and why we prefer home-tels.
After coffee, yogurt and an orange, Himself was up and away in the dawn drizzle, only to be quite early. That's the hazard when you don't know the city. Sometimes the walk looks like 15 minutes, but it goes straight up and down so it takes twice as long. Madrid is hilly. The closest Metro is a puffy climb to the hotel. The one further is a pleasant loop through a park and along some interesting shops. Poor Himself not only got dampish but the meeting was not all that constructive. Even lunch wasn't great.
On the other hand, the meeting ran out of steam an hour early, so he was delighted to hear I had targeted this as the sop to the miserable grim weather: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolater%C3%ADa_San_Gin%C3%A9s.
So off we went by foot. I felt like we were walking through Chinatown. There are multiple small stores all run by folk who make it seem like Beijing's neighborhood around the Geoscience University campus. The other preponderance of stores all have Spanish cured hams as their theme. It makes it look like the only meat here is ham. Not true, but you have to go find a poultry shop. And tapas. Makes you wonder how folks stay in business--all the shops look the same to me. Apparently, people here must shop in a secret place for herbs and spices. It took four tries to even find salt in a small take along recloseable package. Teach me to forget the condiments.....
After gorging on delish-i-ous thick dipping chocolate and churros, we decided to walk to Mercato Anton Martin: http://www.mercadoantonmartin.com/. We saw lots of Madrid life on the way . Many Christmas markets are ready to roll this weekend, even though it isn't December yet.
We never found the mercato due to some wonky instructions on a tourist site, but we did find pig's foot for Oma in a side street shop.. Wearily we turned to home base, successfully figured out the Metro, and with only three interesting shop detours return to the home-tel for dinner. One detour was the jambon shop next to our apartment. We have found that few folks speak any English in this area...but they forge on in Spanish and just hope something sounds familiar to us. This shop was the real deal. Here is where the neighborhood comes to hang out. Not one fancy up scale detail. But ham is all it's various very expensive glory from every angle. I have no idea what our knife wielding server was saying but he gave Himself directions on which hams to photograph...while he sliced away on a ham with hoof still attached. This is not Kansas. Bearing our booty, back to base.
Ah, the joys of self-catering. Fresh cooked food we enjoy, in our socks; relaxing on the sofa while things simmer. Yes, indeed, well worth the search to find short term apartments. The fridge is bigger than the usual hotel bar fridges for our food finds. A regular dinner table to spread out maps and information to study. No maids in and out unless we ask. Much bigger rooms with comfy sitting instead of having to struggle with close quarters and using the too low bed to share information. Very happy.
Tomorrow we walk through royal Madrid , meet friends and move on to their home.
