November 8: Woke up late this morning, giving me just enough time to get to a local nunnery to buy cookies. Apparently their nuns aren’t allowed to even see men, so I had to use a turntable, enabling the nun and I to complete our transaction without ever laying eyes on each other.
The one glitch appeared due to my poor Spanish, so after several failed attempts to explain the different products and their prices, the nun just put everything she had on the turntable, I took what I wanted, put a 20 euro note down and rotated the turntable back, hoping I’d get change.
In Madrid, it is popular to have a big statue on top of your building.
Calle Fuencarral is the center of trendy fashion in Madrid, but I wasn’t impressed. I did see the New Rock store, though.
But all I ended up getting was a free HIV test. It was an interesting experience, interpreting the results with me speaking broken Spanish and my tester speaking broken English.
I continued to be impressed by European’s comfort level with sex. This display of inflatable sex toys is from the front window of a Diesel clothing store. You can just make out the inflatable sheep behind the old lady walking by.
On the way to dinner I passed the Museo de Jamon (Museum of Ham), a chain of stores selling meat as far as the eye can see.
I saw street musicians, rocking out on their panpipes.
At the Cava de Guitarra, our dinner stop, there’s always a guitar and a stool sitting by one of the walls than anyone can pick up and play. One guy did while we were there. I’ve never wanted to play guitar so badly.
In Madrid, tiny convenience stores are called Chinos because they’re all staffed by Asian immigrants. At night, the shopkeepers come out and sell snacks on the street to drunken, hungry bargoers.
Today finished off nicely with wandering the city until 5am. Plenty of time for playing in plastic,
barhopping with friends,
and of course, churros and chocolate. The chocolate dipping sauce is the consistency of hot, melted chocolate. Such an improvement over the American cinnamon and sugar version.
