Madrid Es Capital

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Hola Amigotes,

I miss Mack. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

20 JUNE - Wednesday • As you may recall from previous blog entries, I was a little undecided with what to do with these next two days. Valencia? Mallorca? Granada? They'd all been in the mix, but I decided that the best thing for me to do was head up to Madrid and use it as my home base prior to the weekend in Barcelona. So it took more train rides than necessary to get from Torremolinos to Madrid, but I finally got up here around 6pm.

Thanks to my Spanish colleague, I got a room at a hostal near the neighborhood where he grew up. 56€ a night for a great location, AC, TV, my own shower... unreal. I mean, previously, my idea of a hostal was one huge room with 10 bunk beds and a bunch of drunk college-aged kids and a communal toilet. No thanks. I'm too old for that crap. This place, Hostal Santa Barbara, is the complete opposite of my fears and concerns. It would have been 45€ for a single room, but they were all taken, so I got the "honeymoon suite," which basically means two separate beds. :-)

Wednesday night, I hung out in this neighborhood and got my bearings. I did a bunch of walking around and seeing what's what. I'd been up here - the Metro stop is Alonso Martínez - a couple times before, so I needed to make sure my memory of how things laid out was still accurate. Not that far west on Calle Sagasta from Plaza de Colón and the Biblioteca Nacional, the Hard Rock Café and El Paseo de la Castellana.

21 JUNE - Thursday • I got up early and went for a run north up la Castellana. I did about 27 minutes, but it felt like more with all the bus exhaust and second-hand cigarette smoke I ran through. Lots of stopping and starting. La Castellana is a wide boulevard/parkway that has a equally wide tree-lined sidewalk where people can go for a stroll, sit on a bench, stare at the fountains or even grab a bite in one of the cafe terraces. It's nice. After I got cleaned up, I went out for breakfast and the paper.

In Spain, by my count, there are four FREE newspapers that run editions during the week. FREE. As you approach a Metro stop, men or women stand there handing out editions to the passersby. You've got Qué?, Metro, 20 Minutos (because that's how long it takes you to read it) and ADN. The major cities have their own versions of each paper, but by far, I prefer Qué? to the others. Maybe it's the layout. I don't know. The news is mostly the same, just presented differently. At any rate, I grabbed one of each and headed for a place called VIPS for breakfast. I'd compare VIPS (pronounced 'veeps') to Denny's + Walgreen's because they have the same kind of "diner-esque" feed, plus a little shop where you can get books, snacks, toiletries, etc. The breakfasts are all pretty cheap. I, in fact, ordered a 'brunch' called the Americano, which is two pancakes, two eggs (scrambled, in my case), three strips of bacon and french fries. Pretty much everything in Spain comes with fries. The kids loved that fact, although some places make them better than others. VIPS does a good job. Their syrup is not maple, oddly. The choices were caramel (sort of close to the maple, but waaaay sweeter) and chocolate. Anyways, I put that grub away and started off on my first day alone in Spain.

I'm just going to give you the highlights, since the rest of the morning was spent blogging. I watched "The Simpsons" at 2pm in my hostal room. In Spain, they show a lot of U.S. television series, but obviously dubbed into Spanish. You know how in the U.S. you get about 8 minutes of show and then about 2 minutes of commercials, then 8 & 2 and 8 & 2? Here, it's more like 15 & 5, 7 & 3. I'm not sure which I like better. I mean, here you can do more stuff during commercials and still have time to get back. At home, you really have to hurry... unless you have DVR. Which, everyone in America ought to have, in my opinion.

Anyways, I spent the better part of the afternoon exploring the area around the center of Madrid - Metro stop Sol. I visited stores I'd been to before, had a beer or two in different bars that I previously frequented and I went to the Estadio Vicente Calderón, home of my favorite Spanish soccer team, Atlético de Madrid. They opened up a new team shop last summer, so I did a little damage there, buying a practice top and pair of shorts. That night I went out for tapas in three different places before calling it a night.

Next update will be my weekend in Barcelona.

Thanks for reading!
Love,
Kev

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