Tapas and Funny Hats in Madrid

Our Spanish road trip was now on the home stretch and we were on our way to our final city: Madrid.

We did our best to enjoy our last few hours on the road. When we got to the city we were going to return the rental car.

This is sort of random but I thought that the road signs indicating "hospital" were interesting. 

Our hospital signs in the US are pretty stupid. If you don't speak English you are pretty much screwed.

We stopped at a roadside McDonald's for some quick food. This time I went for the forbidden fruit: the McDonald's beer.

We ditched our (third) rental car at the airport and grabbed an Uber to the Airbnb. Please don't be crazy, new Airbnb guy. The ride over was amusing because as our pickup place was the Madrid airport our driver figured we were fresh off the boat and was asking us all of these patronizing newbie questions as small-talk. You don't know what we've been through, dude.

Our little apartment was very tiny but also very nice and bright and clean. My first question was: how do you use the washing machine? The guy reached into a nearby drawer and pulled out the user's manual which was written in several languages. I feel a good review coming on!

Sweet, sweet laundry.

There was a tapas walking tour in our Lonely Planet guide book so we did that for dinner. It was a lot of fun.

In a way doing Madrid last was a perfect decision. It was by far the most touristy location we'd been to so far, and so the city was trying to sell all of the Spanish things that tourists want even though they are not from the Madrid area.

For example this poster is advertising the Valèncian paella that we devoured in València.

The man painted on the wall of this establishment is doing the high up cider pouring thing that we learned how to do on our tapas tour of Barcelona. It was if we were getting a nice little greatest hits refresher of our time in Spain before we returned home.

From scouting out all sorts of restaurant signs I learned that "para llevar" means "take away".

For the most part we just pointed at things that looked good not completely knowing what the heck we were eating.

The thing on the bottom shelf closest to the camera is topped with piles of baby eels.

I think this was brie cheese with some sort of fruit topping.

In some ways Christmas feels like pizza. Sure it came from Europe, but we weaponized it then aimed it right back where it came from with Coca Cola Santa and Bing Crosby.

These little bread slices with meat on top were real tapas, as they came free with the drinks. Our server guy here had lived in California for a bit and I gave him a little gentle Midwestern ribbing about that not being "real America". He replied that Madrid isn't real Spain.

We also bumped into an American family that we had met previously while on a walking tour in Valéncia. That further cemented my certainty that this was like the last episode of Lost or Survivor with lots of flashbacks of important past happenings. 

We heard so many more non-Spanish languages spoken in the streets of Madrid that the place felt a little like a Spanish zone of Disney's Epcot.

As we approached the Christmas Market on the Plaza Mayor we saw a lot of people wearing crazy hats and colorful wigs.

I convinced Lydia that she needed a poop emoji hat to commemorate our very poopful Spanish Christmas.

There were a few stalls selling nativity scene stuff. I searched for a caganer in vain as that's not really a thing in this part of the county. Especially after witnessing the Catalan zeal for independence I came to view Spain as more of collection of ancient kingdoms rather than a country. I think a large reason that the US is so cohesive is that its such a young country, and most of our history has been together. The EU on the other hand, and even some of the member countries themselves, have long histories full of warfare and atrocities against each other. It's clear to me that people remember those things for a really long time.

The square was crazy tourist-trappy. There was a guy in a matador costume shilling meats out in front of a "restaurant" called the Museum of Ham. No thanks.

One touristy place that I did enjoy was a visit to Chocolatería San Ginés, famous for their churros and hot chocolate. The line was crazy long and we said screw it, but as we were walking away we saw that they had overflow seating in the next door nightclub.

A hardcore obsession with one really good fried dough product reminded me of our stop in at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans.

We didn't have any big tourist boxes to check today, and we had a lot of fun. This was like the retirement portion of our Spanish journey.

First Day in Spain: Tapas in Salamanca

Today it was snowy in New York among other places and so flights were delayed across the board. Luckily Lydia anticipated this last night and booked an earlier flight. She's good at this.

Our Southwest flight was as delayed as it was Christmasy.

I felt real cool when the December issue of Southwest The Magazine featured a cover story with that awesome Oxbow Saison Dell'Aragosta beer brewed with lobster that we recently bought in Maine.

As a result we arrived in LaGuardia several hours early and now had to kill all of that pesky time. We had a couple of complimentary United Club day passes on hand from a credit card so we decided to burn those and spend our time in the lounge. The spread was pretty typical for a domestic lounge: soup, cheese cubes, some fruit. A couple of beers, wines, and some rail spirits were also free so that was nice.

I found a promo code for a free Uber ride up to $65 from a few select major airports like a month ago that I've been biding my time to use. It worked perfectly on the trip from LaGuardia to JFK. Coupon killing it so far! I think it's even good for two uses so I'll hit it again on the return trip.

Tell you what, one thing that Americans know how to do is efficiently load a damn plane. Maybe a half an hour before our flight left everyone lined up in a giant line that then turned into a mob. We just sat and watched. There are assigned seats people!

This video that my buddy Sus sent to me keeps coming to mind in these situations. It's about how different people/cultures experience time and how it affects their lives.

We flew to Spain with Air Europa, Spain's third largest airline. It's nice when you fly to a country on one of their own airlines. It's like an in-between world that one must pass through where the foreigners and the citizens slowly trade places. I went from New York which is like America central HQ to a little plane where often the Spanish crew didn't even bother to translate announcements into English. At one point my only warning that the pilot was expecting turbulence was the sound of everyone around me clicking their seatbelts together.

The Air Europa lady flight attendants had interesting uniforms that had a sort of apron buttoned to the back.

We're so hardcore that we landed in Madrid, Spain after an overnight flight and we immediately got a rental car and drove two hours to Salamanca.

Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport had a Botero sculpture right outside the exit. This is the part where I brag about going to the Museo Botero in Bogota, Colombia.

Our rental is a big white boxy-looking Škoda Yeti this time. We had a Škoda on Lydia and my first international trip to Iceland too. It's a Czech brand.

Much like Ireland, Spain is one of those magical countries where there are just castles everywhere. So many castles that seeing one on the side of the road is not a big deal.

When I saw this giant bull-shaped billboard in the distance I assumed it was advertising something. Nope.

Driving in Spain hasn't presented any huge problems yet. They drive on the right side of the road which is a good starting point. The stop lights do something a bit different though. A green light will turn to yellow then red like I am accustomed. Well after being red a bit it will go to a flashing yellow which is like a yield sign. After it does that for a while it will go back to green. 

Our Airbnb host insisted on meeting us on the side of a pretty busy street which necessitated a couple of passes and a few extra roundabout loops. 

Our hosts Abigail and Guillermo were super nice and insisted on giving us some tourist tips before they left. The little pink strips are little labels that they had applied by hand. "Are you vegetarians? Salamanca is a meat city." I just stood there awkwardly as Abigail did the kiss on each cheek thing as a hello and goodbye. Um, howdy to you too? That is going to take some getting used to.

Salamanca is a big college town and its presence in the city's shops was evident.

Apparently if you go to school in Spain you get to wear awesome Harry Potter looking graduation clothes.

We walked along a busy shopping street until we hit Salamanca's Plaza Mayor. It's a big public square lined with shops and restaurants.

City Hall is that raised part of the square back there.

I wanted to get involved in the tapas, small plates of food, scene as soon as possible. Tapa literally means "top" and I've read a couple amusing stories about how this name came to be. One is that both tavern owners and taverns goers were illiterate and so owners would offer people little samples of the food on offer on a pot "top". Another explanation was that the sweetness of Spanish sherry would attract fruit flies, so in between sips bargoers would cover their glass with a "top" of a piece of bread or cheese which they would then eat afterwards. "Pincho" is a name the Spanish use for essentially the same thing, except it refers to the toothpick often used to keep toppings on a slice of bread. The first stop on our tapas hunt was Mesón Cervantes. 

I liked the building a lot but it was on the main square and just so crowded that it was hard to deal with. I was glad we poked our head in but we left without ordering anything.

We found the atmosphere in Bar Restaurante Jero Meléndez a little more inviting.

This was like a fried fish triangle a la Long John Silvers but with a nice red sauce and pepper slices on top. It was really good. The whole tapas thing is fun because you can pick lots of different things and many people are standing around so you can mingle with the cool kids more easily. Tapas are a pain for the exact same reason. Rather than stumble through ordering something once I have to stumble through it 5 times to eat enough little dishes to make a meal. I guess it's good Spanish practice for me, and patience practice for the poor bartenders.

Both places we went to had a dizzying array of choices with little or no menus present.

Some Spanish ham on toast for €2? Sure why not.

The Casa de las Conchas has a cool seashell facade going on. It currently houses a public library.

Some of the buildings had this Latin graffiti looking writing all over.

The New Cathedral began construction in 1513. So new.

Our last stop was the Roman Bridge. It was very old and bridgey.

The bridge is visible on the city's coat of arms.

Monkey is "mono" in Spanish. Do you get it?

Lydia and I disagree over whether a man of my stature deserves to have a red velvet jacket.