I Should Have Made a Spreadsheet
Free styling in Spain and at Home
Over the years, I’ve become a very good trip planner. I set up a spreadsheet that identifies where I’m going to sleep each day, and what the day’s primary activity will be. Despite the fact that my wife, who makes spreadsheets for a living, has referred to my vacation spreadsheets as “not spreadsheets,” I’m pretty proud of them. They work. On more than one occasion, I’ve just forwarded one of my spreadsheets to a friend who’s asked for advice on trip planning and they’ve duplicated my exact trip. My northern Mozambique spreadsheet is particularly good, though much of the area we visited is now ISIS territory, though I’m pretty sure that’s unrelated.
I’m not as good on the unspreadsheeted planning of day-to-day life. This is unfortunate, as my entire job right now is to manage day-to-day life. For example, my daughter had a school field trip to the local science museum yesterday. The trip proceeded despite the fact that teachers were, apparently, on strike.
Last year when the teachers went on strike, I dutifully kept my daughter home in solidarity. I wrote about it. This year, however, I decided that if a) the union cannot be bothered to explain why they are striking—like even a cursory explanation, and b) the teachers are still going to school to take the kids on the field trip, solidarity does not demand that I keep my daughter home. I read the information, sent in the form confirming that my daughter would cross the picket line—no wait, I wouldn’t have done that—there was no picket line (note: some strike) and sent her on the trip. I felt like a responsible parent.
What I did not note, however, was that I was supposed to send a picnic lunch. This was bad. As a result, yesterday I picked up a daughter who was hungry and grumpy, despite, or perhaps because, one of her kind classmates had pitied her hunger and given her a cheese, ham, lettuce, and ketchup sandwich. (Note: When I used chatgtp to spellcheck this piece, it refused to believe that I really mean to say a “cheese, ham, lettuce, and ketchup sandwich.”) This disastrous error wouldn’t have happened if I’d made a spreadsheet, or possibly if I spoke better French.
These are exactly the sort of things that do not happen on my vacations, except for the time they did… two weeks ago.
My parents, fresh off of emptying their house in preparation for sale, flew to Sevilla to meet us for the second week of our Easter break. These days, when traveling in Europe, one has to book many popular activities in advance. This is at least in part due to scalpers, I mean tour groups, snapping up tickets in advance for resale. When schlepping around two children who are liable to become sick at any time, booking in advance is a risky proposition, and it is why I didn’t see Michelangelo’s David when we were in Florence.
Thankfully, the kids were very healthy on this trip, only one instance of vomiting each! Nevertheless, with my venerable parents in tow, I booked two activities. The first was a visit to the Royal Andalusian Riding School, to see what I call “The Horse Ballet.” The riding school trains horses in the sort of nonsense that the Lipizzaner horses do in Vienna’s Spanish Riding School, one of the few Viennese tourist attractions I had never visited, mostly because it seemed both boring and expensive. But horse ballet sounded great to my mother, wife, and kids, and the vacation isn’t just about me, so I booked tickets. Besides, listening to my kids ask if the horses would be wearing tutus and doing pirouettes was worth it. (Note: And frankly, it would be a better show if a few horses wore tutus or got en pointe.)
The second was a trip to Sevilla’s Alcazar, the palace that is, along with the Cathedral, one of the two must-visits in Sevilla. The Alcazar was quite interesting in that it is in the Moorish style, despite having been built largely following the expulsion of the Moors from Sevilla. I had not previously understood the extent to which the Catholic Spaniards had come to regard elements of the Islamic architectural style as their own.
We gambled on not booking in advance for the cathedral and it paid off brilliantly. While all of the people with timed entry tickets waited in the scalding sun, we walked right up to the no-advance-sales window and walked right in to a cathedral that dwarfs even the Hagia Sophia in size.
The no-advance-sales line was so short and the timed entry line was so long that I had to confirm three times that the no-advanced purchase line actually got you into the entire cathedral. It did! I got to see Columbus’s tomb and everything! Funny that it isn’t in Italy. I could have sworn Columbus Day was all about honoring Italian Americans.
Armed with tickets for two major activities, I had a decent basic outline of our trip, even though, in the spirit of maintaining flexibility while hauling two elders and two kids, I had not made a spreadsheet.
This seemed like a great idea until, at about 10:30 AM on the third day of our trip, I double-checked to confirm that our tickets to the Alcazar were for 1:30 PM. They were… albeit on a completely different day of the week. Our activity for that day was the horse ballet and it started at noon. I’d reversed the dates.
As my extended family mobilized, I sprinted to the parking garage. Then I sprinted back when I realized I’d forgotten the car keys. Then I sprinted to the garage again! Soon we were on our way to Jerez, where sherry comes from, and where the horse ballet takes place. We were going to be late, but things looked good for at least catching some of it. I dropped my family, parked and then sprinted to the entrance, just in time for… my family to explain to me that our tickets were the following day and there was no horse ballet today.
You know how this could have been avoided? WITH A BLEEPING SPREADSHEET!!!!!
Frustrated but resilient, we decided to grab lunch in town after first going to a pharmacy and getting eyedrops for my mother who was in the midst of a brutal allergy attack. We learned there, that the Spanish word for “gel,” as in gel eye drops is “gel.”
It was 1:30 PM. After parking, we began to walk to a tabanco, a traditional Jerez eatery where we could get some simple local cuisine and sample sherry. At the first place we went, a collection of white-aproned staff were sitting outside smoking. When we asked if they were open, they said “no” followed by a bunch of Spanish I couldn’t understand. The next place was the same. And the next.
“I have no idea when you’re allowed to eat in this crazy country,” I said. “I thought they ate late here, but it’s not even 2? Are we too early?”
It was at that moment, that a helpful Spanish woman with a superb command of English informed me of the blackout. Apparently, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France and Italy were in the dark. With all stoves operating on electricity, restaurants couldn’t operate without power. That’s what the restaurateurs had been trying to explain to us.
After my wife and father walked halfway across town to find an open supermarket, we ate a picnic lunch, gave up on the day, and drove back to Sevilla, sans traffic lights.
As the sun set in unelectrified Sevilla, residents stuck their heads out their windows or stood on tiny porches feeling the cool evening air, harkening back to the days before our lives ran on alternating current. It was beautiful, in a way.
But, when my wife and I went for a walk, it was beautiful to see the power come back in parts of the city too. The lights of the bull ring shone and bars jigged their neon lures on one side of the river, even as the Triana neighborhood, where we stayed, remained in pre-industrial darkness.
And as we strolled back, from the light, toward the darkness, I thought of the ages before, the generation upon generation, upon generation who knew not of vacation spreadsheets or, even worse, had to do create them by hand.