Report from Madrid: Day 5

November 10: No city has exploited my love of street food as successfully as Madrid. After watching an impressive street performance,

I was hungry so I had some roasted corn on the cob. No butter, just lots of salt. I’ve never had corn on the cob that way before, but it was delicious. Almost worth the $3 I paid for it.

I ate a $2 waffle cone. No ice cream, just the cone. It was good.

Also among today’s purchases: Nutella pie, toffee, orujo (a Spanish liquer), horchata, chocolate covered everything, and Turron, a popular almond-based Spanish candy that was surprisingly hard to track down.

Pre-dinner meal was at El Tigre, a popular Spanish tapas bar. In Spain, when you order a drink, you get tapas, which is Spanish for free food. And at El Tigre in particular, you get a lot of free food. I love this city.

Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant where we ordered four desserts between three people. The black sesame flan was good, as was the red bean ice cream, but yesterday’s dessert just set a really high bar.

Tonight found us at the street market for a third time where I assisted a bronze statue and examined vats of olives before discovering my new favorite snack in the entire world: roasted candied sunflower seeds. I can’t even put into words how much more delicious these nuts were than every other roasted nut product I’ve ever eaten.

This has been a productive trip. Before arriving in Madrid, I was under the impression that I didn’t like calamari, roasted chestnuts, or sunflower seeds. Turns out I was wrong on all counts.

I took the subway home and felt sorry for anyone who gets violated from behind by a large blue rectangle.