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Published: January 1st 2016
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view from our hotelWe had breakfast as our same little pastry shop them walked around the “flea market” junk sale in the square. There was one book’s salesman that really wanted to sell us some books. Tim really like him. We returned to our hotel, finished packing and then got a cab to the train station. Well, you know it’s bad when you know enough Spanish to know that the kids are talking about you but not enough to know what they are saying. “mucho Americano’s dos” then blabber, blabber, blabber to the taxi driver. We still don’t know what the blabber was.
We arrived at the train station early and found a seat and continued chatting. Our train was quick and quiet and we arrived in Madrid. Nicky and Tim found that one of the metro lines went within a block of the hotel so off we went on the metro. 13 stops later we arrive. Then we have to orient ourselves to the layout and eventually we find the road for our hotel. We check in. Susan and I are on the 3
rd floor (remember in Europe it is floor 0, 1, 2, …) No elevator in this hotel. Up the
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plaza de sol in the middle of the day tiny winding stairs we go with our suitcases. It wasn’t horrible but there were others behind us so, we felt pressured. But we made it. Nicky and Tim had another floor to go to. They are on the 4
th floor. The room was nice, much smaller than our others, but it was fine. We put our “hot” diet cokes on the balcony to chill down. (you see we had a refrigerator at the last hotel but when we woke this morning the drinks were not the least bit cold) – yes we did turn it on and it ran all night and we heard it but it just didn’t work.
We next started out across the city to find the plazas where the celebration happens. The main party is at Plaza De Sol, the smaller plaza is Playa De Mayor. Both plazas were nearby. We then found a place to eat and had a light lunch. Next we went back to the hotel to nap as we wanted to make sure we were rested for the evening. The hotel had in our room a little can of 12 seedless, skinless grapes for the evening. You see, the tradition is
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plaza de sol to eat one grape a second before midnight. Some people say it is one grape a month to get rid of the bad from last year. Some say it is to welcome in the 12 new months of the New Year. We hear people sometimes choke on the grapes.
We nap and take it easy. We try to check stuff online but the internet is VERY spotty. I at least got the blog out.
Nicky had reservations for dinner at an Indian restaurant. All the main places were full and very expensive. We all love Indian food so it was fine. We walked to the restaurant, many blocks away and arrived at 8:30. Of course, we were the first to arrive. Actually, no one else came until around 9:30 and later. The meal was great and was another of the “plated” dinners where it comes out in courses. For desert we had a “celebration” desert from Bangladesh. It was delicious, but something in it sure dried out our mouths. It think I was thirsty the rest of the evening.
Next we walked towards Plaza De Sol. No one is on the streets it’s weird. We walk and
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plaza de mayor walk. Eventually when we get close to the plaza, we start seeing more people, then we see the LINE to get into the plaza. That’s where everyone is. The line was as long as you could see. We walked onto the smaller plaza. Not many folks were there yet and it was about 30 minutes before midnight. Tim pulled up the news and saw that they were limiting the number of people into the main plaza so we just hung out in the smaller plaza. More people slowly arrived but there was no countdown clock in the plaza so no one was really sure when the official midnight really was. Many other people had the grapes like ours and we all got our grapes ready when it closed in on midnight. Someone started counting and we started eating our grapes. I counted in my head so I could keep the grapes flowing and I had 13 grapes. We decided it would bring me better luck. I like that. The rest of them didn’t count so they can’t say how many grapes they actually ate. They were just trying to stuff them in their mouth. We hung out for a few
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plaza de mayor more minutes, toasted our empty can of grapes and then headed back to the hotel.
Happy New Year.
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Patty
non-member comment
Happy New Year!
Sure looks cold there! Best wishes for a great New Year to all your family.