The Guadarrama mountains, la Sierra Madrileña and a great new bar: La Gamberra

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About an hour’s drive North of Madrid are the Guadarrama mountains. I have talked about them often, but never quite dedicated a blog to it -and this is not it. But a recent outing prompted me to write this.

Of course, the main reason to visit the mountains is nature and nature sports: hiking, cycling, or skiing (sorry, camping is forbidden except in designated campgrounds). But there are also great villages and buildings, like El Escorial (read about that here) or El Paular monastery (click here for more).

Spending my Summers there since my youth, we would, of course, take advantage of all the natural resources, but we also wanted to find places to hang out and party.

My cousin Quique recently opened a bar, La Gamberra, in nearby Alpedrete. My sister and I were invited to the opening night. We had a blast! La Gamberra has a simple but delicious, straightforward menu with a heavy beach vibe -lots of fresh seafood[1]! Obviously, a full bar, this is Spain after all, a huge “terraza” outdoor seating, “Beer garden” style, and best of all awesome great live music, most nights. They also have a prix fixe lunch menu for weekday lunches based on homemade traditional stews. The mood was enjoyable! Laid back, with the live music playing, people spending time together, having fun. If you are in the area and looking for a place to eat or to have a fun drink and enjoy some live music, I could not recommend this place enough!

[1] Remember that Madrid has the second biggest seafood market in the world after Tokio, despite being over 200 miles away from the nearest ocean.

Magic in the Magic Kingdom, revisiting Disney World

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When you finally convince your girlfriend to visit you after four years working abroad and her only condition is that you go to Disney World? You arrange it.

We had a great time. I had not been to the Magic Kingdom in a loooong time, so it was nice to revisit childhood memories and to see Disney from an adult perspective; understanding everything I had learned about Disney as a business, after reading In Search of Excellence when I had my own business, (knowing that the magic was happening under my feet and everything above “ground” is a set – actors or “cast members” cannot take their masks off above ground, only when they go down “secret” stairs to the “backstage”), the cleanliness, the friendliness, the whole experience.

We stayed at one of Disney’s hotels, so we got the full Disney experience, the bus, the meals, the swimming pool!

I was recruited to be one of Belle’s knights in shining armor -although all I got was a handheld mask, we met Ariel, we rode a handful of rides, saw a few shows, and had a great time!

We only had one day, so we have a lot to see in future visits!

Hanging out with Ariel

If you don’t use it, you lose it, Welcome to French Club! Le Cercle Français

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French is a beautiful language; I miss teaching it (you can read about me teaching French at UNC here). The other day I was talking to a dear friend and volunteer at school, whose mother was a French war bride and instructed her daughter so they could chat in French.  We realized we both missed speaking French. Solution? Start a French Club, a Le Cercle Français. Our first meeting was just the two of us in the school dining room, but we hope there are more Francophiles at school waiting to come out of the woodwork!

The topics of conversation are not that important, the important bit is to exercise the language of Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Eiffel, De Gaulle, Joan of Arc, Voltaire, Renoir, Simone de Beauvoir, Zinedine Zidane, Marie Curie (well, she was Polish, but you get the idea!), and so on, the list is endless…

Allez, viens parler français avec nous !!

On the importance of time management -Bonus Power Point!

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It is all about priorities

Time management is a myth, you cannot manage time, time passes inexorably. What you can do, is manage what you do with your time.

Are you tired of always running around doing a thousand things, feeling like you are on a merry go round?

I used to have this problem, especially when I had my company -Inter Tape- in the 90s and early aughts, with the accompanying physical expense: stress and all that. Tired of the chicken without a head feeling, I hired a great team to give us a Time Management workshop during a company retreat. My life was changed! I loved the idea of being able to control my environment as much as possible, all very Stoic. I did further research, and my life became considerably more livable.

Fast forward a few years and a change of career. I was teaching at the University of North Carolina when I noticed my students were freaking out about homework, assignments, life, parties, etc. So I gave them my time management workshop (a shorter version, adapted to a class period). They must have liked it since they asked me to do it at many of their fraternities and sororities. Eventually my Dean of Students found out I was giving this workshop to my classes and last week he asked me to do this presentation for the whole school. It was a bit overwhelming, but a lot of fun. I hope the students got something out of it…

The main points are to figure out your Long-, Medium-, and Short-term goals, write them down and put them where you can see them. Second step is to find out how you are spending your days, with the objective of finding out your “time thieves” (Tik Tok videos? Call of Duty?). Then prioritize your work into four quadrants, what is important and urgent, important, and not urgent, urgent, and not important and not urgent nor important. Another key is to write down absolutely everything you must do so you can see it and get it done. For more information check out the attached Power Point presentation!

You are welcome.

Time management presentationDownload
Making a point

On antique books

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How attracted are you to old books? The older the better? I must confess I love books in general, but I am fascinated by old books.

This fascination has gone on for a long time. Yes, I will stop and look at any (attractive) book, but if it is old I will really relish it. I have a handful of old books, which I enjoy, but part of the thrill is in discovering them: at garage sales, old bookstores, who knows where one is going to see an old book.

Our library has an antique book collection which I sometimes visit. Obviously, the old books are very delicate, so we limit their viewing, but it is still a pleasure to be surrounded by such treasures. Unfortunately, it is difficult to read old books, precisely because they are brittle and fragile so just being in the presence of them and even being able to handle them is a thrill.

In my striving for a simpler life, I am committed to only having 100 books at home, the oldest one is not particularly old, a 1944 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. In my office I have a handful of technical/professional books, and in Spain I have another handful. For someone as passionate about books as I consider myself to be, I think I own remarkably few books.

What old books do you have? Or have seen? Tell me in the comments below.

Gentlemen; get your check up.

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Gentlemen, when was the last time you had a check up?

For me it had been a couple of years. I am not a fan of the American health care system (what system?), so I kept postponing my check up until I could do it for “free” in Spain.

I like to think that I take care of myself; try to eat healthy, do some sort of exercise almost every day, all that stuff, so I was not expecting any surprises…

But my blood test told a different story: my PSA level was a bit higher than it should be for my age group.

The PSA is the level that points to your prostate health. I had to find a urologist who then did two different tests, then an MRI scan, and eventually a biopsy. Needless to say, it is all a bit stressful.

Fortunately, the final results came in all clean, but we do have to keep an eye on my numbers with yearly check ups.

Of course, the scary bit is the word Cancer. So if you want to avoid the stress of having that word keeping you up at night, get your check up. You are welcome.

Once a tour guide, always a tour guide; a Tonxo Tours update

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Although nowadays I am terribly busy teaching, I still enjoy giving tours on my spare time, and I even gave a couple of tours of my school!

Now that I investigate it, I have not given a Tonxo Tours update in a long time (check out the last one here).

Since that update, I have given tours of the Everglades, which I love, and I have gained a lot of depth and confidence as I learn more about South Florida and Miami in general. This is normal for every destination; each tour is better than the previous one (usually…) as one learns more and more.

This Summer I had a few tours of Madrid, and I had a lovely multi day tour with a fantastic couple that included my happy place: El Escorial, as well as Toledo and Segovia, where we started by visiting the last Hieronymite monastery of Santa María del Parral led by my old friend Hermano Martín.

At some point the Development office at school connected the dots when they needed to show the school to a visiting high school and to a group of visitors, and they contacted me to do it! I was in between classes, and after some reviewing of history and other tidbits, I did it. It is not Toledo, with its labyrinth of narrow streets, or Madrid with its overwhelming history, or Miami, where your main concern is that your customers do not get run over, but it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it!

So, if you need a tour in South Florida, Spain, or even St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, give me a holler!

National Geographic; a lifetime subscription (almost)

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Everybody is familiar with the yellow National Geographic magazine. I have been a subscriber since 1977 (more or less, I think). My dad got me my first subscription back when I was a teenager living in New York, since then I have moved many times, but I have always kept my National Geographic subscription!

Yes, my first love was the amazing photography, basically telling the story of the article in photos, but little by little I got into reading the articles as well.

The magazine has gone through some changes and now belongs to Disney, but they seem to be doing a good job of keeping the quality of the articles, the writing, the photography, and the magazine itself. One of the peculiarities of Nat Geo is that there is only advertising at the beginning and the end, but no advertising in the middle of the magazine, this is very refreshing and conducive to reading, without interruptions. Another great feature are the maps the magazine sometimes comes with, they are spectacular! I love them and have even had some of them framed!

Nowadays, there are more “fun” little articles at the beginning of the magazine, I guess to cater to folks with short attention spans, but they do not detract from the main articles, which range from all sorts of topics like history, geography, archeology, sciences, nature, and much more. As I prepared for the photo shoot with my niece, we noticed that a favorite topic throughout the history of the magazine is ancient Egypt!

If you have never read a National Geographic, I encourage you to find one and check it out, they are special. You are welcome.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo credit: My niece

La cerca de Felipe II – It’s not that kind of wall.

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There is a lot of talk lately about walls, and there are a lot of walls, no need for me to mention them here.

But I recently explored a lesser-known wall, which had a quite different purpose than most walls…

You see, Felipe II, in the 1500s decided to build an almost 32-mile wall around his Escorial Palace (the largest Renaissance building in the world, read about it here), but not to keep people out, there were plenty of gates, but to keep wildlife in, as in hunting game, so he could hunt it!

This wall, the Cerca de Felipe II was not finished in his lifetime, nor his son’s Felipe II, nor his grandson’s Felipe IV, but continued being built into the Bourbon dynasty in the 18th Century!

My exploration partner Jaime and his sister Teruca led the way, taking advantage that the Valdemorillo reservoir is exceptionally low due to maintenance work on the dam. After a nice walk we found the wall and a bridge!

The wall is impressive! Over 8ft tall (2,5 mts), 20 inches wide, and not a drop of cement to be seen for 32 miles!

This reminded me that I had driven past an excellently maintained part of the wall -and a gate- near our village since I was a kid! The wall has “dips” which back in the day would have sand ramps on the outside to allow animals to jump into the walled area. Once in, the animals could not escape, ergo more hunting game for the king.

At any rate, the wall nowadays about 50% gone, but some remaining bits are in excellent shape as you can see from the photos.

Finding a treasure (and I need your help)

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In case you did not know this, my field of academic research is Francisco de Isla, an 18th C Spanish Jesuit who wrote Fray Gerundio de Campazas, Spain’s best-selling novel of the century.

Every Summer for the last few years, my friend Paco and I go to El Escorial to visit their old and antique book fair – and have dinner after. I normally just have a browse and rarely buy anything, as my reading list is already far too long. But this time, I found a gem.

The Biblioteca Jesuítico Española by Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro is basically a bibliography of Spanish and Portuguese manuscripts found in seven Roman libraries and then some. And guess what? It has a bunch of references to our man Isla. Manuscripts found in different libraries in Rome, Toledo, Madrid, even Loyola in the Basque Country. Not bad for 10 Euro!

Then something special happened. I noticed the bookseller’s T shirt, referencing Monty Python’s Life of Brian. When I pointed this out to Paco, he knew exactly the shop where the fellow bought the shirt!! So we had to take a photo!

So now I must figure out which libraries I want to investigate their Isla manuscripts. This will be based on if I can find some sort of research grants to go investigate. This is where you come in: do you have any tips on how to look for research grants? Let me know in the comments, please.

Thanks!