Day 4-6
I’m adding a new feature this trip. Its called the TRS meter. The Travel Richter Scale which will gauge what impact the situation or town has had on us. As an example: An afternoon at Barcelonettta Beach on a sunny day is a TRS 9 or 10, a winter’s evening doing anything in Regina would be a TRS of 0.
Our first stay is on Manuela Malasana Ave. A narrow one-way tree-lined street in the heart of the up and coming neighborhood of Malasana.
There is parking on both sides of the street which is necessary because there are 10 restaurants within one block in each direction, all very nice and interesting. But almost nobody comes here by car as the Bilbao metro stop is very close and several bus routes on an adjacent 6 lane roadway are nearby.
Most of the restaurant clientele is local because there are dozens of 7-story (6-story if you’re Spanish) historical apartment buildings all around us, including our own. Guessing at the age of the buildings they would easily be 100+ years old, so pre-automobile era, and parking would not have been a consideration.
We are one floor above the street with our room facing the street. They call it the first floor but in Canada it would be the second. The ground floors are the commercial backbone of the neighborhood and act as a buffer for noise and privacy (in theory).
The owners live at the back of the flat down a long corridor which separates them from their customers. And customers we are as this is a full-time operation which generally has 2-3 bedrooms let out. There is a pleasant French couple next door to us for the first 3 nights who we would share the bathroom with but it is a non-issue as they rise early and retire early and as we get a handle on our jetlag ($18) we almost never see them.
We leave late in the morning and have adopted the Spanish tradition of eating between 8 and 10 at night so we have the place to ourselves. Despite our neighbors being somewhat close in age to us they obviously have had bladder replacement surgery because as we wander down to the toilet in the middle of the night we never cross paths.
We did try to speak with them initially but their English was worse than our French and unless he’s asking me to ‘open the window’ or ‘close the door’ there wasn’t much that we could exchange verbally. Thankfully it never came up in conversation to ‘find your cat’ or ‘what is the name of your cat’ so we didn’t reproduce the debacle in translation that we had last time in Blois. A story too delicate to retell here.
I’ll be quick in recounting the first couple of days as there were but a few highlights.
Puerta del Sol was an often mentioned place to go, but while surrounded by grand buildings I would compare it to what Castleaird Plaza will resemble in 150 years. TRS 1.
Then the even more mentioned Plaza Mayor (pronounced plaza my-oar) was considered a required stop. It’s a large rectangle with covered stone roof around the perimeter and beautiful archways and probably has a storied past. Shops and restaurants were under the ceilinged portion and were for the most part tasteful. But the large center square had been given over to African migrants that in order to survive were hawking faux designer bags, sunglasses, etc. laid on blankets encircled by rope so they could hastily be scooped up if the policia decided to make a purge. They looked desperate and paranoid and it was difficult to watch as a North American traveller whom are so pampered in our day to day living. TRS 2.5
We bought our tickets (seniors discount) for the Red Tourist Bus that covers the historical portion of Madrid. There 21 stops where you can get off along the way and then get back on anywhere else. These buses are typically called Hop-on Hop-off buses and are an excellent way to get the lay of the land with included audio descriptions from an elevated position as well as cheap transportation (notice how that word keeps coming up?).
We use it stop at Retiro Park, a highly touted green space which includes a rectangular man-made lake and an all-glass domed building. Too bad the glass hasn’t been cleaned this millenium, but on the bright side it blocked enough sunlight to keep the inside temperature to a manageable 50C.
The Asian tour group that we always seem to be near doesn’t bother to unzip their coats and nobody is sweating. I’m looking around for an EMT to resuscitate Carol from heat exhaustion but it’ll be faster to drag her down to the lake and submerge her head.
We leave after having a glass of wine served by the world’s worst waiter, although we still have 32 days to go so he could lose his crown. The wine he served Carol was so vile that he left the bottle on our table in the sun (to cure?) and after he skimmed by 10 minutes later we pointed it out and he shrugged and moved it to a sunnier spot a few tables away.
Just so you never order it by mistake the name was Vina Mayor, pronounced Vina Crapliquid. I tried to take a picture of it so I could use it as a warning to others but my camera refused to obey (part of it’s Smart technology I assumed).
Red Tourist Bus TRS 7.2, Retiro Park TRS 2.6, rectangular lake covered in tourist row boats TRS 1.1, Crystal Palace TRS 1.96. I know I’m sounding cynical but these places were built up way out of proportion to their actual amazement value. Hey, the TRS don’t lie.
Then we explored the Malasana neighborhood on foot (cheapest method), found some cool shops, tapas bars, and vintage clothing shops close to our new digs.
BUT THEN… we entered a curiosity shop filled with zillions of unusual items and I stopped just inside the door to look at some vintage post cards, some going back to the 50s, some embossed, and very funky… this looks interesting. Carol, on the other hand, had the misfortune to enter a few feet farther. Then the elderly proprietor showed up from out of the shadows.
Carol said something to him in English and either he was upset or from the Twilight Zone because he went on a rant in Spanish all the while making extreme eye contact with me while simultaneously blocking the small doorway. He paused a few times, pointed to several items with passion in his voice like they were his children. He guided me by the elbow, surprising me with his strong grip, to a display case and made a furious description of the contents, all the while looking me square in the eyes. It was like he was taking me on a history class, but there were no ‘open the window’ or ‘close the door’ words to ground myself with because of his furious pace and intense passion.
Then suddenly his grip loosened and he spun in front of me got down on one knee and simulated felatio while looking me straight in the face. My mouth was agape but I closed it quickly as that might send the wrong signal. After what seemed like forever he raised himself upright and moved off to the side. He either felt that the world was capitulating to a dreaded place or he really liked my cologne. We bolted through the doorway, he went back into the shadows, and I felt a great need to brush my teeth.
I can already see that this post could get too lengthy than most people can handle in this day and age so I will split into parts 1 & 2.
End of part 1.
Blue Delivery 