Friday 11.19.2010

One More Stop

We’re up at the crack of 7:00 this morning for the last leg of our trip. We gobble down the pastries we bought yesterday afternoon, get packed up and check out of our hotel. We were very pleased with our lodging here—certainly budget level but with a great location and pretty good service from the staff.

It is our normal half-mile walk to the Place Catalunya in sunshine and crisp temperatures. We catch the aerobus for the airport at 9:30 and enjoy the feeling of being in the biggest vehicle on the road for a change. We get dropped off before 10:00 and get in a hundred-person-line for check in for our 12:25 flight on Air Europa. After not moving for ten minutes John spied a sign for baggage drop-off, which Mary checked out. Since the guy at the hotel had printed our boarding passes for us, we could use this line with three people in it. One of the people was a diva, however, and tied up the clerk for 15-minutes before the first class desk person waved us over and got us through in a minute. Another long line at security, but as we approached they opened another line and we were first in the new line. Still lucky.

While we waited we got an egg McMuffin and a real coffee from Mac and got a table where John could get some computer work done. Mary went shopping in the duty-free shop for some pre-flight medicine. We moved to our gate area where Mary produced two little bottles of Rioja and a couple plastic glasses. It seemed a very well thought out plan.


The plane was packed and we all had to take buses to get to it out on the tarmac. There is none of the American sense of personal space as it seems normal to go full frontal contact in tight spaces. We think they must not teach physics in Spanish schools since no one understands that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.


The flight is a bit late arriving in Madrid and there is a bit more of a delay as we wait quite a while for luggage. We have decided that since we don’t know the ropes, we will take a taxi into town as we did in Barcelona and then weigh our options for leaving on Tuesday. The cab driver gets immediately into six lanes of stopped traffic heading into town and does his cabby best of zooming in and out of exit lanes to move up six cars at a time. After about ten minutes of this he explains to us that he is going to take a longer way into town but will get us there much, much faster. We think we understand him. He takes us on a 90mph thrill ride on inner and outer loops and finally into surface streets in the city. When he pulls to a stop we are across the plaza from our hotel, charged about ten euros more than we expected, but are probably an hour earlier than if we would have stayed where we were. It was an ok trade-off and how could we argue.


We have changed hotels here in Madrid. Our original choice was a compromise of price vs. location and we opted for a great price in a mediocre location. A couple nights ago we began to rethink that decision and to explore other options. As it turns out we found a higher rated hotel in the best location in the city for a few euros more. We are now at the Hotel Europa, which is on the “Times Square” of Madrid, the “Puerta del Sol.” The hotel has one star on the sign out in front that certainly made us nervous, but the place looked fantastic when we walked inside. The room was even better. It is roomy with a king bed, a big flat screen TV, a great marble bathroom and a window and little terrace overlooking the square. Mary mentions that there are a bunch of “old guys” downstairs so maybe part of the place is a pensioner’s hotel, but our room is definitely 4-star.


We take our get acquainted walk around “our” square and then up several spokes that run off of it. Virtually every city we have been in on this trip, from the smallest to the biggest, has had a pedestrian shopping area in the center, some longer than others, some wider, and sometimes there are just more of them. That is the case here. Many of the streets running off the square, and there are eleven of them, are pedestrian malls. We walk about six blocks up to Madrid’s “Broadway,” the Grand Via and poke into a couple stores. Mostly we just walk around to get a lay of the land and know which direction we will head in the morning.


It is a gray afternoon in Madrid and not the most welcoming of weather conditions. We are not initially impressed after the elegance of Barcelona, but will withhold further judgment until we get a better look. We go back to our great room and look at the swarms of people out our fifth story window instead of reading a book. It is much more entertaining.


Note: As we write this on Saturday evening there is a march of about a thousand people into our square with banners and flags. They are surrounded by police all the way and are now listening to political speeches. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog.


At about 8:00 we move into the Plaza Santa Ana neighborhood where a lot of the tapas bars live. The first place we try is a tiny operation, which we initially think is a one-man show. The fellow behind the bar is pouring drinks, serving food and cooking on a little grill behind the bar. Eventually someone else shows up to take over the grill. For the first time John gets something even he can’t eat. It is a dish we think is chorizo but it is deconstructed into fat, gristle and garlic chunks that are unchewable and inedible. We have some Patatas Bravas that are always good. A little later we move to a ceverzaria on Plaza Santa Ana and nibble a bit more with a beer.

School is still out on Madrid, but it has been a pleasant evening, we’re in a perfect location in a lovely room so there is a great deal of promise.

Today's Picture: Mary's view of Puerto del Sol, Madrid's Times Square.