NO. 2
or, The Really Good Thing About Travel
If you veer off Calle O’Donnell in Madrid and walk past one particular pharmacy you’ll find a restaurant called Laredo. It was at the bottom of my apartment building, cornerstone of the neighborhood, and it was a festival of eating and drinking at all hours. Even when I came home at midnight on a Tuesday, most other restaurants in the neighborhood pulling the shutters closed for the evening, Laredo was still full of life. Cigarette-haze curled around those brave enough to stand the chill outside, and inside through the tinted window you could make out couples leaning into each other, older men cleaning up the last bits of olive oil off their plates with stale bread.
Mornings were the one time of the day that Laredo was empty. It felt strange, like if you went to an amusement park off-hours when you weren’t supposed to be there, all the rides standing still, creaking in the wind. After walking a couple streets down I would make a stop at this place that did Mallorcan pastries, ensaimadas. I was the youngest by far of the clientele and they eventually knew me by name. One of those outside with a milk & coffee and I was ready to begin the day. That is, more or less, how things went in Madrid.
In Buenos Aires it was different. It is a much bigger city and I lived nearer to the center, street busy at all hours, rioting and cheering and honking down the main road after every eventful soccer game. Late summer nights when I got hungry and didn’t feel like cooking I’d walk down to the café on the corner, which stayed open until two or three in the morning. At that time there was never anybody in there, except a couple men four generations older than me, smoking with the bartenders. I’d pick a seat in the corner and order a milanesa and pull out a book and read. And I’d reflect on the day and think about what I’d do for the next, if writing wasn’t the only thing I had time for. I moved apartments a couple of times in Buenos Aires but invariably it would go like this: a café, open late nights, serving hot flattened fried meat and some sort of espresso.
The story is the same no matter where you go. In Brazil it’s at-home barbecues, salty meat and heat-haze on lazy Sunday afternoons out on the patio. And in Portugal every morning it was the sweet rice cake I’d buy before walking back up the hill to my apartment where I’d watch the sun rise, a burning August red, over the terrace. And in the evenings I’d get an Uber to the tennis courts over in the northwest part of the city, play a couple tough hours, grab beers with Maximiliano (hell of a name) afterwards.
On the coast of Croatia when I finished work in the late afternoons I’d walk down for pastries from a local bakery halfway between my apartment and a great big forest park on the ocean. School would be getting out then so the bakery would be packed with kids and parents, kids clamoring for the sweeter stuff, parents saying (probably, I couldn’t understand them) that no, we’ve got some at home. Then eating those pastries on the patio looking over the ocean, wondering what the village was like on the other side, one day finally taking the bus over there to figure it out and being more or less impressed.
* * *
This is the best I can do to write an essay about why I like travel—and why I believe it is best done slowly. It is not to see the big sights, though those are fun adventures in their own right. It is instead to become absorbed by a different sea of life, where the tide is unfamiliar and the waves crash in all sorts of new ways on the shore, and to notice those differences and find the beauty in them. It’s seeing the big attractions at their finest, full of tourists and all, and it is also to walk down your empty neighborhood street during off-hours, half-drunk. It’s knowing the name of your doorman. Slowly discerning where the busiest streets are and knowing how and when to avoid them during rush hour. Getting invited out for drinks by someone who’s lived in that city their whole life. It’s watching the Laredo restaurant at one-A.M., closing the shutters as the last of the patrons, well-fed and wine-drunk, stumble their way home on a cold clear night.
If you veer off Calle O’Donnell in Madrid and walk past one particular pharmacy you’ll find a restaurant called Laredo. It was at the bottom of my apartment building, cornerstone of the neighborhood, and it was a festival of eating and drinking at all hours. Even when I came home at midnight on a Tuesday, most other restaurants in the neighborhood pulling the shutters closed for the evening, Laredo was still full of life. Cigarette-haze curled around those brave enough to stand the chill outside, and inside through the tinted window you could make out couples leaning into each other, older men cleaning up the last bits of olive oil off their plates with stale bread.
Mornings were the one time of the day that Laredo was empty. It felt strange, like if you went to an amusement park off-hours when you weren’t supposed to be there, all the rides standing still, creaking in the wind. After walking a couple streets down I would make a stop at this place that did Mallorcan pastries, ensaimadas. I was the youngest by far of the clientele and they eventually knew me by name. One of those outside with a milk & coffee and I was ready to begin the day. That is, more or less, how things went in Madrid.
In Buenos Aires it was different. It is a much bigger city and I lived nearer to the center, street busy at all hours, rioting and cheering and honking down the main road after every eventful soccer game. Late summer nights when I got hungry and didn’t feel like cooking I’d walk down to the café on the corner, which stayed open until two or three in the morning. At that time there was never anybody in there, except a couple men four generations older than me, smoking with the bartenders. I’d pick a seat in the corner and order a milanesa and pull out a book and read. And I’d reflect on the day and think about what I’d do for the next, if writing wasn’t the only thing I had time for. I moved apartments a couple of times in Buenos Aires but invariably it would go like this: a café, open late nights, serving hot flattened fried meat and some sort of espresso.
The story is the same no matter where you go. In Brazil it’s at-home barbecues, salty meat and heat-haze on lazy Sunday afternoons out on the patio. And in Portugal every morning it was the sweet rice cake I’d buy before walking back up the hill to my apartment where I’d watch the sun rise, a burning August red, over the terrace. And in the evenings I’d get an Uber to the tennis courts over in the northwest part of the city, play a couple tough hours, grab beers with Maximiliano (hell of a name) afterwards.
On the coast of Croatia when I finished work in the late afternoons I’d walk down for pastries from a local bakery halfway between my apartment and a great big forest park on the ocean. School would be getting out then so the bakery would be packed with kids and parents, kids clamoring for the sweeter stuff, parents saying (probably, I couldn’t understand them) that no, we’ve got some at home. Then eating those pastries on the patio looking over the ocean, wondering what the village was like on the other side, one day finally taking the bus over there to figure it out and being more or less impressed.
* * *
This is the best I can do to write an essay about why I like travel—and why I believe it is best done slowly. It is not to see the big sights, though those are fun adventures in their own right. It is instead to become absorbed by a different sea of life, where the tide is unfamiliar and the waves crash in all sorts of new ways on the shore, and to notice those differences and find the beauty in them. It’s seeing the big attractions at their finest, full of tourists and all, and it is also to walk down your empty neighborhood street during off-hours, half-drunk. It’s knowing the name of your doorman. Slowly discerning where the busiest streets are and knowing how and when to avoid them during rush hour. Getting invited out for drinks by someone who’s lived in that city their whole life. It’s watching the Laredo restaurant at one-A.M., closing the shutters as the last of the patrons, well-fed and wine-drunk, stumble their way home on a cold clear night.