start in Casablanca

Madrid-Barajas airport

a birthday rainbow

Omi Marga

around the town

a last look

Saturday 25 December 1999

It's a testament to how much this illness has taken out of me, as I look back and see how few times I could be encouraged to dig out the camera.

It's Christmas Day. Isaac is sick enough to miss the visiting Santa, which the hotel staff repeatedly reminds us is impending. I'm too used up to explain that we're Jewish. I think we've finessed the situation. Imagine my surprise as I return from one task or another and am informed that Santa has gone up to personally give a gift to our ill child. Rose says it went remarkably well (for an unexpected visitation of a large bearded man in a red suit).

Isaac is absolutely thrilled by his gift, a car which rolls on a huge central wheel. Mickey and Minne Mouse, Goofy, Donald, and others appear inside. He plays with it ceaselessly, even after we return to San Francisco.

In my earliest trips around the island I remember the packs of wild dogs. (Gran Canaria actually refers to canis - dogs - rather than the yellow birds.) These days the dogs are long-gone, but feral cats have taken over the place. The more they're fed by tourists the more they breed, exacerbating the problem.

From the fourth floor of Atlantis Uno we look eastward to the ocean, and beyond that, the Sahara Desert.

Hibiscus is a favorite vine for fence-covering. Seeing them gives me no end of pleasure.

From our floor of the Rey Carlos we see the nighttime lights of the nearby Centro Comercial, through which we stroll from time to time. There's an amusment area which intruiges Isaac, especially the 18-foot Paul Bunyan (or is it a cowboy?...

We leave a few days later, finishing our trip in time to do our annual New Year's Day walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.