Why We Drive

And it's not just because of Charlie.

Josh endured the long drive from Mouans-Sartoux to Marbella, nearly 1700 kilometers, with good humor and amazement. "I've never been been in a car this long," he announced. "Congratulations!" I replied. "You're now a road warrior." A dubious distinction, perhaps, but when you fly or train from place to place, you miss a lot.

We wouldn't have enjoyed orange juice in the middle of an orange grove in Valenica (it was delicious, by the way).

Or stopped in Nerja to revisit the Balcon de Europe, a place we'd enjoyed during our stint in Spain in '99. We ate breakfast on the square where we used to eat lunch and the children used to play hide and seek around the chalkboards promoting the menu del dia.

On the route back to France, we spent

a night in the seaside town of Cadaques, famous because Salvador Dali lived there,and, in our family, for the pale turquoise sea glass mixed in with the stones on the beach.

We walked along the edge of town and over to a small island and along the way we picked up glass, skipped a few stones, and scrambled over the rocks. We meandered back to town and enjoyed one last Spanish seaside lunch of boquerones, calamares, and cold white wine.

Then we hit the road again.

We headed to Montpellier -- we couldn't remember who had lobbied for this particular stop, and as we approached the shabby buildings on the outskirts of the city, no one wanted to claim that distinction.

It didn't help that our hotel turned out to be a suite in someone's apartment (a detail I overlooked on TripAdvisor) and that the owner of the apartment took my reference to the "gentle, well-behaved Golden Retriever" as a description of the 14-year old boy tagging along.

We quickly found a real hotel and as we walked through the narrow streets with polished cobblestones and ecru walls, we decided we liked Montpellier. The medical school that's been around for a thousand years was one of the first to open its doors to students without regard to their religious background.

The Italian scholar and poet, Petrarch, studied law in Montpellier in 1316-1320. He's also known as the world's first tourist -- someone who traveled simply because he wanted to see another place. Am sure that he would understand why we drive.

Moorish Spain

The Moors ruled the southern part of Spain -- Andalucia from the Arabic Al-Andalus -- for almost eight hundred years bringing poetry, art, writing and their distinctive architecture to the region.

They first came from Morocco and landed at the enormous rock jutting out of the sea next to the shores of Spain. The rock’s modern day name, Gibraltar, also comes from Arabic -- Tariq’s Rock --- named after the leader who came in 711 to conquer the Visigoths.

Jeff and I took the boys on a day trip to Gibraltar where we stood, literally, between two continents. “I can see Africa,” Luke said, looking longingly across the water to the mountains that beckoned. It would have been easy enough to charter a boat and captain to ferry across the Straits to Tangiers, but with the political upheaval sweeping across northern Africa, we thought we’d stay on the Spanish side of the Rock.

Despite its quaint British charms, Gibraltar offered its own exotic sights like the hundreds of monkeys who live and roam freely on the hilltop and the deep caves beneath the layers of rock where stalagmites and stalactites form a surreal labyrinth.

We spent most of our time in Marbella where we spent a rare week unfettered by much other than walking the beach, scouring for sea glass, playing tennis and deciding which beachside restaurant would be the best for lunch.

February in Spain isn’t the ideal time to actually swim in the sea, but that didn’t stop the boys and Charlie from a daily plunge.

One of the trip highlights was a visit to Al Hambra -- the elaborate lattice-dripped palace on a hillside where the Moors made their last stand.

We'd been there when Luke just a toddler.

This time instead of skipping through the rooms with barely a glance at the walls, he captured the intricacies of the place with his camera lens.

Washington Irving lived on the grounds during the years when the palace fortress was abandoned and dilapidated, but even then, the charms of the place entranced him.

"We crossed the threshold, and were at once transported, as if by magic wand, into other times and an oriental realm, and were treading the scenes of Arabian story."

Prayers and poetry grace the walls of the place. While most of the centuries old Arabic script proclaims "There is no victor but Allah," poetry also graces the walls of the place such as:

"Sublime work of art, fate wants me to outshine every other moment in history. How much delight for the eyes!" How true.

Barcelona's Graffiti Wars

We went to to Spain for Luke's February break and cousin Josh joined us for the long ride down the coast. Our first spot: Barcelona, the invigorating capital of Catalonia. Jeff and I took the boys on a tour of Gaudi and the Gothic Quarter. They introduced us to the city's exuberant graffiti culture.

I used to equate graffiti with vandalism, but Luke's fascination with this, um, art form over the years has made me look again. In Barcelona, in response to the city's crackdown on the spread of graffiti, scores of shop and restaurant owners hire graffiti artists to paint the shutters that adorn their doors.

On their own initiative, Luke and Josh tracked down a graffiti gallery so we made the pilgrimage the next morning, with the boys clutching notebooks filled with their own bizarre and creative drawings.

Inside we met Robert, owner of Base Elements. "It's a war out there," he explained. "The city is trying to pass a law that would fine both the shop owner and the graffiti artist in those cases when the store hires the artist." He went on to tell us about the various artists whose work he sells, including Pez with his trademark big-toothed grinning fish (featured below) and Rallito-X whose signature feature is his original use of certain male body parts... The boys grinned as I politely flipped through the X-man's latest comic book.

What does it mean that graffiti, born in the modern era from protest and rebellion, is going commercial, almost mainstream -- from the streets of Barcelona to the movie, Exit through the Gift Shop, and even the Shepard Fairey t-shirts that Luke just bought?

I will leave my art historian friend, Mark L., to explain whether the graffiti explosion signifies the renaissance of an ancient form, or a new-found appreciation for crude shapes and garish colors.

Or maybe the embrace of graffiti reflects the

deep-rooted yearnings of the human psyche to rebel against the forced orderliness of society and to mark our place in a vast, chaotic universe....

Who will win the graffiti war in Barcelona?

I'm rooting for those who wield the spray cans.

Lenk

Lenk, a small village in the Bernese Oberland, seems an unlikely place for our first reunion with friends from the 'hood. But it so happens that our friend and neighbor, Matthew, is taking part in the Winter Term, a 12-week program for 8th graders that focuses on academics, Swiss culture & heritage, and... skiing. Judging by Matthew's fine form and speed as he led us down "his"mountain, the Winter Term is treating him very well. Plus, it's in his blood -- his dad, a former ski racer, roared down the hill behind him.

The journey to Lenk took us through Annecy, the capital of the Haute-Savoie, a romantic town built on the edge of a lake and canals. Suz and Ken took us there for the first time nearly ten years ago. It was summertime and they swam in the lake with Luke from the boat we'd rented. It was colder this time around, but the chill in the air didn't lessen the town's vibrancy.

(Photos by Luke.)

We lingered too long, and then lost our race against the sun as we made our way around Lake Geneva to the edge of the Alps. And so off we went through the dark for a game of hide-and-go-seek with the steep and windy roads marked with thin cables that probably wouldn't hold the weight of our car. It was almost a relief we couldn't see the sheer drop-offs below. We went up and down past small French-speaking hamlets nestled in the mountains, until finally the few signs along the road turned German. We were closing in on the Oberland.

We set a rendezvous with our friends the next day at the bottom of the rope-tow and spent a sun-soaked afternoon skiing down exceptionally wide runs among a panorama of snow-topped mountains. "Have you guys been to a lot of places like this?" Robb asked, gesturing to the spectacular view. We've skied a few times in the Rockies, and elsewhere in the Alps, but no, nothing quite like this.

"We hiked up there during the summer that I spent here," Ginny said, pointing to the Wildstrubel, the tallest peak. The people who run Winter Term are old family friends, and she had spent time at the school as a cook one summer. I wouldn't mind spending time in the kitchen either if it meant living in Lenk for a while.

Over plates of rosti and slices of meat, we caught up on life and compared Luke and Matthew's rigorous schedules of tennis and skiing respectively. How will they go back to the toil of an eight-hour school day?

The next day we were back on the road -- this time able to admire by daylight the unique geography of the valley towns and mountain peaks, complete with the occasional church along the side of the road that made us stop the car, more often than we'd planned. And so again we ended up losing our race against the sun. But isn't that one of the joys of traveling by car?