After watching the Rockies host the Pirates on Tuesday, on the morning of July 18, Ryan, Logan and I headed to Atlanta.  My former colleague Christine Genovese, a lifetime Denverite about to be transplanted to the Queen City of the West, had been kind enough to contact her nephew Matt who is working for the Braves.  The deal was if our flight was on time, thus enabling us to get to Turner Field by 5 pm, that we could be on the field for batting practice. 

SUCCESS!!  Flight on time!  Checked in to hotel.  Taxi to Turner Field arriving at 4:20.  Connect with Matt.  Nice young fellow.  Big black clouds in the sky.  Big lightning bolts.  Batting practice canceled.  Crap.  Nice try Christine and we are grateful.

So off to the 755 Club at the top of the stadium above the left field bleachers for dinner and to observe the storm.  When our allotted 90 minutes were completed there, we sat in the comfortable lounge chairs on the Suite level passing the time until the game was ready to begin about 8:30 pm.  From then on, a perfect night for baseball in Atlanta.

We saw a fun game from our second row seats in spite of our first rain delay of our fourteen Tour games.  While a 9 to 4 final with the Giants prevailing, it was actually a fine pitching performance for most of the game including a perfect four inning start for the Braves' starter.  Eleven of the thirteen runs crossed the plate in the extra innings including a Chipper Jones home run tying him with George Brett as the all time RBI leader among third basemen.  The negative was a 12:35 am finish.

It is extra fun to go to home games of franchises with a storied history.  In this case, the memories of Aaron, Mathews and the winningest lefty of all time, Warren Spahn, are posted around the property and inside the stadium.  We enjoyed our visit to Turner Field.  Our fifteenth game of our tours (and first indoors) comes Friday in St. Petersburg where Tampa Bay hosts the Seattle Mariners.

It’s time for the third installment of our summer tour of a few baseball stadiums, aka Baseball Tour 2012™.  There will be two fewer games this year as we deal with greater distances between parks and a different form of entertainment in the middle of the trip.

The Tour started with Ryan (12) and Logan (soon to be 11) taking their first solo flight from Phoenix to
meet me in Denver.  It is interesting to me how airlines now handle this age of traveler.  Rather than performing any oversight
activities such as making sure Jerry Sandusky isn’t picking them up, they treat them as they would any adult traveler.  Having seen this before with my granddaughter, I arrived an hour early.

 So on the perfect baseball weather night of July 17 (our 13^th consecutive game without a rain
delay!), it was off to downtown to Coors Field to see the last place Colorado Rockies take on the renewed Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Pirates prevailed 6 to 2 over what appeared to be a fine Triple A Rockies team.  We appreciated the cameo appearance of Konnie at the game and her bravery in donning the official T-Shirt of Baseball Tour 2012™ for the evening.

On Wednesday it will be off to Turner Field in Atlanta for a contest between the Braves and the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants.  Then on Friday we will be joined in St. Petersburg, Florida by my son Benjamin and daughter-in-law Fernanda to see the Tampa Bay Rays host the Seattle Mariners followed by three days in Orlando with Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Fernanda for some theme park heat, lines and excitement.  We wrap up the park visits on July 24 by
visiting the new Miami Marlins Park as they host the Braves.

The graduating class from Short High School in Liberty, Indiana held a celebration on June 23rd in honor of the 45th anniversary of its graduation.  While attendance was sparse, it was a spirited gathering including several attending who were unable to attend the reunion  in 2007.

We are extremely grateful to Coach Joe Stanley and his wonderful wife Ginger for continuing to make the effort to attend so many of our events after all of us departed the school in 1967.  They had a huge impact on our lives as young people and for them to have the desire to be with us yet today is very rewarding.  Zella Drake also continues to join us these many years later.  Her late husband Kellas, a Short High School teacher and coach, was another influence on our lives including joining with Zella to sacrifice a week of their lives to be the chaperones on our Senior Trip to the east coast.

Otherwise, this post is merely to make some pictures from the event available for viewing by our classmates.  I hope the 1967 alums enjoy.

Union County Educational Excellence Program (“UCEEP”), the charitable foundation that supports unique educational opportunities and college scholarships for students attending Union County schools, is proud to present its first major fundraising event.

“Bob Jenkins Presents – A Classic High School Sock Hop” will feature Bob Jenkins Spinning the Oldies and “Forever – The Tribute,” the world’s most entertaining Beatles tribute band.  It will be an evening of music, dancing, visiting old friends and the opportunity to relive some of those memorable high school days.

Bob, a 1965 graduate of Short High School, has spent over 30 years as an award winning auto racing broadcaster including a stint as the “Voice of the Indianapolis 500.”  He is the only broadcaster to anchor the coverage of all three events held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“Forever – The Tribute” has been thrilling audiences since 1996 and is internationally known as the world’s most fun and entertaining tribute show.  The band includes members from the touring cast of Beatlemania and The British Invasion from Disney World’s EPCOT.

“I am thrilled to be able to return to Union County to host this event to support educational opportunities for students living in my childhood home of Union County,” Bob said.  “It will be a fun filled evening of music, dancing and memories.  I urge everyone to save the date, find a date and get in shape for a fun filled evening of music and dancing including my special dance contests.”

“Bob Jenkins Presents” will be held on October 6, 2012 at 7 pm at Union County High School.  Event sponsors are needed.  Contact Connie Rosenberger at Union County High School for more information on sponsorships.

Konnie chose a trip to Manhattan to celebrate the 2012 version of her birthday.  While it is my third trip in the past three and a half months, there is never a shortage of things of interest to do here and, now that we have been here frequently this past decade, we have our favorites to return to also.

So for this trip our shows included George and Ira Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It” with Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara, a musical comedy full of Gershwin standards that continue to be recorded by artists today, and “Newsies.” “Newsies” is a Disney production that is mostly a song and dance review.  Entertaining, but a song and dance review none the less, with no song I had previously heard.

On Friday we spent the day at the New York Botanical Gardens, a mere 250 acres of vegetation in the Bronx.  We previously visited there to see a Dale Chihuly exhibition and made the return trip via the Metro-North Railroad this time to visit their Monet’s Garden exhibition.  We roamed the grounds most of the day including making our first trip to the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, a worthwhile destination for its over 4,000 rose plants (www.nybg.org/gardens/rose-garden/).

Dining this trip included Novita (www.novita.com), a small Italian place on 22nd Street that we return to every trip.  On a Thursday evening they had eight specials plus the full menu as well as the usual accommodating and personable Italian wait staff.  We were 30 minutes early yet the owner gave us glasses of prosecco for our wait.  I told him we were early and he did not need to do anything complimentary.  He said “we call it hospitality.”  Totally contrary to what we have grown accustomed to at our local Italian eatery in Cherry Creek where there is no consideration for frequent customers and you now might even get seated at one of the incredibly tight two top tables next to the wine refrigerator that is now situated in the middle of the dining room.

After that it was Naya at 64th and 2nd (www.nayarestaurants.com), a new Lebanese place for us that had about the most interesting interior design of any restaurant we have visited.  The space is probably all of about twelve feet wide but with the white plastic panels on the walls with lighting behind the panels, they have made it quite interesting and the food was very good as well as reasonable.

We tried Otto, a Mario Batali restaurant in Greenwich Village.  It was a very large space that was very busy and loud.  Despite its famous owner, probably a one shot deal for us.  We finished up with a repeat visit to Raddicho (www.radicchiopastaandrisotto.com/), a very small space that seats a maximum of 30 diners on East 53rd Street.  Respectable food at slightly less than Denver prices.

That’s all for this trip.  Coming up, another high school class reunion and Baseball Tour 2012.

Konnie and I have become accustomed to the longer trips that we have been taking the past few years so one that lasts a week is merely a blink.  Our last day which had our best weather dictated a trip to the Real Jardin Botanico.  Unfortunately, almost nothing was in bloom.  So after a brief visit there we did some shopping with Isabelle and prepared for our long journey home.

Thanks for following us on our travels yet again.  Next up, to New York with my son Benjamin in May and then tentatively back to Europe with Konnie later that month for her birthday if we can pull the arrangements together.

Wednesday was cold, yes cold, and wet so we opted to visit Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.  This magnificent museum is built around the collection assembled by Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his son.  It, as well as the Prado that we visited earlier, contain outstanding collections that are easily enjoyed by the casual art viewer.

On a much improved weather Thursday, we decided to continue to see sights in the Old Madrid area of the city.  Our visits included the Basilica Pontificia de San Miguel which stands on the site of an old Romanesque church a block from our apartment that was constructed between 1739 and 1746.  From there we hit the Plaza de Oriente in an effort to see the Opera House (Teatro Real) but there were no tours today.  So on to Museo Cerralbo.

As we have learned elsewhere (such as the Soane Museum in London that we only found because of or friend Jacquie Martinez), it is not always the big name places that are the most interesting and Museo Cerralbo is in that category.  This 19th century mansion is a monument to Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa.  The house is huge and gorgeous and the collection of "stuff" intense and endless.  Well worth a visit when you are here.  Lunch at Cascaras.

From there we headed to San Francisco el Grande, another unheard of jewel.  On the way there we hit the Muralla Arabe, a small stretch of outer defense wall that is all that is left of Madrid's Moorish heritage.  Anyway, unfortunately no pictures are allowed at San Francisco, but the interior is a remarkable building.  The artwork contained therein is spectacular including the magnificent frescoes on the dome and the dome is one of the largest in the world.  Larger than St. Paul's Cathedral and only outsized by St. Peter's at the Vatican and the Pantheon according to their literature.  A must see if you are in Madrid.  The tour is in Spanish and Isabelle did a terrific job of translating the highlights for Konnie and me and she again handled our communications with various vendors during the day.

This city has more restaurants than we have ever seen in a concentrated area.  We are a couple of blocks from a street named Calle Cava Baja and we counted 40 restaurants on that short stretch.  An excellent dinner at Emma & Julia's on Calle Cava Baja with generous treatment of us as their guests.  There you go.  We have killed Old Madrid this week hitting every highlight in the book.  Only one more day before the long trek home.

The construction of Catedral de la Almudena was begun in 1879 but was not completed until 1993 making it an extremely modern cathedral by European standards.  Its construction was slowed by the Spanish Civil War, involved multiple architects and I’ll bet the contractor was changed along the way also.  It must be interesting to span the evolving building technologies over a century plus.  In any case, in the Catholic cathedral tradition it turned out to be quite beautiful.

After a few stops at closed sites where the actual hours did not match those in the guide book, out Madrid exploration for the day included walking the Calle Mayor, Calle de Alcala and the Gran Via and then a walk through the La Latina area.  The architecture in Madrid is quite grand.

Lunch at the pricey Restaurante El Schotis on Cava Baja and dinner at La Camarilla, also on Cava Baja, where both staffs were helpful in guiding us through these crazy tapas.

So we started Monday later than we wanted but hopefully we are completely adjusted now.  We started the day at Arcade, the restaurant where we killed two hours on Saturday while we waited for our apartment to be ready.  As is often the case abroad, they treat us better on subsequent visits than we get treated when we frequent restaurants in our own backyard.

Then off to the Catedral Nuestra Senora de la Almudena (closed, we’ll try again tomorrow) and the Palacio Real.  The Palace is spectacular (no pictures allowed inside so few pictures today) with most of the decorative highlights being imported from Italy.  Then it was one of our walking tours hitting Plaza de Oriente, Jardines de Lepanto, Jardines de Sabatini, La Rosaleda Parque with its Templo de Debod, then past the Monumento a Cervantes (Don Quixote), past Plaza de Espana, down the Gran Via and back to our neighborhood near Plaza Mayor.  So far there is no comparison between the gardens here and those in London.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called La Mordida de Fuentes (but they spoke Spanish so it counts!).  It did have many dishes that we do not see in the states.

Tuesday we will try to focus on the cathedral and other churches.  We’ll see how many we can catch open.

Konnie and I left Denver on March 16th with my granddaughter Isabelle for this year’s spring break trip with her.  This time we headed for Madrid.  Isabelle, now 14 and in the eighth grade, has been in a Spanish immersion program in school so we thought this would be a good place for her to test the progress from her immersion.

And given that that there is far less English spoken her than I expected, so far her Spanish has worked well and been a big asset to us.  We spent Saturday waiting for our apartment to be ready and getting familiar with the area around our apartment in Central Madrid including two hours in a coffee shop where the proprietors did not speak English but somehow delivered to us everything we mentioned to each other that we MIGHT be interested in consuming.

After visiting Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol, Mercado de San Miguel and a “late” lunch at a lovely Tapas restaurant, we called it a day to make the time zone adjustment.

On Sunday we had a late start with lunch near Plaza Mayor eating outside at Kitchen Stories where we fought off a team of gypsies who were aggressively pursuing some of our food.  From there we spent the rest of the day at Museo del Prado before having dinner at Miau where Isabelle handled all of the communication with the staff.