November 9: Today in the Plaza Mayor, I met a wineglass virtuoso. Seriously, he was playing Tchaikovsky. It was impressive.
Sarah bought me a stick to chew on. It tasted a little bit like licorice, but mostly like stick. Woody.
We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant with swings at the bar. No barstools at all, just really, really wobbly swings. Yet another brilliant idea that would never fly in the US.
I saw a woman in a glass cage (still not sure whether it was art or advertising),
a park at night,
There’s one restaurant in Madrid that’s so good and so cheap that you have to arrive 30 minutes before it opens to get a seat. Dinner was delicious, but the desserts were mindblowing. We ordered three for two of us, and the slice of chocolate ice cream covered by crème brulee swimming in a sea of rich chocolate sauce was beyond compare.
And on the way home we passed a market where herbalists insist they can cure whatever ails you.
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.
Having now eaten bubble and squeak (leftover potatoes and veggies mashed up and fried together the next morning) in London, I can vouch for the fact that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
November 7: Did some laundry today, so I now have enough socks and underwear to make it through Marrakesh. I can wear pants for weeks on end and shirts day after day. I’m even willing to double up on underwear, but I have to have clean socks every day.
I had to hang my clothes out to dry. I’ve never done that before – it was actually quire enjoyable. Though I suspect that if I had to do it more than once it would be less fun.
For lunch I went to a shop that had 100 different bocadines (little sandwiches) for 1.20 euros, did my best with the Spanish menu and then headed to La Museo Reina Sofia to listen in on Sarah’s art class. Today’s lesson was on Miró. There’s something really cool about learning about art and seeing the actual painting in front of me, rather than some tiny illustration in a textbook.
On my way home I stopped in a bakery and ordered the most interesting looking thing, which turned out to be a pan dulce. It wasn’t that good, so I went to an asian supermarket and bought a prepackaged horchata, which also wasn’t that good. And so I ended up going out for pinchos (little snacks, like tapas but you pay for them), followed by a trip to a Giangrossi where we sampled about 10 different mysterious Spanish flavors of ice cream(including carrot!) before finally settling on turrón, lemon ginger, fruit and granola, mint chocolate chip, and hazelnut.
November 6: I arrived in Madrid armed with four years of high school Spanish. Today was mostly spent recuperating from Munich, but I did have time to see a really pretty building.
I also made a quick pass through the Plaza Mayor as well as Madrid’s biggest park, though what really impressed me were the duck ladders on all the ponds. It’s funny to think that there was an actual person (or perhaps a committee?) who thought “Oh no, what if a duck lands in our pond and then isn’t able to get out?!” and then was willing to deal with all the red tape to actually get little tiny step ladders installed everywhere.
Evening finished by making some new friends over an authentic Spanish sangria. Authentic Spanish sangria is different from American sangria in that it’s got a half inch of undissolved sugar at the bottom of each glass. The sugar rush begins!
