Día de San Valentín

Valentine's Day is celebrated here, although it's not quite as commercial as it is in the States. Sure, you find teddy bears on display, special Valentine's day promotions, an occasional heart decoration here and there. But it's nowhere near the same level of "marketing assault" that we get in the U.S.

So what did we do? Well, our first idea was spontaneous. Let's go to Toledo! So we made our bocadillos (Spanish style sandwiches), packed up a small backpack and grabbed a taxi to get to the Atocha train station. But by the time we made it to Atocha,the tickets were sold out. Before leaving Atocha, I made sure we said goodbye to my friends - the turtles. I love Atocha station; it has an indoor garden with palm trees and other tropical plants, with a fiberglass ceiling that leaks in natural light. It's very calming and I like to see these turtles doing absolutely nothing more than soak up the light.

Anyway, enough of the turtles. So now that our day plan was a bit ruined, we took our backpack with our bocadillos to El Retiro and ate in the park. Then a nice siesta in the sun. Later on in the evening we went to a Flamenco Show in a small theater.

My Sevillanas teacher was one of the main dancers, and damn she is good. It was interesting to see a Flamenco show.

It's basically a musical - song and dance combined with a basic story. Although it's difficult to distinguish all of the words in the songs, so I'm not sure if there was one story or multiple.

The whole show was based on a group of Gitanos that are in love with Flamenco and maintaining its culture (I think).

Anyway, they are all in a house, at the Alhambra, etc. At the end of the show, they had an elderly lady come up and finish the show with a dance. This lady must have been about 65 years old and she hit every note.

These Spaniards are so emotional. Geesh. They wail and cry, then they are happy, and then proud with a bullfighter-like attitude. Now imagine these menopausal emotions combined with singing, dancing, strong stomping on the ground ("zapateo"), tears, mantones flowing in the background.

OLÉ - that's Flamenco!!!