Moving along in Spain

October 12, 2009

This was a holiday and most of the stores and the museums are closed. We know they are closed because we walked to the Prado only to find it and the rest of the town closed. No matter. We walk through the park and the botanical gardens. On the way we see the Spanish air force fly overhead to verify the holiday. We are not alone on our walk. All of Madrid is walking through the park. You’d think they had had enough walking. I say this because last night they were all out and walking the streets during the paseo (walking at night time) since it was a Sunday night and before a holiday. It looked like New Year’s Eve at home. Not my cup of tea. But we endure the flood of humanity. We walk slowly and stop frequently to sit on the benches to let the world pass by. We did the same during the morning while having breakfast in a plaza, acting as if we had no place to go, nothing to do. In reality, we didn’t. We were slightly tired and quite satisfied to do nothing but sit in the cafe. Be forewarned that it costs 30% more to sit outside of the restaurants, but in this case it was well worth it. Sitting on benches and in the café was one of the better things that we have done.

We had lunch/dinner at a local ceravecia…sort of a bar/restaurant. It is very common. The daily menu is the way to go. You get the wine, beer, or water, the starter, the entre, bread, coffee or dessert. This time the cost was 7.5E. It’s a deal. We are finding that the daily menu meals run from 7 to 15E. You must remember that this is dinner. For the 8:30 pm dinner, all you eat is a small appetizer. In this particular eating establishment they didn’t speak English but it’s not really a problem. It does help to know some Spanish. Emi had empanadillos and I had veal. I’m so glad that I took high school Spanish, and my Spanish phrasebook helps a lot.