Madrid (Part II)
The best thing about Madrid's tapas bars is that you simply throw your rubbish on the ground when finished. In fact, the dirtier the place the better, as it's easy to spot which places are popular with the locals. They do provide bins under the counters, but I feel it's doing the place a disservice to use them: better the fling the stuff with a flourish onto the floor.
Bocadillos (rolls) and raciones (rations) are served for those who want something more substantial. For €2.50 on Sunday I got a Bocadillo de Calamares, a squid roll, which tastes a hell of a lot better than it sounds. It was delicious!
Eating like a king for a tenner is grand, but if you want to drink like a king, Madrid can be quite expensive. Poor Delphine got stuck paying for three mojitos at €9 each - a €27 round for those of you who aren't good at maths. That's about a month's salary in Berlin.
Better to find a quiet bench, buy €1 beers from smiley Asian walking off-licences, and watch the Madrid night go by.
Despite Gav's reservations over Delphine's reservations for their "Gay Hotel", Chueca turned out to be the best place to find the €1 beers from the handy smiley unofficial off-licences.
On the day that Northern Ireland's Unionists traditionally antagonise Catholics with their annual marches, Gavin was telling us of their efforts to be less antagonistic with their antagonism.
"It's like gay pride for Orange bastards," he noted, perhaps inspired by his local surroundings. Little good it did in the end.
Night buses apparently do run, if you can find them, but on Monday morning I had to walk 7 km home. There was no way I was getting a taxi. No way! Vermin of the roads are all taxi drivers.
While I was at San Fermin in Pamplona, I thought it was great not to have a place to stay for the night. Like a snail carrying its house on its back, I thought I could make my home anywhere, just lay my head down where I fell to wake up refreshed and resuscitated in the morning. Of course, that didn't turn out too well...
But wherever there's bad shit there's usually good shit too, as I'm sure someone learned once said. Unfortunately the reverse applies too. Nowhere's perfect. Unlike in Berlin, where thieves are mostly only interested in bicycles, (with the odd notable exception), los ladrónes de España have an unhealthy interest in wallets, as Gav found out last week.
Leaving a watering hole on our way to another, we were approached by two fellas who claimed to be "amigos". They tried show us a new danza which involved locking their legs in front of ours and jiggling them as we walked down the street. Suddenly Noddy stopped dead. "Take your fucking hand off me phone," he growled. The two lads stopped, looked at each other, and quickly withdrew, no doubt to find another couple of dancing buddies later on.
My parents also had bad experiences here, as did my aunt, while a handbag was stolen on another occasion, so it's definitely a city in which the unsuspecting visitor would need to keep their eyes peeled, meaning of course, they wouldn't be unsuspecting anymore.
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