Madrid
Posted: June 2nd, 2009 | Author: Rob Brogan | Filed under: Madrid, Summer 09 | Tags: food, Madrid, picture, Summer 09, video | Comments OffI arrived in Madrid Monday afternoon and there was some confusion about when my brother Ryan was arriving. I’ll skip all of that and try to do a rundown of what I did -
I was sweaty and exhausted from metro hopping and walking in search of the place. Once everything was resolved, I sat on the futon and put on some music. There is a sound system here with a CD changer and there was already some good music in it. I relaxed some and then I went out. I just brought some money and started walking, no map or anything. It is kind of fun to go somewhere new and simply walk in a direction for a while (try to sort of keep your orientation in mind) and see what is around.
You can find me on google maps if you put in: Calle de Princesa 3, Madrid, Spain. I am in a high rise apartment there. It is across from Plaza España so I walked there first. There is a Don Quixote statue by a fountain and whatnot… I contemplated what it must be like to be a country known for a classic piece of literature from over 400 years ago as I kept walking. I wonder what it would be like if the USA was only known for Mark Twain and we had statues and streets named after him and tourists would come and take pictures of them and buy copies of Huck Finn. I don’t know. I’m sure Spaniards don’t think of themselves like that, but really it is kind of funny when I come to Madrid and the most lucid impression is that you are in a city of literary geniuses from the days of old. Second, you think of kings, queens, and people dressed in midieval vestiments, and then perhaps third your thoughts wander to conquistadors.
But in short, I see everything in this giant city as a connection to old literature, and that could just be because that was what I got my degree in.
So, I walked around the plaza, inspecting the building labels across the street to find which one seemed the most interesting and I followed Gran Vía up a ways. Then I took a random turn down a smaller street to my right, again with a lot of signs poking out from the buildings, which grabbed my interest. I exhausted that little street quickly and it poured out into a bigger walkway that made me think of La Rambla in Barcelona. I think it was called A- something and it sounded familiar when I saw the name but couldn’t recall what I was thinking of.
There are lots of shops on this wide avenue with a couple street performers that I readily ignored and I did my best to pick the most obscure café, although failed royally as I noticed more of them later in the city – must be a chain. Well, I ordered a café con leche y un bocadillo de jamón. Then I changed my mind as the waitress was about to get the café, and asked for a beer instead. It was very hot and I was still stressed from traveling. A logical choice.
I relaxed and took my time with the Heineken and my Spanish jamón mini sandwich. I paid and then walked on, taking more random turns here and there. Lo and behold, I ended up on Gran Vía again and I headed back to the apartment.
I went and had some great Chinese food later [shrimp and veggies in curry sauce with fried rice - very good], and then saw a movie which is a blockbuster here ”Los Hombres Que No Amaban A Las Mujeres” (click poster for info).’ It was Swedish with Spanish subs, which proved to be a new challenge for me. I have seen movies dubbed in Spanish and I can follow those just fine, but during the first part of this movie I had a hard time reading the Spanish fast enough to understand it while watching the movie at the same time. After a while I got into the groove of it. As for the movie itself, I liked it, but it wasn’t amazing. I don’t know if they have it in America. It means ”Men that hate women” or ”the woman with the dragon tatoo” is the book in english. It is a best seller in Spain and the movie has been advertised like crazy, so I decided to see what all the who-haw was about.
That was Monday more or less. Now for Tuedsay (at writing: today).
My brother called around 9am and I got up, showered and went outside to wait for him. We agree that this place is really great. Huge, and cheaper than a hotel!
After getting settled in, Ryan and I walked to the royal palace (didn’t go inside today due to a huge line of sizzling, pasty Americans). We did go inside a cathedral, pretty cool, but after a while all the giant cathedrals look the same.
Then we took some random streets and got Dracula ice cream bars – an apparent favorite of Ryan’s. I guess they don’t have them in the US but they are really good! It reminded me of the ice cream man. Grape on the outside, some kind of red flavor on the inside, and at the bottom a kind of vanilla and something else.
On a secondary note I love how RED has become a flavor in contemporary pop cuisine. For example, hundreds of families coming to see a movie (referring to when I worked as a theatre concessionist) stare at the icee machine with large, well-lit, well-marketed labels saying PEPSI and CHERRY above a swirling mixture of brown and another red, respectively. The assuredly literate parents always ask their little kids trying to peer over the counter ”do you want to get the frozen drink again? What kind? The brown or the red flavor?” and the kids: ”RED! RED!”
Certainly this didn’t exist before the 1950-60s. Kind of odd. But even a grown boy like myself resorts to describing something as red flavored when I don’t know what is in it. I mean, it wasn’t strawberry, it wasn’t cranberry, and I doubt it was raspberry. After all the preservatives and sugars, who knows if it is really a fruit of any kind in the first place? So yeah, red. It was good.
To make a long story short, we ate some other things on our journey and went to the grocery store and got some Spanish yummies for the kitchen: jamón ibérico, mussels, olives, red wine, manchego cheese, sparking water, etc etc…
Stopped for ”breakfast” at a random place. I don’t know if it was a misunderstanding or if she normally makes them like this, but I asked for a bocadillo (little sandwich) and they didn’t have any at that time of day so I asked for a tortilla de patata (basically omelette with potato) and I ended up with the tortilla between two slices of bread! There’s Ryan enjoying his coke.
Alright, so don’t tell Dad, but I had some sardines with Ryan and I actually like them! We stopped at a small place called Mariscos Bilbao or something. Loads of fresh seafood and ham there.
These were done with my iPhone so the quality isn’t always the best.
Lastly, I took a little clip of the inside of the Cathedral by the Palace (I forgot all the names already). I was going to just take pictures out of it but here, you can have the whole thing: