FRIDAY, MAY 16, TOKYO — We both woke up around 4 this morning, our confused internal clocks simultaneously agreeing that we’ve had enough sleep. On these long spring days in the East, it was already first light when we opened the curtains. The photo above was taken from our 22nd-floor room at the Prince Park Tower Hotel, and looks out over a small slice of the Tokyo skyline, and in the foreground, the Shibakoen area, including the grounds of the Zojoji Temple, with a wooden gate dating back to 1622, the oldest wooden structure in Tokyo.
We had a good, on-time flight here, and both of us even managed to sleep several hours on the plane. Courtenay has spent months planning this trip, and we’re both so excited to be back in Japan.
After we sped through Japanese passport control and cabbed to our hotel, we took a short walk around the Shibakoen, we saw the Toshugu Shrine, and inside Zojoji, got a lucky peek at a beautiful statue of a black Buddha, which was Tokugawa Ieyasu’s favorite, and only displayed to the public three days a year. We also walked past a 4th century keyhole tomb and a shell mound dating to the Jomon period (14,000 BC to 300 BC). We finished our arrival day by over-ordering on a yakitori dinner (chicken and vegetable skewers) in the basement of our hotel), and waddling back to our room.
We have a big day planned today, starting with a trip to the TeamLab Borderless art installation, which is just a 15-minute walk away, followed by a visit to a Japanese woodblock print museum, a soba lunch, and then our long-awaited first-ever sumo wrestling competition. We’ve already started our first day in Japan by watching the wrestling highlights from last night’s sumo bouts. At home, we watched all the reruns from the March tournament and have our favorite wrestlers. We’re so ready for tonight’s action!
March 13, 2025 — Cordoba, Spain — A light rain and a hair-raisingly sharp turn into the car rental return parking garage greeted us on our arrival in Cordoba, after a pleasant drive from Ronda with a memorable stop at the megalithic stone dolmens at Antequara. We had a wonderful lunch, by a huge hearth with an actual fire, at a roadside restaurant, the Caseria de San Benito, and drove the wide-open highway on into Cordoba. The only challenge of our van rental was on arrival in Cordoba, when all three passengers had to get out of the car and help Rick make it into the garage, with three-quarters of an inch on each side of the van to spare. In a gentle rain (yes, it has rained the entire time we have been here), we got our first look at a city that has a remarkably rich history stretching several thousand years with Carthaginian, Roman, Visigoth, Muslim, and Christian eras.
Our experiences in Cordoba began on the rooftop terrace of an historic hotel, formerly a 17th-century convent built around three courtyards, where we shared a bottle of champagne while rain tapped on the plastic shelter above us. One by one the city’s lights came on, illuminating the incredible Mezquita and its bell tower, only a hundred yards or so from our hotel. Like so many religious sites Spain, it has a long history – Roman temple, Visigothic church, Islamic Mosque, Christian cathedral. Though most of the Catholic rulers built their huge cathedrals to completely cover the large mosques, Cordoba is unique in that they left much of the mosque intact, but instead set a large cathedral in the center of the former mosque. As we looked over the Mezquita, in the distance we could hear a Muslim call to prayer. It was a moment that perfectly captured Cordoba, where Muslim and Christian history, rituals, and tradition–and even architecture–are intertwined in deep and unique ways.
Cordoba began as a Roman settlement, and we caught glimpses of its early Roman roots, including pillars and stones repurposed into the corners and walls of more recent buildings–some well over two thousand years old. Six pillars from a Roman temple still stand not far from Cordoba’s main square, the Plaza de Corredero, a formerly used as a bull-fighting ring. But it was the Muslims who built Cordoba into one of the world’s great cities, from the eighth to the 13th centuries. It was the ancient, or the ancient Alexandria, a center for intellectual, poets, mathematicians, and thinkers, Islamic and Jewish. A famed Muslim leader, Abdel Rahman I, a refugee from the Abassid coup over the Umayyads in Damascus, Syria, arrived in 756 and made himself emir, and he launched the golden ages of Cordoba. The city became the Ancient Rome of the medieval world, a great center of Muslim culture and learning, with over 300 mosques and 80 libraries.
For us, Cordoba was aglow with light and shiny with rain as we left the hotel and walked to the Puente Romano, the one-time Roman bridge that spans the Guadalquivir River, which flows downstream through Seville to the ocean. With all of the rain, the gushing river was running high and muddy. The bridge was originally built after Caesar’s victory over Pompey the Great. Later a Moorish bridge was built on the foundations of the Roman bridge. That’s the span that we walked across, sheltered by umbrellas, looking back at the soft yellow stones of the illuminated Torre de la Calahorra, a 12th-century gate tower that once functioned as part of the city’s medieval fortifications, and was the site of fierce fighting when the Catholic King, Fernando III, brought his troops to Cordoba during the Christian Reconquest in the 13th century. Now it’s a museum that celebrates the period in history when Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities of Cordoba lived in harmony. We felt that special blend of history, walking the atmospheric maze of streets in the Juderia, the Jewish Quarter, including the colorful Calleja de las Flores, lined with hanging flower baskets, and emerging with a spectacular view of the Mezquita Mosque-Catedral, a UNESCO Heritage Site, and one of the most incredible places we have ever visited.
The Mezquita’s immense size and beauty is hard to describe, or even photograph. It was founded as a mosque in 785, built over the top of a Visigothic Church. It was an enormous mosque, large enough to fit more than 20,000 faithful. The praying space is a sweeping area of hundreds of honey-colored pillars (repurposed ancient Roman columns) with stripes of red brick. For three centuries, this building was the focal point of Muslim life in the city and inspired countless artists and intellectuals. The poet Muhammad Iqbal, for example, described it has having “countless pillars like rows of palm trees in the oases of Syria,” while the people of al-Andalus said that its beauty was “so dazzling that it defied description.”
We’re all so fortunate that this building survives. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, instructed the Christians to not destroy the Cordoba mosque, now the only surviving one in Spain. He recognized its magnificence. However, the Christians did a major remodel, and in the 16th century build a massive baroque church in the middle of the mosque. It’s a mind-bending, unforgettable place to visit, wandering first through all those Muslim pillars and all that praying space, only then to emerge into a soaring cathedral space chock full of Christian imagery.
We saw a lot of other things in Cordoba, including a fun glimpse into the famous gardens and patio courtyards of Barrio de San Basilio, another part of the city’s Unesco World Heritage. The bronze medal winner of last year’s patio competition, the owner proudly showed us her courtyard, the walls filed with flower pots and ancient Roman mosaics scavenged from somewhere, while her son-in-law prepared lunch in a nearby kitchen.
But it was the breathtaking Mezquita, where we climbed the bell tower built atop the minaret of the former mosque, and where we could see century after century, wave after wave, of the people and religions that settled, built, and ruled, this part of the world.
March 12, 2025 – Ronda, Spain – We left Seville yesterday morning, with a wonderful stop at the ancient Roman ruins 10 minutes out of town. Italica was the birthplace of two important Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, who presided over the Roman empire at the height of its vastness and power. That they came from Spain, rich in metals and agricultural goods, is not surprising, and the grandeur of the city of Italica reflects their wealth and patronage. This city, on a rise in the landscape, was once almost forgotten, until its memory was revived in the last few hundred years and excavation began in the past century. Abutting the modern city, archeologists have uncovered a huge amphitheater, remains of a major temple to Trajan, a theatre, and homes graced with beautiful mosaics of birds, gods, and a medusa head. We wandered the rather muddy site, between rain showers, imagining the city of marble and stone now sunk into the ground, and mused on hubris and the fall of empires. It happens. History does indeed repeat itself.
We then piled back into our land-yacht, a sleek black Mercedes van piloted by none other than Rick. It was the only automatic transmission available, so we will be avoiding any city center maze-driving. We then drove across a vibrant green landscape of rolling hills, covered with orchards (almonds? dates? Olives for sure), toward a mountain range with clouds roiling behind. We seemed to be headed into a storm, as we drove to our next destination, a puebla blanca, or white town for which this part of Andalucia is famous. We parked below the extremely picturesque town of Zahara de la Sierra, a cluster of white houses resting like a cloudbank below an old Islamic fortress. We climbed up to the small town square and visited the 17th century church, which was backed by a cliff rising to the fort. Two lovely old women inside greeted us and sat talking the entire time we wandered the small but ornate interior. We saw a papal indulgence given to the local men’s society in the 16thcentury. A papal indulgence! I had never seen on in person, but it was indulgences like these (basically a promise from the pope to get into heaven early, in exchange for a hunk of money) that lead to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, a good Catholic, had had enough with indulgences and corruption in the church, and so lead a revolution against the church, and eventually the Counter Reformation, when the Catholic church tried to reestablish its glory and authority in the splendor of the Baroque.
We had a lovely little lunch in the only restaurant open in town, La Era, then drove on to Ronda, famous for bullfighting and Ernest Hemingway. Both Hemingway and Orson Welles loved Ronda, and spent a lot of time here – there are busts of the artists in the main park. We dropped our bags at our lovely hotel, which has a spectacular view over the valley and mountains in the distance. Because the weather is stormy and rainy, the mountains have been especially atmospheric. We wandered along the edge of the cliff to the dramatic 18thcentury bridge that spans the 300-foot gorge between the “new” Christian town and the older Moorish town across the gap. The first bridge collapsed six years after it was built, but this one seems to have survived. We decided to brave the walk down the hill to get a view back up at the bridge, and lucked on a gorge walk that took us to the base of the bridge. It is apparently a new “tourist attraction,” and for 5 euros, we donned hard hats and walked down a stone-paved pathway for some spectacular views back up at the bridge. We were lucky, because we were the last people admitted, arriving 3 minutes before the 6:30 p.m. closure. I had worried on the way down, since it seemed so far, but the hike up was easier than I thought. It helped that Will texted halfway up, so I was able to catch my breath. 😊
We then had a lovely evening (with some mediocre food) visiting a few tapas bars, and ended up back at our hotel for a glass of complimentary champagne on the terrace. All the people inside thought we were crazy for going out in the stormy weather, but it was covered, there were propane heaters, and we are Oregonians and Philadelphians.
Today, we are doing laundry in Ronda and then heading off to visit an other puebla blanca and further back in history, to some 6,000-year old megalithic passage tombs and dolmens. Spain really has it all, when it comes to history!
Seville – Sunday, March 9, 2025 – We arrived in Seville last night on a fast-train from Madrid with our friends Helen and Mike, who were fresh off a plane from Philly. We had a wonderful time last night bumbling through three tapas bars – there are shifting mores and customs, depending on the city and the establishment, on how and what to order, how to gracefully snag an open table without enraging the staff, not that that happened!, but that is a whole other topic we can delve into sometime.
But after a short night (yes we have been going to bed at midnight!!! Imagine!!), but waking up at 5 am, I thought I would write a quick post on our museum experience in Madrid. We saw both the Thyssen-Bournemisza and the Prado, the later with our art historian guide Almu Cros. We have never had a guide for a museum, but she had a unique perspective on the collection – who the rulers were who commissioned or bought all this art – one of the greatest collections in the world – and also on how the artists used the collection over the centuries to inspire their own work. For example, perhaps the most famous painting in the collection is Las Meninas, Seville-born Diego Velasquez’s iconic 17th-century painting of the artist painting the king and the queen, when their little girl bursts in on the scene with her maids and her dog. Later artists, including many modern and contemporary artists, including Francis Bacon, have been obsessed with this painting and painted their own “versions.” What I hadn’t realized, is that there is another extremely important painting that had been in the collection in the 17th century, Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding from two centuries earlier, that Velasquez had been looking at. Famously, there is a mirror in both paintings, with a tiny, hard-to-discern reflection of the artist, or in the case of Velasquez, the subject of the painting – the King Philip IV and his queen. In the painting, there are other elements from the Van Eyck – a dog, the light shining in at a slant, many little elements that Velasquez drew on to create his uniquely modern (for his time) portrait of an artist at work. Another example, Picasso’s massive Guernica (which is at another museum in Madrid), the Cubist artists cry against the horrors of modern warfare on civilians following the Nazi bombing of a small northern Spanish town in the Civil War of the 1930. Though he was in exile from Franco’s fascist Spain, he drew on his memory of Goya’s depiction of the street fighting in the streets of Madrid during an uprising against Napoleon’s occupation in 1808. Once you look at the massive Goya painting in the Prado, you can see it – the horse (there were no horses in Guenica), the raised arms of the woman, the body on the ground with the broken sword. Another mirror into the past, and into an artist’s mind.
And you think the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali is weird? Well he is actually just channeling his much, much weirder predecessor, 16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose famously strange Garden of Earthly delights is a highlight of the Prado. Dali literally quoted from the Dutch painters strange and disturbing hybrid creatures who act out the follies of human behavior. But as Almu pointed out, even Bosch was looking to other strange minds for inspiration – the monks who drew strange hybrid (and sometimes obscene) monsters in the margins of the sacred texts they were copying.
That is looking at art with your mind – it’s magical working through the intellectual puzzles with your mind. But there is a far different way to experience art, something that the Stanford professor Alexander Nemerov (affectionately known to his undergraduates as the “Art Preacher”) opened me up to. You look a piece of art with your heart, not just your mind. You never know how a piece of art will affect you, and I am sometimes just so moved by something that I find myself in tears. That is the power of art to really reach through the centuries and strike you at your heart. Such a thing happened at the Prado, in the Goya room. We were standing in front of his painting of May 3, 1808, showing the execution of Spanish resisters to Napoleon’s invasion – the peasant raises his hands like a Christ-figure as he faces the firing squad. I have been haunted by this image since I saw it as a child, in my parent’s Time-Life history of Western art. But as I looked at the painting, thinking about the history, I glanced to my right and saw a painting I had only seen in art class, called the Drowning Dog, though I don’t think Goya named it that. It shows a small dog in a vast canvas of almost Byzantine gold, looking up as if he is swimming to keep his head above a wave that threatens to submerge him. It took my breath away – the tiny dog has the look of despair, or of hope, or of both – but it was an emotion I recognized, and recognize as I write this. The sense of that the world is out of one’s control, that feeling when you have to confront your own end, the terror, the horror and yet somehow, the hope. I had seen that look the day before, at the Thyssen, in the face of an El Greco Jesus, looking up to heaven with a look of despair, as if saying Why Me? Is this all there is? Seeing our friends again after all these years, when we have all faced life and health challenges and scares, when we face futures filled with uncertainty, uncertain diagnoses, uncertain futures, the gold, and the face of that sweet little dog from Goya’s dark period, gives me hope.
Last thought – don’t tell anyone, but the real Mona Lisa is not at the Louvre. It’s at the Prado Shhhhhh!!!! Almu has us convinced – the Prado’s Mona Lisa looks just like the one at the Louvre – except they cleaned it, revealing beautiful greens and blues in the background. Her iconic smile is there, the same clothes, the same pose, the same lack of jewelry. The label on the side says “Workshop of Leonardo,” but Almu has some wonderfully persuasive arguments that this, in fact, is from the hand of Leonardo. It was painted on more expensive wood, walnut, for example, using more expensive paint. Could this have been the version that the patron chose, leaving Leonardo with the other copy, which he would carry with him to France, where he died with it in his possession? She wears no jewelry, much like another Renaissance portrait of a young wife, painted after her early death. Could Mona Lisa be the painting for another grieving widower, and he chose the more exquisite of the two versions? Almu thinks so, and so do we. But God forbid that the word gets out – NO ONE was looking at the Prado Mona Lisa – ok, maybe a few people casually walked by while we were discussing it. But you cannot imagine how the experience would be ruined if the selfie-taking hordes descended on this Mona Lisa. Meanwhile, you can enjoy Leonardo’s wonderful creation in the relative peace of the photo-banning Prado.
Art – where you find a mirror into your self, into the past, into your emotions.
The Thompson Attigs 