Push-ups, Louisa style

Whenever I use the pull-up bar in the doorjam to her room, Louisa invariably asks, "Can I try that?"  So, I wasn't surprised when she asked to try the Perfect Push-up apparatus.  I was, however, surprised and amused at the results:

June 19, 2008 - Day 4 - Madrid

If we were the type of family to believe in omens, we might have become very bummed about the prospects of our unfolding vacation based on how our first day in Spain developed.  If  this day were given a subtitle, it would be "The day Susanna marked our progress through Old Madrid with a trail of vomit."

The Puking Begins

Jet lag + exhausting late night = late start.  Despite the best efforts of our lumpy beds (I, for one, could feel almost every spring in the mattress) , the crew slept in until a leisurely 10:30am.  We didn't really have set plans for the day, just a handful of goals for the next several days, so once we finally got everybody ready and out the door we set our sights on an early lunch.  We settled on one of the numerous sidewalk cafes that populate the alleys surrounding the Plaza Mayor, sat down in the shade, and ordered:  Bocadillos, or baguette sandwiches for Jenna and I, Spaghetti for the little girls, and steak and eggs for Abby.  Hey, it's what she wanted.

From Day 4: Madrid

Here we are waiting for our food, with the Palacio de Santa Cruz in the the background.  It started out as a prison including during the Inquisition, was later converted to a palace, and now houses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Our memories are a little fuzzy about what transpired next, but I remember spending most of the meal cutting Abby's steak, we remember that Susanna wasn't really interested in her pasta (which should have tipped us off, because she's a voracious eater), and Louisa kept whining about something.  Both Jenna and I have highly developed whine filters, so lunch was almost over when we clued into the fact that Louisa was announcing that Susanna had "spit" or puked on her.  About that time Susanna started to heave.  Jenna snatched her up and pointed her away from the table as she spewed the clear, foodless contents of her stomach.

First thing that went through our minds, "This is a great way to start a vacation.  What have we gotten ourselves into?"  Second thought, "Guess this solves our quandry about what to do today.  We're walking and staying close the door of any building we visit." 

Plaza Mayor and el Supermercado

We had brought a city guide with us with a suggested walking tour for the area, and with that as rough inspiration we headed into the Plaza Mayor, the large area of interest closest to where we were.  The Plaza Mayor is a big square surrounded on all sides by patio restaurants on the ground floor and four stories of residences (I guess) above.  In the 15th century it was the main public market at the crossroads of two major thoroughfares.  There's still a market there today where vendors sell artisinal meats (unrefrigerated, ugh), breads, honey, street performers,  . . . , and on this particular week, a delegation from Mexico to entice Spaniards to bring their tourist dollars to the western hemisphere.

From Day 4: Madrid

Having passed through the Plaza we set out in search of a store and provisions for our day of trekking.  We didn't have to travel far 'til we found a little corner supermercado. which would become our main base for supplies, and stocked up on water, juice (zumo en España) boxes, oranges and apples.  Susanna puked on a tree outside.

Plaza de la Villa

Freshly provisioned, we headed down the Calle Mayor until we hit Plaza de la Villa.  We didn't really know it at the time, but this plaza is kind of important. One of original squares from medieval times, Plaza de la Villa now houses several public buildings.  

Casa and Torre de los Lujanes (left, in the above photo) are actually the oldest existing buildings in Madrid.  Originally the home of wealthy merchants, they were built in the 15th century and now house the Royal Academy of Political Sciences and Morals.  We just really liked peeking through the keyholes in the giant gothic door:

From Day 4: Madrid

Casa de Cisneros (straight ahead in that same photo above) was a palace home built in 1537 at the behest of the cousin of a Cardinal.  Today's it's Madrid's City Hall.

Casa de la Villa (right in the photo above) is the new building on the block, built in 1645 as the home of some fancy pants Duke or Marqui.  Today it's part of City Hall.

Plaza de la Villa was also where we first came upon the wonderful painted-tile street signs that adorn old Madrid.  Branching off the plaza was the amusingly named Calle del Codo (Elbow Street). Down the street from the Plaza, we came across Calle de la Traviesa, which can be loosely translated as Naughty Street.  Priceless.

From Day 4: Madrid

Iglesias de San Andrés and San Francisco el Grande
At this point the detailed map in our guidebook of old Madrid ran out.  It seemed to early to head down the Calle Mayor to the Palacio Real, so I looked around and spotted an old Cathedral at the top of a hill to the south. After a long slog up a cobbled hill we arrived in a small plaza in front of the Iglesia San Andrés only to find it closed.  In retribution, Susanna puked in their plants:

From Day 4: Madrid

Not to be deterred, we headed down the hill to the west, across a busy intersection to la Iglesia de San Francisco El Grande.  Also closed.  But they did have a formal garden with a great view of west Madrid, which we enjoyed . . . for a few moments, as there was no shade and the sun was high in the sky and scorching hot at this point.  It was time to cut to the chase and head towards the pièce de résistance of the day - the Royal Palace.

Catedral de la Almudena

But first, one more try at a cathedral.  This time the seat of the diocese, Catedral de la Almudena, which adjoins the Royal Palace to the South.  To get there we pushed the strollers down a long winding hill (photo below taken on our way down this hill), across a street and up another long hill. 

From Day 4: Madrid

By the time we got there we were tired and hot, so the dark coolness of the cathedral was a welcome relief.  There was a lot to take in, but Louisa fixated immediately on a stained glass window opposite the entrance.  Pointing to it, she excitedly exclaimed to Jenna, "Look mom, it's like Veggie Tales Easter Carol!", apparently her only previous exposure to such churchly beauty.

From Day 4: Madrid

At a certain point in, Jenna's spidey sense kicked in and she sensed Susanna was due to puke again.  Sure enough, as soon as we got outside she relieved herself.  This was to be the last episode, however, as she then fell asleep in the stroller and remained asleep for the rest of the day.

El Palacio Real

Entrance to El Palacio Real requires tickets.  Our philosophy for this trip is that if there is something we wanted to do, we were going to do it regardless of the cost.  There's little point in paying so much to fly over to Europe and not see things just to avoid paying a little more.  So, after pausing briefly to take a few photos outside the gate, we sprung for tickets and went in.

From Day 4: Madrid

The palace is quite large, the largest in Western Europe, according to Wikipedia, with over 2,800 rooms.  The King actually doesn't live in this palace any more - too public, I guess - but it is apparently still used for state functions.  In between functions, peons such as ourselves can explore its extravagance.

After wading through the gift shop and dropping a backpack and other sundries into a locker, we headed out in to the plaza, then into a wing that held the old apothecary, filled with porcelain jars of exotic herbs.  By this time, I think both Susanna and Louisa were asleep, so rather than push our double-wide stroller up the stairs and through the tight corridors, Jenna and I took turns checking out the drug stash.  

After that we headed across the plaza to the main palace.  Here, again, there was no provision for strollers and the docents asked us to park our monstrosity near the entrance and proceed on foot.  This necessitated schlepping the comatose Susanna (and possibly Louisa), which we did, up the grand staircase and through the countless rooms adorned in different stiles.  This part of the tour was especially satisfying to Jenna.  I think she said something to the effect of "this is how I imagined a palace would be".  Fair enough.  Personally, after about 20 over-the-top room, I reached saturation and started to get bored.

The next stop was more interesting, as it held the armory of Carlos the something-or-other, including weapons and armor for himself and his horse.  Carlos had many suits of armor, and several of the dressy variety were really quite impressive.  King Carlos wasn't a very tall man, though; not more than 5 1/2 feet tall to my reckoning.  Interestingly, though, his armor sported a disproportionately large protuberances to protect the family jewels.

On the way out we stocked up on Spanish childrens' books, including an illustrated Don Quixote and one on El Cid.

Food and then home

We tried using our TomTom GPS to locate a good restaurant on the way home from the Palacio, but ended up just cruising the Calle Mayor until we found a place that seemed to offer standard Spanish fare.  We sat up front and braved a couple of smokers, asked if there was a non-smoking section, were told it was in the back but was just as smoky as the front, and decided to at least sit near the open window where there was a little better chance of our lungs surviving the night.  Luckily, after a few drinks the smokers left and we were able to enjoy our dinner in relative freshness.  Susanna slept on.

For our main dish, we ordered Paella, Sevillana style, I believe.  We weren't able to try it the night before because we arrived so late and it takes about a half hour to cook.  Jenna really liked the paella and has taken to preparing it at home.  In fact, we just had it tonight with the missionaries.

We also ordered la ensalad mixta, or mixed salad.  Mixed salad in Spain has lots of tuna in it.  And white pickled asparagus.  And eggs.  Tasty, but lacking in the greens department.

From Day 4: Madrid

I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but we did snag this photo out front on our way out.

From Day 4: Madrid

For dessert we stopped at an ice cream (or gelato?)  shop.  Fruit sorbet for Abby; chocolate for Louisa.

From Day 4: Madrid

When Susanna awoke about 8pm, her bug had passed.  For a day that had begun ominously, Day 4 ended well.

June 18, 2008 - Day 3 - London > Madrid

It has been one of our longstanding ambitions to move to a Spanish speaking country and live the ex-pat life for a few years, but so far, the favorable combination of circumstances necessary to make that happen has failed to present itself. Until it does, we'll have to settle for visiting Spanish speaking countries.

That's how Madrid came to be added to the itinerary of our Eurotrip. I figured get to Europe is the hard part, so as long as we were already making the trip to England, getting to Spain should be easy. I'd also heard of all these discount European airlines where the fares cover little more than the airport taxes, so I had visions of a very inexpensive side excursion. (Turns out those super cheap fares only occur during the off season).

Once we decided to go to Spain, we had to decide which city(ies) to visit. Barcelona and Granada were high on the list, but a tenant from Salamanca and her visiting mother convinced us that Madrid and its environs would be a great trip for small kids. Barcelona, etc. could wait for a later trip, so we decided to do 2 days in Madrid proper with day trips to Toledo and Segovia, both within short train ride from Madrid.

The Flight

We took the 5pm EasyJet flight from London Gatwick to Madrid. For those of you haven't had the opportunity to fly through Gatwick, count your blessings. It's not fun. Apparently they don't assign gates to flights until the last minute. We didn't find out which gate we were leaving from until 10 minutes prior to take-off time. Consequently, we spent all the time leading up to the gate announcement standing in the middle of a large terminal with our luggage staring at the monitors, waiting for the number to appear, no idea when it would appear, all while trying to keep bored little girls from running off and getting lost (at least one of them has a prior history of that) in a strange airport in a foreign country.

EasyJet has no assigned seats, similar to Southwest airlines in the states, but we managed to wrangle pre-board authorization due to our offspring. Once aboard, it was smooth sailing. Since we wouldn't be driving in Spain, the car seats stayed in England, much to the glee of girls who enjoyed unprecedented freedom to move about the cabin.

The Journey to Our Hostel

We arrived in Madrid around 8pm. After collecting our luggage and strollers from baggage claim we set about figuring out how to get downtown to our hostel. I'd learned on the internet that a cab ride cost about 25 Euros would take a little under half an hour, while the subway would cost much less, require two train changes and take, well, I didn't know how long it would take but presumably more than half an hour. We soon learned that none of the taxis were large enough to hold all of us and our luggage, so we moved on. A shuttle service would take us all for only 43 Euros, but feeling frugal, adventurous, and not needing to arrive at any particular time, we opted for Madrid's excellent Metro - linea 8 from the airport to Nuevos Ministerios, linea 10 from Nuevos Ministerios to Tribunal, and linea 2 from Tribunal to Sol.

Let me cut to the chase and tell you that the trip was grueling. In addition to the three dazed girls we were toting two strollers, a double-wide and a single, two duffle bags a backpack and a large roll-behind suitcase. Spain wasn't graced with an analogue to the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it's Metro stations showed it. Some parts had elevator or escalator access, but at least one leg of the journey in each station required schlepping all our stuff and kids up and down flights of stairs. This began the tradition used the rest of the trip of dumping the girls out of their strollers upon arriving at steps and having them walk up or down themselves so we could handle all the accoutrement.

We finally poked our heads above ground, sweaty and exhausted, around 10:30pm at Puerta del Sol, the shopping district in the center of downtown (also milestone 0 for the national highway system) to find it hopping with people. After consulting our travel guide we made our way up a steep cobbled street into Plaza Santa Cruz where our hostel was supposed to be located, looked around fruitlessly, then turned around and saw a large yellow lit sign on the 4th floor of the building behind us. We had arrived!

Dinner and the Hostel

We had to traipse up to the 4th floor (named the 3rd floor in Europe) to get to the reception and check in. The lady at the front desk was a little flummoxed to see that we had brought kids. Obviously that bit of data hadn't made it into the reservation notes. The upshot is that instead of a room with a double and a single bed, we got one with three singles. No biggie.

After dropping all of our cargo in our shockingly violet and maroon room, we headed out to the Plaza Mayor, scarcely half a block away, to look for some dinner. At this point is was about 11, and contrary to what I had heard about Madrid, a lot of restaurants were close to closing. We found a reasonably priced place and ordered the healthiest looking fare we could find, although we were rebuffed in our request for paella, as it takes half an hour to make and the restaurant was closing at 11:30.



Even at that hour, however, there was a group of musicians plying the plaza in search of the last tips of the night. Sitting out in the open air, eating to the sound delightfully out of context bebop, we enjoyed a pleasant end to an exhausting day.

Tip: Want to know where pictures were taken? Click the icon in the bottom right hand corner below to go to my Picasa Web Album. I geotagged all the photos, and the album will map them out for you. Enjoy!

June 16-17, 2008 - Days 1&2 - SFO > LHR

12:59pm PST - United flight 930 SFO > LHR

I have to admit, I was dreading this flight. I've been on several intercontinental flights, and they are taxing. And that's when I'm flying alone. I wasn't looking forward to the new dimensions of pain to be proffered by the addition of a 7-year-old and two toddlers.

Work travel has made me a Premier in United's eyes, affording me access to luxuries such as special lines at the airports and free upgrades to Economy Plus with its essential (to my 6'4" frame, anyways) extra inches of legroom. Didn't work out as nicely on this trip. Even though we arrived two hours early to the airport, we still only arrived at our gate after boarding had already started, because the Premier line at the check-in counter took 1 hour to navigate. Nerve wracking stuff. That free upgrade to Economy Plus? I can invite one guest to join me there. Four guests, however, not so much. So it was cattle class for us.



You can't win them all, but hey, miles payed for one of the tickets.

Jenna's plan was to sleep deprive the kids so they'd sleep all flight and arrive in England ready for the day. The plan worked for Jenna and Louisa. The rest of up hardly slept at all, taking regular, unproductive trips to the bathroom (less boring than sitting in the seat, I guess).

7:10am GMT - Arrive in London



Our friends had a driver waiting us at the airport to drive us to their house in Cobham. I was extremely tired, but excited to soak in the differentness of being in England - the ancient (by CA standards) house, the cars I'd only seen in foreign car magazines, driving on the left side.

We made a brave effort staying awake, but by afternoon, decided a controlled nap couldn't hurt.

Eurotrip 2008

This is the year we decided to take a big, crazy trip. Our friends the Whiteheads moved to London last year, and we decided to take advantage of the free housing to see a bit of the Old Country. With all three kids. And two strollers.

I went into this trip with no small amount of trepidation. The flight from San Francisco to London takes more than 10 hours, much longer than any flight the girls had ever been on. How would they behave? Would Jenna and I be the targets of stared daggers for hours on end? England's also 8 hours ahead of California. From my previous travels I knew that I could cope, but if we arrived there and the girls decided that 1am was the time to wake up, was I in for two and a half weeks of sleep-deprived misery?

Turns out those fears were unfounded. We had a fabulous time, walked scores of miles (probably destroying the bearings on our strollers), saw two beautiful countries, took almost 1200 photos, visited family and old friends and got to spend LOTS of time together.

It's taken me several weeks to digest all of the raw material to tell this story, and the sheer magnitude of it means I'll be trickling it out little by little. So day by day, here comes the story of our summer vacation.

Neocon 2008

For the last year, I have been leading a team designing a table for Steelcase that enables nomadic, collaborative work that laptops have made possible.

The table, really a family of tables with three different heights and 20+ different table shapes, was unveiled to the world as Steelcase media:scape at the 2008 Necon furniture show in Chicago this year:



Go to the above web album for more information. Also:

• IDEO's profile of the project.
• Steelcase's press release on all the awards they won this year (media:scape won a Gold award)
• This article from a local Michigan rag that has some decent photos (actually take in Steelcase's secret underground photo studio)
• Nice quote from my client Lew in this WSJ bit.
  

Rock Star

Last Saturday my band performed in our ward Variety Show. I sang lead and played bass and guitar. Note the Primary mosh pit in the videos below:

First song was a medley of Elton John songs (Tiny Dancer, Your Song and Yellow Brick Road) our bassist Ben arranged:



I switched instruments with Ben, and so played bass and sang. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that the low E string on my bass had gone flat since the sound check in the morning, so I had to adjust the tuning on the fly.

Second song was "Just What I Needed" by The Cars. I switched to guitar:



Last song was "All These Things I've Done" by The Killers: