Traveling with my dad is never boring, or normal. From the time he had our whole family wear matching Canada t-shirts to Six Flags, (no, we’re not even Canadian) to the time he took us to Tijuana and barely escaped an intense market bartering exchange, there’s always a story.
So I shouldn’t have expected anything less when he, my mom, and my husband Russell flew into Madrid to visit me while I was in Salamanca working on my Masters. I picked them up early from the airport and later that morning while walking from our hotel, the Hotel Opera http://www.hotelopera.com to the Plaza Mayor, we took a short cut down a side street. An important note here—my dad is huge and has intimidated people with his size throughout his life, so most people think he would not be the target of a crime. However, in Spain the fact that he was so much bigger than everyone else, combined with his loud voice, 
his ever-present video camera, and his white tennis shoes, put a huge bulls eye on his back. And front.
As we went up the street, out of nowhere appeared two young Gypsy women with a city map. They zeroed in on my dad with the open map, pushing into him, acting like they were asking him directions. Finally my mom pushed one of them and I called out the magic word “policia” and they vanished. In all the commotion one of them was going through my dad’s pockets, relieving him of 40 Euros.
This is not the way to begin a two week trip to Spain. Once my dad realized he was robbed he was irritated the rest of the day and wouldn’t stop talking about it, so one would think that he would be hyper-vigilant. One would think. The very next day we had planned to take one of those double-decker tourist busses to sightsee. Every Spanish guide book that exists warns of the pickpockets in the Puerta del Sol area of Madrid. As we walked toward the busses, I kept telling my dad to pay attention and be watchful. “I am paying attention all the time”, he grumbled as he walked down the crowed sidewalk, videotaping while he walked. The largest man in Madrid, walking through the Puerta del Sol with a video camera covering one eye, narrating in English, and wearing size 15 white tennies. Yeah, no red flags there for pickpockets.
As he got on the red tourist bus, he continued to film, capturing the special moment of bus loading for future generations, so each moment of his next robbery was captured on the camera. An elderly gentleman came up behind him and as my dad was stepping onto the bus, this man went into my dad’s front pocket, grabbing what he thought was a wallet but was only a sunglasses case. My dad realized this was happening and the thief realized it was not a wallet, dropped it, and took off. Pure chaos on film.
Following that incident we stayed on the bus tour about two hours and during that time I watched my dad get chewed out by my mom and then—she relieved him of all of his money and proclaimed that he would be given a small daily allowance that he had to keep in a tiny belt pouch that he decided to lock with a luggage padlock.
In Spain, the popular image of the mighty bull, his testicles hanging for all to see, was a complete contrast to the image of my dad with his empty pockets and tiny, padlocked belt purse. A Castilian castration? Poor dad…………………….
Trippin' with Señora 