Meandering on the Way — February 7-12, 2023

Tuesday, February 7

Today’s excursions were all on foot. We needed a few things to make our lives more complete and it was time to see if we could find them. In the morning we walked to a little shopping area about a half mile west of us. The weather was coldish, 40 degrees and windy, but the area we walked through was nice. Much of our route was along the street shown below, with its park-like center and widely separated lanes of traffic.

When we arrived, we found a pharmacy, a tobacconist, a couple of boutiques, three different bakeries, a nail shop, an herbalist, and an interesting looking little book store, which we did not go into for fear of losing our focus for the day. Instead, we went into the pharmacy and got some allergy medicine and sundry other things.

In the same area, there are also three different cafe/bar/restaurants. We decided that we should try one of them for lunch. At this point, however, it was only 11:45, which is way too early for lunch around these parts. So we took our purchases back home, rested a bit, and then went out again.

Of the three, we decided to try El Rincón de Carlos (Carlos’s Corner) for our first attempt at a local restaurant. We got there at 1:45, just in time to get a table before the rush. That was good because we saw as we entered that the place was quite small, with space for just six or seven tables. The daily lunch special, called the Menu del Día, consisted of two main courses, dessert and a drink: plato primero, plato segundo, postre, y bebida. There were four choices for the first course, four choices for the second and four choices for dessert. For us, just ordering was a laborious process. One difficulty was that the day’s options were written on a chalkboard in some kind of crazy all caps script that we found almost impossible to read. There was only one waiter, Carlos himself, and he was patient with us. The food was very good and was accompanied by a couple of crusty bread rolls and a bowl of awesome green olives. We had flan for dessert and that was awesome too. Besides the fact that the food was delicious and reasonably priced, E was super impressed that there was a table cloth, something hard to find in USA these days.

Wednesday, February 8

Today we visited M and M, more of Eve’s dear friends whom she has known since the era when she lived in Spain during the seventies. The trip involved another train ride into the area northwest of the city. We’re getting better at this train business and this trip was a little more relaxed. M and M met us at the station and we immediately set off on a walk around the little town where they live. The Guardarrama River runs through the town and the site has a long history of settlement. We crossed the river on a modern foot bridge that was built immediately above the crumbling stone arches of a much older bridge.

The desire to see M and M was one of the main reasons we came to Spain at this time. It was quite wonderful to see them again.

Thursday, February 9

Today we went down to the oldest part of Madrid. There we met up with our friend M, who took us on a lunchtime tour of the area. We walked around through the narrow streets, sometimes treading on pavement first laid down centuries ago. Madrid was occupied by the Romans at one time, and later by the Arabs. We saw a section of wall dating from the twelfth century and passed through a place once known as La Puerta Cerrada, the main entrance to the city during the Muslim times that was shut tight each evening and not opened till morning. We also passed by an eatery called El Botín, which first opened in 1725 and which holds the Guinness world record as the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the world.

Our peregrinations were punctuated, of course, by stops at four different cafes featuring different sorts of treats. The first was a place called Alabardero; we don’t remember the rest exactly. This was partly due to the fact that each of the first three stops included a drink of some kind: first a small vermouth, then a small beer, and then a glass of wine.

Friday, February 10

We went downtown again to day and had lunch with E’s friend Marga, who took us to a place called LasTortillas de Gabino. This was a definitely a higher class of food that we got from El Rincón. And they were pretty serious about tablecloths. Whenever a table was reset with a clean one, a waiter had to come out with an hot iron and smooth it down. Nice big iron, too. Anyway, our long, relaxed meal was amazing.

On a much more serious note, our walk from the Metro to the restaurant took us past the Turkish Embassy, where relief supplies were being collected to be sent to the areas affected by the earthquake.

Teams from Spain are in Turkey helping with rescue efforts. Spanish TV has some heartrending video.

Saturday, February 11

Lots of activity today, maybe too much. E has been on a quest for slippers and warmer pajamas. Spain has gone into energy conservation mode due to the effects of the Ukraine war and our building is heated no higher than 67 or 68. So off we went to a shopping center in the Mar de Cristal neighborhood, which is just four Metro stops away. It turned out to be just what we needed. There was a huge Carrefour hipermercado and a bunch of smaller stores. And of course there was a cafe where we could stop for a snack. This being Saturday, the Carrefour was jammed with shoppers. But the lines moved pretty quickly—we were in one of the quick checkout lanes—and it was amazing to see such a huge operation going full throttle.

Later on we did some food shopping closer to home and tried to rest up for our big evening adventure, which was going out to a movie in the downtown area. We met our friend M (there are lots of M’s in this story) who lives downtown and who had already gotten the tickets. We went to a large movie theatre called Verdi and saw The Fablemans. It was in English with Spanish subtitles and we all liked it a lot.

When we came out of the theatre at 9:30 pm, Madrid Saturday night was in full swing. There were lots of people on the streets and the cafes were crowded—both inside and outside, where people young and old were drinking, eating and talking all bundled up against the cold. We finally found a cafe with a free table indoors and did our share of the appropriate activities. M really wanted to take a video of the place, to catch the noise level, the very Spanish faces, all of the animation and the gesturing, the clothes and the hats, the serious expressions of the hardworking waiters. But that would have been a little too weird, even for M.

Sunday, February 12

We got home at 11:30 Saturday night, at which point our health apps had recorded more than 15,000 steps for the day. Sunday needed to involve a little less walking! Our biggest accomplishment for the day was doing a load of laundry, which is an all day affair. Although our apartment has a washing machine, drying is another story. It involves hanging things in the living room on a rack in front of the radiator, and then rotating them from time to time to hasten the process.

Aside from that, we ate three meals in and did our packing for our next outing. The plan is to pick up a rental car in the morning and drive north to the Pais Vasco, the Basque part of Spain. More on that next week, assuming we actually manage to do it.

Until then, we have this report on the canine situation, which has improved vastly since E’s times here in the 1970s. According to one of our local sources, there are more dogs than children in Madrid.