Japanese Food Crisis

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We sleep in and have a domestic morning washing clothes and paying bills. We discover that our flight to Corsica leaves quite early tomorrow morning, and that we'll need to order a taxi for 5am. We try to book a taxi on line. The first site we try won't recognise our address, and the second one says that all the available taxis are fully booked at 5am tomorrow morning. I think what this really means is that most taxi drivers in Madrid will be in bed asleep at 5am tomorrow morning. The third site says that we need to download an app to use it, but we can't get the app to download. Thankfully the fourth site seems to work. I hope that the taxi turns up. It would be a long swim to Corsica.

We ring home to talk to our offspring. They ask us how the trip is going, so we ask them if they've been reading our blog. Scott and Emma don't say anything. Troy says he skimmed one entry about a water park, which is from when we were in Dubai over a month ago, and it seems that none of them have read anything since. I'm shattered. Troy says that if we want them to read it, we need to make the headings more interesting. He says that he read the Dubai entry because it said "Water Park" in the heading, and that sounded moderately interesting. Perhaps we do need to make the headings a bit more enticing - in retrospect "Exploring Toledo" does sound a bit boring. I decide that I should change all the headings, and I'll start with yesterday's "The Prado" which I'll amend to "Encounter with Policemen with Machine Guns". Maybe that will grab their attention. Policemen with machine guns are mentioned in passing in that entry. Also, we did see them, which is a sort of encounter, so I shouldn't get into too much trouble with the misleading advertising people. I wonder if the misleading advertising laws apply to travel blogs.

Issy's raw fish cravings haven't gone away, and I think she'll start to get tremors if we don't eat some Japanese food soon. I Google "Japanese restaurants in Madrid". There aren't too many of them, but I do manage to find one about a kilometre from the apartment. Google says that it's currently closed, but will reopen at 8pm. I get Google Maps out to find out where it is, and carefully hand draw a map showing us how to get there. Google Maps says that it takes 13 minutes to walk there, but 20 minutes to drive, which Issy says is the price Madrid pays for having so many one way streets. It's our last day in Madrid, so we decide that we should make a last ditch effort to visit the Botanical Gardens. The restaurant is roughly in the same direction as the gardens, so we decide to walk past it on the way. We wend our way through endless streets and back alleys and arrive outside the restaurant. There's a sign in Spanish on the door. I try to translate it. I shudder. I'm pretty sure it says something along the lines of "closed for holidays, will reopen on 26 August". Issy looks like she's about to have a tremor. I encourage her to trudge on, but she struggles. We walk along Gran Via, and miraculously find another Japanese restaurant which looks like it's open all day. Her tremors seem to have dissipated slightly with the promise of raw fish later in the day, but I think I'll need to keep a careful eye open for any signs of possible recurrences. We decide that we'll visit the Botanical Gardens, and stop here for a combined lunch/dinner on the way back.

I've been reading a bit about Madrid on my iPad, and I hope that Issy might be interested in some of the information I've picked up. I tell her that Madrid is the third largest city in Europe, after London and Berlin. It's also Europe's driest capital city. I tell her that in August, Madrid only gets on average two showers of rain. I sense her interest in this conversation is fading, and that she's not really listening. She assures me that she is. I say again "two showers in the month". She looks aghast. She says that if people in Madrid only have two showers a month she wonders why they don't all smell. I was right. She wasn't listening.

We walk on across several sets of pedestrian lights. We've noticed that the sound these make would lead you to believe that you were in a Star Wars movie and that someone was trying to shoot you.

Signs at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens tell us that it's not a public park; apparently it's more like a cross between a museum and a research facility. It's laid out in a square grid, and all the plants have signs on them giving their common and botanical names, and where they come from. There seem to be plants from all over the world, but after a while it occurs to me that we've seen plants from almost everywhere except Australia. Issy says that it's time to leave. I think her tremors are starting again, but I tell her that I'm not leaving until I find a plant from our homeland. She says she'll get the taxi to drop by here to pick me up on the way to the airport in the morning. I wonder why they don't seem to have any plants from Australia. Maybe there's a feud going on between the Spanish Botanical Society and its Australian counterpart, or maybe they're worried that our plants might give their plants diseases. I think they should tell their plants to toughen up. Just when all seems lost I stumble across a grevillea, and the name plate says that it's from Australia. I tell Issy to look excited while I take a picture of her standing in front of it. She doesn't appear to share my enthusiasm - I think she's got raw fish on her mind.

We walk back to the Japanese restaurant. I keep hoping that the owners haven't suddenly decided to go on holidays in the last couple of hours. We order and eat. Issy leaves her raw fish until last. She puts the first piece in her mouth. She closes her eyes and looks like she's gone into an orgasmic trance. I'm afraid to speak.

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Photos

Australian grevillea, Botanical Gardens, Madrid
Issy trying to look excited.