Sunday, August 5, 2007

Vacation-2

Next phase:Spain






Highlights from Madrid






-Arriving at the airport and searching for Customs/Passport control, and even inquiring of the security guard, who said we were free to go. What? This is the country that got bombed a few years ago? We don’t even get a stamp in our passports?

-Blowing a fuse in our hotel room and having to switch rooms at 1 am.

-Searching for “helados” every day when we got that ice cream urge.

-Trying not to eat the olives and bread and other appetizers that they put on our table, because it cost extra.

-Arriving at a restaurant too late for lunch and having the owner keep the place open just for us so we could try paella, the national dish!





-Trying desperately to remember Spanish, when all that came to mind was Russian.

-Finding out that Flamenco shows and bullfighting starts at 10:30 or 11:00 pm…past our bedtime!

-Riding the all-day hop on/hop off double-decker tourist bus!

-Browsing a big used/rare book fair.

-Searching for lakes and other bodies of water by which to relax, and finding out that a “lake” can be a man-made pond with paddle boats.

-Asking for directions and always receiving the answer “Go left.” “A la izquierda” became our Spain motto.

-Trying to be Spanish and trying “tapas,” only without the bar-hopping.

-Taking a siesta in the botanical gardens…just collapsed on the grass under the trees. In Spain we saw a lot of people doing this, and it seemed like a pretty nice custom. Hopefully nobody thought we were intoxicated.





(unrelated photo of Goya outside El Prado museum)

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like so much fun! How was the paella? Was it worth it? Certainly looks yummy. See anything cool at the book fair? That sounds so amazing.

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