Food

Food was a big reason for coming to Madrid. And so far I've had pigeon, wild boar, deer, anchovy-heavy tapas and many other unknown things laden atop slices of bagettes in the tapas bars. But ham is king in Madrid, from what I can tell. Hams are hanging everywhere. And just about every bar we stopped in has a kind of ham beast leg with its hoof mounted in a stirrup device like in the picture above. Paper thin slices are carved from it and draped on bread slices...typically, from what I could tell.

It looks gross, but I wanted some. But didn't know how to order it. So I finally got up the courage to go up the bar tender and pointed and I think I said "I want" in Spanish. He looked at me quizically, but then said "Uno?" I said "No, dos, por favor," since Michelle was hungry too. He was surprised, but called his bar helper over, who proceeded to slice up two very large platters of the ham. It took him about 15 minutes to carved the prociutto-like slices with his hand knife and arrange them nicely on the platter. It was delicious, but we could only eat about half of it before the fat and salt overwhelmed our bodies. It cost us about $50 US. Expensive snack. Live and learn.

Carlos

This is Carlos, a bartender at one of the tapas bars we visited early evening. No one was in the bar because last nigt was the European soccer championship between Liverpool and Madrid. Everyone was either home watching the game, or at bars that had TV. While Carlos no hablo mucho english and we no hablo mucho Spanish, we had a great conversation, I think. He made the greatest mojitos. I think Michelle invited him to stay with us if he ever came to the States. I think he proposed to Michelle.

Museo del Prado

Yesterday our body clocks still hadn't quite adjusted so we ended up sleeping until 11:00 a.m. Consequently, ended up missing our lunch date with Sean the O'Spaniard. So we ended up spending the early part of the day touring the Museo del Prado, an art museum with seemingly thousands of paintings, drawings and sculptures by El Greco, Rubens, Goya, Rembrandt, Raphael and some other hacks. It was amazing. But we couldn't take it all in...it would require at least two days to see the entire collection.

Flamenco guitarist

One of the bars we crawled into was this very small cave below ground that might have been 10 feet wide at most. At the end was a small stage where a flamenco guitarist was playing...amazingly well. Soon joined a women (in the picture) who sang some traditional songs. Michelle made friends with a couple young Spanish men (of course) sitting next to us (one was half-Irish who spoke English with a Spainish/Irish accent) who told us the guitarist is one of Madrid's best classical guitarists who bought the bar so that he could play whenever he felt like it.

For dinner I had lamb ribs; Michelle had a torilla (which is a potato-egg fritta in Spain).

We got lost on the way home last night, but I mastered enough Spanish ask a stranger "Excuse me, sir, are you Puerto del Sol?" He figured out that I meant to say "where is.."

The Irish-Spainard invited us to meet him after work tomorrow for lunch. So that's where we are off to.

Tapas!

We hit a string of tapas bars. Here's the first one, followed by a selection of offerings from the second one. We started out with Squid on a stick, piementos stuffed with shellfish and some tequilla-flavored cream, and something else I can't even venture to guess.

Looking for food

We crashed for few hours upon arrival at the hotel even though it was morning. The full affects of the Xanax and jet lag had not yet worn off. Then we headed out to find some food. First stop - The Plaza Mayor -- which lies in the center of old Madrid. It's a huge open square surrounded by French, Georgian and other architecture. Lots of shops and tapas bars surround it. Not sure who the statue of the horse-straddled dude is in the center of the square. Note the illustrations on the walls of the other building.

Lots of barkers, panhandlers and the such...

...on the streets of Madrid. This is what happens to them if they stay put too long without getting any contributions from the passing crowd: they turn to bronze.