Advertisement
Published: October 29th 2008
Edit Blog Post
My second day in Madrid started off with a huge chocolate covered pastry. They are all about their pastries there. We bought pastries on the way to the metro and then took the subway into the center of the city. Once we got off the metro we stopped to eat our pastries on a bench across from the National Library. The Spanish have some funny statues. I saw a couple statues that just made me laugh, for instance, while we were eating our unhealthy delicious breakfasts on the bench, the statue across the walk was a statue of a manly looking woman with fabric draped from her hips down. She had her hand to head and looked utterly confused as to where her shirt had disappeared to.
After breakfast we wandered down the paseo, which is a boulevard walkway that goes in between the lanes and they are covered in trees and fountains and grassy areas with benches. I like this type of sidewalk. We passed a couple of cute cafés where I tried my first cup of Spanish coffee, espresso with steamed milk. The lady chased me down outside the café to let me know I had forgotten my sugar
Spanish coffee
Cafe on the paseo and was utterly confused when I (or Danny) told her I had left it on purpose. It was delicious without it.
One of my favorite buildings in Madrid was the post office. It used to be something important but now it’s a post office. Every time we passed it throughout the weekend I wanted to go in but it was always closed.
We finally reached our destination of the Reina Sophia which is one of the 3 famous art museums of Madrid. It’s a more modern museum featuring Dali, Miro, and Picasso. We mainly went to this museum to see famous Picasso piece, Guernica. This painting was massive and there were so many different elements symbolizing the Spanish Civil War. It was a powerful painting. From the Guernica painting, we took a wandering tour of the rest of the museum for it was “modern” paintings and random pieces of art. We came up with fun stories for the pieces that were “untitled” but was a picture of a bird, or a piece that was half a ball sitting on the floor, random hoops hanging from the ceiling or a green bench. Fascinating pieces like that. There was a cool piece
that looked like a disheveled bookcase with antique books, but when you approached it, realized it was all carved out of wood. We rode in the famous glass elevators that from the top floor, you could see over the whole city. I did not know Madrid sat in the middle of the mountains. It is the greenest as well as the highest elevated city.
From the Reina Sophia we headed back towards the center of the city where we met Danny’s friend Rowena. One of the main aspects of the Spanish culture I wanted to experience was tapas, so Danny took me to a hole in the wall tapas bar called El Tigre that usually only Spanish dare go into. Of course, we decided to go during Spanish lunchtime on a Friday so the place was more packed than normal. There is no sitting room anyway, only random tables placed so you have to literally elbow your way through the crowd. We found a spare patch of ground that was open so we claimed our spot. You order your round by holding your hand in the air with how many glasses you want. The tapas automatically come with the beer.
View over Madrid
On the right are the glass elevators of the Reina Sophia and beyond is the view of Madrid from the top of the museum Danny ordered 3 so we got 3 juice size cups of beer and then a plate of bread with tortilla on top and some had a thin ham looking meat with tomato sauce. (My camera died here ) All this for about 5 euro. Tapas comes in rounds, so, the first round of beer was the bread with tortilla or thin ham. The second round of beer came with now two plates of food, one with fried potatoes with a spicy tomato topping, and the second with spicy Spanish chorizo on bread. The chorizo tasted exactly like salami. The potatoes were fried in olive oil so they didn’t have much flavor and the spicy sauce was a little intense, kind of like spicy vinegary tomato sauce. The one tapas Danny wanted me to try was the croqueta, which has a cheesy mash mixed with ham or chicken and then fried, so we kept moving up in the rounds because once you reach a certain round you get croquetas. So, we went for the third round, even after all of us were very full. Unfortunately, we were given a plate with bread and tortilla, and then a plate with bread and
Tapas
The pigs legs on the counter...mmm slices of ham with a spice sprinkled on top. This was my favorite which will surprise some of you that know me and my eating habits Sitting on top of the counters are pig legs. Every piece of the leg is visible and was not 2 feet from my face. To prepare the third round of tapas, they cut slices directly from the pig leg and slap it on the bread and immediately hand it over the counter to you. But I tried it, and it turned out to be my favorite tapas.
After the third round we had enough. We left El Tigre to head to this little touristy market that sold posters and paintings. This was right next to the famous Prado museum. Danny goes to the Prado every week for his art history class because they have many famous paintings. We originally weren’t going to go because he went so often he was slightly tired of it (sad isn’t it?). But I found out that many of the paintings I had studied throughout school, especially Rubens, were there, and that if I was in Madrid only once I should probably see the most famous art museum. We
Tapas
Tortilla on bread & ham on bread found out the museum was free after 6 so we went to the same café on the paseo where I had gotten coffee earlier in the morning and sat and had coffee and orange juice until 6. Since we had already been to one museum in one day, none of us wanted to spend any lengthy amount of time in the Prado. We looked at the brochure, found the location of our favorite paintings and then saw an edited version/ speed walking tour of the Prado. It was perfect. We went straight to specific paintings, took it in, said “ok, I saw it” and moved on. We made it through the museum in a half hour.
At this point, we were pretty worn out and eager to sit down. We took the bus back to Danny’s house with the full intention of cooking a meal. We got off the bus and headed straight into the nearest restaurant. This just so happened to be an American restaurant called VIP’s. I finally got to try croquetas which I was not a fan of. Too mushy. After dinner, we went to this gelateria for milkshakes. We all three got mint milkshakes, which turned
out to be made with Spanish milk thus tasting like bathroom cleaner. YUM. Although the milkshakes were less than satisfactory, the chairs were comfortable so the three of us sat and talked for a good hour about the difference between British and American English, mainly the difference between biscuits and cookies (biscuits are plain cookies, cookies have chunks in them, like “choc chips” as they call them). So now I know. The things you learn in Spain.
By the time we got home to Danny’s apartment it was 10 o’clock and because we were in Spain, still had to consider what we were going to do that night.. Their weekend evenings don’t start until midnight. Time passes so quickly though. It was unreal. We went out to a bar called Brown Square around 11:30 and the next time I looked down at my watch, it was 3:30!! We moved to another bar and once again, I became blind after about a half hour so we called it a night.
As a late night snack, Danny and I made the most delicious hot dog sandwiches. Once again, it was a long day but I really enjoyed the Spanish laid back lifestyle.
Late night
Sometime between 11:30 and 3:30 I can see why they live the longest out of the entire world, minus the hot dogs.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.178s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 49; dbt: 0.1358s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Auntie
non-member comment
milk
Sorry to see you "found" the milk I warned you about!!!!!