A Day in Madrid

So, I’ve been to Madrid plenty of times, but yesterday was really good for lots of simple reasons. We went for the purpose of eating at a little café dubbed “The Hemmingway Café” just because Hemmingway ate there—not that that should really matter anyways because Hemmingway is a sexist, amoral fiend. But continuing…we found it and ate much too expensive tapas and limon granizados.

After this we decided to try our hand at the metro (I should probably mention that by “we”, I mean Paige and Bill and I). Our goal this time was to find “The American Store”…Bill really needed some grits…
Anyways, we found it and I got some cake mix, pancake mix, and syrup to make for Encarni (our Señora). Success.

Our next stop was the Parque de Retiro. It’s this gorgeous park in the middle of Madrid with a pond and ancient statues and such—since everything in Spain is ancient…
There were lot of street performers and painters and people selling jewelry and what not. I bought a really cute shell necklace for 3 Euros that I’m very proud of :)

What I really enjoyed about this park though was the overall atmosphere. We just sat in the shade of the edifice and watched people boating in the pond and read Don Juan Tenorio…or at least tried :) No hurry, No worries.

Time to switch subjects…

Water shortage

Spain apparently doesn’t have a lot of water. Much to my frustration, a good chunk of my money goes to my personal hydration purposes. Lets say I buy a water bottle for 1,50 € and within 2 ½ minutes its gone. Well, I still have to walk around such and such city all day—what shall I do? Let me tell you something; there are NO drinking fountains ANYWHERE, so I can’t refill. In fact I’ve only seen 2 since being in Spain…My only option is to go to buy another water bottle for another 1,50 €.

I know, frustrating huh? If I don’t die of being hit by a bus, I’ll die of dehydration.

Which reminds me—last week our bus hit a car. Ya, cool huh?

That also reminds me—Paige and I defied death today by crossing 6 lanes of traffic in Madrid…NOT on the crosswalk. Bill was too scared to join us, needless to say :) In fact he jumped the first 3 lanes to the island, then got scared and jumped back leaving us there by ourselves…actually no, there was a strange French man who joined us even though his wife and daughter were on the other side, clearly upset by his actions…or maybe the French are always upset at something.