MADRID, SPAIN
2nd May 2002 to 5th May 2002
Ole from Spain...
Kat in the centre of Spain..and Madrd... Peurta del Sol "Gate of the sun"
Well Senorahs, Senores and Senoritas
Are you in for a treat with this email..... both Rob and I are writing it....go on... I hear you say " woooo hoooo" don't be shy now... it's ok to get excited when Rob contributes :) (ohhhh ok, I must admit...he does do all the searches for the weblinks...)
Well, we're sitting at this internet cafe in Madrid and there is wild Spanish music playing in the background, is very cool indeed, gives it atmosphere.
To be perfectly honest with you, I kicked Rob out of bed this morning (5 May) because he was fidgeting and wouldn't let me sleep. Now, I know that as a wife you are supposed to put up with these things, but there is no way in hell that I am going to miss out on beauty sleep just to be a good wife.... so being a woman of many wiles, I tempted Rob with the one thing I know that he absolutely LOVES and would NEVER say no to.... yip! The internet....
Plan worked, Kat got to sleep for another 2 hours.. hehehehe.. and Rob started our Spain email..... this is his work below, with me butting in for good measure:)
Thank god the keyboard's nearly back to normal. Paris keyboards suck....at least the Spanish keyboards are nearly normal...except for your @ and # and a few other characters which you have to hit CTRL ALT instead of just SHIFT to make them appear.....and with no instructions, (except in Spanish), figuring that out is no easy task...especially when you need @ to write an email address........all the letters are where they are supposed to be at least..
We found a very pleasant "hostal" right in the centre of Madrid in "Puerta
Del Sol" or "Sol" to the locals. It didn't even take us that long to find, I
sent Rob hunting whilst I sat on the side watching the world go by (told you
I was a woman of many wiles). Accommodation in Spain comes in basically 3
categories:
The Hostel - bottom of the range shared room accommodation.. they do have
private rooms sometimes but security and noise can be a problem.
the Hostal - mid range budget accommodation which there are seemingly
hundreds of them in Madrid
and the Hotel - for those who want to pay double or triple the price for a
bar fridge, kettle, a bigger bath towel and maybe supplied coffee satchels.
Speaking of bath towels, a lot of the places in Europe ( even hotels) seem to believe that by providing a towel the length of your arm, is enough to wipe your whole body with.... most times, you're lucky if you can wrap it around your head :(
We generally have 4 rules to our accommodation searches besides price when we
get to a new city...security, cleanliness, TV and our own bathroom. Spain
seems to have very very affordable budget hostals which are probably the
best accommodation we have stayed in so far. In London and Scotland the best
you can get for the criteria is about 45 pounds...or A$120. In Amsterdam
and Paris it seemed to be about 65 Euro.. or A$110. Good ol' Spain the
average seems to be 45 Euro...A$76. Very clean with marble floors and you
need to talk into a speaker at the front door to confirm who you are to even
get in.
Madrid city centre revolves around a plaza called Peurta del Sol, meaning "Gate of the sun". More Puerta del Sol
Off this plaza there are about 8 main avenues...and if you go down each one, each has its own unique character. Some are pleasant cafe strips with tables on the footpath, ( one even has this huge vent, like the one Marilyn Monroe got her dress blown up by, that we stood at for about 30mins. Why you ask did we sit at a stinky vent? good question dear friends.... Rob wanted to watch unsuspecting peoplesī faces as they walked over it.... he would then pack up laughing... yea.... it must be the air here:) no but seriously, it was rather funny) some are crowded with tavernas, some are mainly shopping malls, some more dedicated to hotels and one is dedicated to sex shops, gambling places and prostitution....
Now one guess which one Rob picked up on?????
Madrid has a distinct lack of the more "touristy" places of say London and Paris. Unless you are into art gallery museums....some of the best in the world are here...the sights are really few and far between. Since Rob and I have had our fill with museums for a while, it gave as ample time to stroll and sample each of these great avenues...
Probably one of the more eye opening moments was when we were walking down the "seedy" avenue...without really even noticing or knowing it initially. There were just more sex shops and gambling dens around than normal.
All off a sudden, Rob asked me if I noticed that there were a seemly high number of girls...most standing alone next to a doorway or pole with a small handbag...all the way down this street. I looked around a confirmed that this was true, but I wasn't certain if they were working girls... I mean they didn't look like pros.... no cleavage, short skirts, fishnet stockings, solicitous remarks... just standing there all covered up with a handbag.... veeeeery strange....hmmm
We then did what any respectable couple would do in this situation...we walked back up and down the street to confirm our suspicions...about a kilometer each way...then sat at an outdoor cafe watching and cementing our theories for an hour or so :) ....until it started getting darker about 8pm and we scurried back to one of the more safer tourist cafe strips.
One of the strikingly pleasant things about Spain is its relative cheapness compared to other European countries and the Australian dollar goes much much further here. To show this, we decided to invent an Index to compare each country ( please read " Rob decided to invent and Index" and Kat had no choice).
If you are unfamiliar with Consumer Price Indexes, it simply is a method countries use to compare a basket of commonly used public goods (e.g. bread, milk, coke, smokes, petrol, interest rates, leather g-string underwear (ahem), and compare the prices result either over a period of time (i.e. for inflation) or against another place or country (i.e. relative comparison)....guess who wrote this piece of valuable trivia?...hehehe
Anyway we have decided to come up with our own Index to show this in the countries visited so far....and thank you to Mano for the term "Bobkat"...a term he affectionately (well hopefully affectionately!!!)...has called us by:)
This index comprises of 2 items we see and use in every country so far....1) a bacon and egg breakfast and 2) an hour on the internet at an Internet cafe. And no, we do not have bacon and eggs everyday...our cholesterol is high enough...but we do see it very often :) (says Rob who had 4 eggs yesterday.....)
For your info we have converted the city's/country's currency for you into Australian $$$$ index figure. (1 Euro = A$1.70 and 1 Pound = A$2.70)
noooooo..... don't go....... this is actually quite interesting!!! (promise Rob is not holding gun to head for me to say this)
Bobkat Consumer Price Index
Athens - Bacon&Eggs = 6Euro, Internet = 4Euro, Index = A$17.00
London - Bacon&Eggs = 6Pound, Internet = 1Pound, Index = A$18.90
Scotland - Bacon&Eggs = 5Pound, Internet = 1Pound, Index = A$16.20
Amsterdam - Bacon&Eggs = 5Euro, Internet = 2Euro, Index = A$11.90
Paris - Bacon&Eggs = 6Euro, Internet = 2Euro, Index = A$13.60
Madrid - Bacon&Eggs = 3Euro, Internet = 1Euro, Index = A$ 6.80
Some may argue the relativeness, value and sample size and scope of the measurements above, but we stand by our intensive research.... as you can clearly see....and our wallet testifies to the fact too...that you can have higher cholesterol and square eyes at much cheaper prices in Madrid than in say London....and the portions in Madrid are very filling indeed.
Speaking of filling portions, right opposite our hostal room was a place called "Museo del Jamon", this literally means museum of ham.... now you might say....why the hell would you have a museum dedicated to ham? (which is exactly what Rob said when I pointed it out to him)... but no dear friends, it is actually a delicatessen come bar/restaurant/coffee shop that has a few hundred legs of dried ham hanging all over the place ( almost like a big butcher shop). The ham is spiced and dried in various ways and is then sold to other shops, used in the deli or served up in the restaurantsī dishes.
Rob at the Museo Del Jamon (Museum of Ham)
Very yummy place to eat, If you can handle standing under the legs of ham whilst eating.. hehehe ...breakfast usually consisted of a cup of delicious coffee, fresh fresh orange juice and a slice of toast or croissant for 1.80.... go beat that!!!
This place is almost open 24 hrs and people start drinking beer from 8am, what a way to start the day:)..... no really, we didn't :)
Rob and I really didn't do a lot of sightseeing in Madrid, it seemed more the place to wonder about the streets, sit in the middle of the water fountain with the other locals at "Sol" and watch the world go by. The Puerta del Sol is the official centre of both Madrid and Spain, and a slab of stone, known as Kilometre Zero, marks the spot where six of Spain's national routes begin and three of the city's 10 metro (underground train) lines converge.
At night you'd go to a bar and have tapas (or as Rob calls them.. "tampas") and Spanish beer. Tapas are bits of toasted homemade bread, drizzled with olive oil and herbs and laden with piquant horsīde oeuvres; Chorizo sausage, cheese, various types of ham, salmon etc etc. The other cool thing about these bars is that each time you order a round of drinks, they bring you a small plate of snacks as well, olives, salami, bread sticks... so with a few tapas and drink/snacks... you can easily have a great dinner.
Bar we frequented in Madrid
I did attempt to have a paella here, but ended up going to this very touristy restaurant that had paella from a box, so it's kinda killed the experience for me:(
Sunday we decided to go to this much talked about flea market called "El
Rastro", it's supposedly huge.... so we casually woke up in the morning, had
our coffee con leche with churos (coffee with milk and Spanish donuts) and
leisurely strolled passed
Plaza Mayor
(More Plaza Mayor and
even more)
where we came across 50 or so stalls with coin collectors selling and
swapping their wares. It was very cool indeed, seeing how many people were
avid collectors. After I twisted Rob's rubber arm and convinced him to buy a
proof set of Euros, we set off for
El Rastro Market.
More
El Rastro markets and
if
you want more
We came to a vast area of narrow streets all cram-packed with stalls, nothing really interesting to report, other than that I managed to find some excellent value cotton underwear as all mine got burnt in the drier.... word of warning to all you girls out there.... do not bring lacy underwear on your travels as the lace does not withstand the heat of the tumble driers....and when it's raining constantly you can't hand wash either:(.. cotton cotton cotton!!!!:)
A few hours were spent wondering the streets, as I would always stop at the corners and gawk at painted tiles. You find painted tiles everywhere; On restaurant walls, street signs are written on them with a pretty picture background etc etc... they are very pretty and depict all kind of scenes. Rob thinks I'm loony....
Got back home later on in the evening, and went to our favourite watering hole for our last tapas and beer,...we were leaving for Barcelona the next day. Must be the Spanish beer but I tend to drink it a whole lot faster than Rob believe it or not, oh ok... I'm a pisspot.. what can I say:)