Adíos BFTF, for now...

Adíos BFTF, for now...

Sunday March 22, 2015

We awoke early and headed downstairs to meet Carlos for breakfast.  His girlfriend was flying back from London last night, and he was going to try and make it back before 4:00 PM in Madrid so they could get together for a while.  The three of us had breakfast and spoke about his continuing connection with the Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship program.  He was interviewing students this past week for the program for this year.  He's also met some of the ones who came over after he did 8 years ago.  They may even have a BFTF cruise this summer if they can get the group together.

We decided that Carlos should see the Frank Gehry hotel in Elciego.  It is something that would be fun to do a tour later on when he returns to the area.  The hotel is in the Gehry style like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.  We went through the countryside and smaller towns to reach Elciego, and the Gehry hotel was there in its stainless steel glory.  The colors are great to see when there is full sun and you can take in the hotel vistas.  The hotel is part of the Marque de Caceras winery.   They don't do tours of the hotel, but you can stay there if you don't mind the high prices.  

We returned back to the Hotel Villa de Abalos and parted ways with Carlos.  Carlos recommended we find a place to catch the Madrid Vs. Barcelona Soccer match this evening.  It would be a big event that would be a very Spanish night.  Cathy proded me to go with her to get out and get some excercise.  We walked through the town and up and down the side streets and back paths.  When we returned to the Hotel, we found that the Wine Bar was again coming to life.  Seems like the locals also like to go here on Sunday afternoon for tapas before 4:00.  We decided this would be perfect and between some broth and a some tempora fried fish, we had plenty to eat.  We had a couple of glasses of white and then went back to the room.   I was feeling a little tired and ready for a sleep.   I had been fighting off a sore throat and I was about to give in.  The cold weather outside made me want to stay in and sleep it off.

I did pretty well just curled up in bed with my iPhone and going back and forth from sleep to semi-conciousness.   Cathy was working on projects and we finally decided that we should go out and see what was going on with the game in town.  The game was a Pay Per View, but we did find a bar on the main road that was going to show it.  The bartender was very friendly and invited us to several cups of coffee and beer and a tapas to make it comfortable.  As the time for the game arrived, more people flowed in and took off their layers of coats and gloves and made their way to a stadium style seating in front of the TV on the wall.  The bartender was siding with Madrid to stir up the pot and get the people animated.  We stayed for a while, but I was hoping to sleep off the cough and pushed for an early bedtime.