yet another nest, this one in a chimney just the way it is supposed to be.

For some reason, seeing these storks was special; more so than seeing, for example, the egrets that live in Parque Juaréz next to my house. Something about their mythology. For example, whoever has storks nesting in her chimney will have good luck. Or her next baby will be a boy. (Bad luck?)

Someone has set up a web cam on a stork nest. You can watch two parents and three fuzzy babies in real time. And you can listen to the noises they make, as well as the sounds of traffic, dogs barking and children playing. Check it out here.

We re-energized ourselves with a cup of excellent Spanish coffee. Note the profound lack of tourists here. My kind of place.

(I'm afraid coffee has been ruined for us. Throughout Spain we drank nothing but espresso with a little water added to make café Americano. When we get home, we'll have to look into getting our own espresso maker. I can't imagine going back to drip.)

Driving the small back roads through farmland, you occasionally see wells with crude mechanisms for raising irrigation water. One such has been preserved in the main plaza.

This one was probably driven by a power takeoff from a tractor via a flat leather belt. The gear train turned the wheel which scooped up water, one bucket at a time, and dumped it into a flume which fed the fields. It's an old design; its ancestors probably were mule-driven.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

But we didn't come here for coffee or wells. A hint of our true objective appeared on the four tiled benches that surround the well.

The quotation is from Chapter 2 of Don Quixote, referring to his delusional tilting at windmills, thinking they are giants. The tiles depict him charging one while Sancho Panza looks on in consternation.

The windmills somehow have been preserved, just as they were when Cervantes wrote about them at the beginning of the 17th Century. They're just up the road in the town of Consuegra.

The hilltop we visited was, as we expected, windy. The windmills had been built where they would work best.

Only one of those at Consuegra was still in working condition, and it is operated only in October, during a Saffron festival for some reason.

I would have liked to view the millstones and the gears, but the buildings were closed. Not enough visitors come here in May to warrant staffing the site; a pity. However, from the outside, I could observe at least a few things about how they worked.

The main axle and vanes are mounted on a conical top that can be rotated, to face them into the wind so as to extract maximum power. In all the mills I saw, the top had to be rotated manually, by swinging the long beam at the rear into the lee. In contrast, many Dutch windmills and all of the old Aeromotor-type windmills once familiar on American and Canadian farms employ mechanisms for automatically pointing into the wind.

The beams apparently serve another purpose. The stone towers are cylindrical, meaning that masonry walls would have to withstand considerable shear forces; perhaps enough to knock them over. The long post serves as a brace to resist these forces. The towers of Dutch windmills are more cone-shaped, making them self-bracing.

I could also see that the vanes were attached to the rotors weakly, so that they would break away in unusually high winds, again to protect the mills from being knocked down.

The windmills represent a technology that was developed through trial and error, before the days when physics became well enough understood to permit paper designs. Yet, I could see a sophistication in their structures and mechanisms. On another distant hilltop, we could just make out the shapes of modern windmills generating electricity. Their designs are the result of computer simulations of blade shapes and airflows. They extract far more power from the wind than these 300-year-old mills. But they are nowhere near as romantic.