Gettin Cheeky

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You know how in the US when you are walking towards someone and you’re eventually going to walk into eachother, so you both go right? Yeah…. That doesn’t happen here, they just run into you. Cars do not stop, and neither do the people. I got literally no sleep last night, our last night in madrid, because our hotel faced the street and everyone was running through the streets screaming and yelling and partying.

The other thing that is way weird to me at this point is they literally kiss everyone. When our tour guides picked us up they gave us all los besos, which is basically rubbing your cheeks together, and making an extremely obnoxious kissing smooch sound in their ear and then doing the same on the other side. It’s different from the French because they actually kiss eachothers cheeks. ( hence the title of this blog)

We walked around Madrid for a large portion of the evening. Many of you would be extremely proud to know that amoung the large list of new foods I have tried we can add beer. Still not a fan, but we found a cervezeria that served them for 1 euro. They serve sangria from the tap over ice. And when we said that we were american, they asked if we wanted chupitos, we had no idea what it meant but said yes. Turns out chupitos is the word for shots…. They do not mix or chase, but they give you gigantic pieces of lemon that you suck on after but they do barely anything to help. A lot of the places around the hotel in Madrid were a little… sketch looking, so we just ended up calling it a night around 2 , which is like the equvialent of basically not going out in the states.

After lugging my luggage down 4 flights of marble stairs, we drove from Madrid to Toledo. The drive between the two cities was pretty but still not very “spanish” looking, just a lot of olive groves (?) and intermittent factories. We arrived in Toledo around 11 pm, and it is seriously the most beautiful place that I have ever seen in my life. It still has the ancient roman walls built in a circle around the city with bridges over the water and big gates. There were some remnants of Roman Aqueducts surrounding the city but they are not used anymore. Yet again we took a tour of the city with museums and churches and all of that. None of the locals live inside the city because the streets are so narrow and the buildings are so ancient that it isnt practical. Instead they live in gigantic houses on the hillsides over looking the city. Don’t worry I promise I will post pictures at some point.

It’s funny because all of the locals think it is insanely hot but it was seriously nothing compared to the summers in CO. They said that the humidity won’t really kick in until we get to Granda, which will be tomorrow morning.

For lunch we stopped at a place called Tapaña, and had a typical spanish lunch. The first course was bread with lemon juice instead of butter (TRY IT!!) and then the second course was Paella Valencianan with Prawns (which in my opinion look like a cross between grass hoppers and shrimp) , shrimp, little mini clams, mussels and then some chicken thigh bones with no meat on them. The third course was bistec, or steak, and its about twice as large as a 6 oz steak would be around, but its about ½ a cm thick and was served on a bed of french fries. The waiter asked if we wanted ketchup, but almost kind of in a laughing way, because we were clearly american. For a bunch of seemingly relatively fluent kids, we sure sound like a bunch of idiots ordering. It took us a couple of tries to figure out how to get free water because if you just ask for agua they give you glass bottles that cost 3,45 euro which is more than a tapa!

There are a few things spaniards don’t use that we do that I am already missing. Salad dressing, vegetables, sauce of any sort and salt. You can ask for salt and sauces and all, but they don’t cook with them. Yesterday I orderd un “ensalada mixto”. And when it came it was lettuce with rice all over it, ovile oil, eggs, raisins… pretty much everything you could imagine. And that’s the other thing, their menus have ZERO description. It will simply say “Spanish omelette” and you have absolutley no idea what is in it and it is not appropriate to ask. In the US you have nearly every ingredient listed in front of you when you look at the menu! Which brings me to the food I accidentally ate, and hope to never have again..... rabbit. I was sitting there tasting this dish that we had gotten called el baguette de conejo... had no idea what conejo means and were dumb enough to ask the waiter because we thought it was interesting. I thought I was going to vomit instantly, but I didn't! Yay me! I mean, I have to admit... It was pretty decent, but I do not plan on trying it again.

They also have dessert for literally every meal. But it isn’t necessarily like what we have. For example today it was strawberries that had a little cocoa powder on the tip and were rimmed with sugar, rather than our cakes/ cookies/ pastries etc etc .

Ay dios mio that was a lot of writing, but I probably will not be back on for a couple of days because we go to Granada tomorrow!

Hasta luego!

Mucho Amor

~A

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