Woke up at 4:00 (two hours after we went to sleep) + Patrick and Severine drove us in Patrick’s brothers european car to the bust station. + Waited with a crowd of confused people. The situation was like a candid camera prank. see illustrations coming soon + Patrick and Severine stand as sentinels guarding our luggage in the luggage compartment until the crazy crowd filters away. Thanks for everything, Severine and Patrick! + Slept on the airplane. + Brian used his language skills for real communication for the first time. He is very proud of himself. He smiled for 10 minutes. + Went to McDonalds because we hadn’t eaten very much since lunch the previous day and it was near by. sorry! + The go to Reina Sophia museum and see the Picasso exhibition + Picasso was a very prolific artist… Totally picasso’d out! + Followed Rick Steves’ Tapas bar crawl to eat genuine Spanish Tapas! Very yummy! Had a small shrimp in onion dish, fried eggplant, and pig’s ears! (oreja) + Participated in a Rick Steves Gathering + Brian couldn’t eat very many of the pig ears + Wandered around the Puerta del sol area (Amy really liked the small, busy pedestrian streets) + found a movie theater, checked times for Iron Man + used navigation to get back to the central square, passed by a McD’s express and got a soft serve ice cream for 0.75 euro + Walked back to Opera, decided to walk back the other way (about a 5 minute walk, 10 if we’re slow and wanted to walk by the churros store) to watch iron man at 10:15 (it was just so nice and bustling! Nice warm night!) + Watched Iron Man + Brian really enjoyed this quote: “It’s impossible, it can’t be done!” “Tony Spark built this in a cave! From scraps!” + Amy thought it was really funny how iron man was super cool and could fly and all, but to fly, he had to hold out his hands like little ballerina wings + Walked back to hotel (still a lot of people on the streets!), sleep!
stories: Rick Steves’ Gathering
We were following Rick Steves’ Tapas crawl tour in Madrid and we go into the Casa Toni Bar to try their fried eggplant (bejerena) when we overheard the three American ladies at the table by the window trying to ask an Italian couple at the next table what they were eating (we recognized it as the eggplant we had on our table) and the Italian lady pulled out a Spanish-Italian dictionary, which wasn’t really helping the American ladies, so the Italian lady gave them a piece to try. Finally, Amy couldn’t stand not helping out so she said “It’s eggplant!” The ladies couldn’t hear her, so Brian tries to get their attention. We tell them that it’s eggplant and everybody’s happy, the American ladies thank us for telling and the Italian lady thanks us for helping. Then, another American couple comes in, holding a Rick Steves’ book! The three American ladies get all excited and point out that they also had a Rick Steves’ book. Of course, we had to jump in and flash our own Rick Steves’ book that was lying on our table. All of a sudden, Rick Steves’ book wielding American travelers took over the tapas bar, babbling about taking pictures and sending them to Rick Steves. Brian, a lady from the first American group, and the lady from the American couple stand together with their Rick Steves books and take pictures. Then, they commenced asking each other for recommendations on hotels and where they were staying (Brian was the one participating in the foray, not Amy. She just mostly watched). The three American ladies were from the Sacramento area and had come in from Bilbao, and the American couple had come to that same tapas bar for gezpacho the last time they came into Madrid. The ladies figured out we were “techies” almost immediately after we said that we lived in the Palo Alto area. Brian’s Stanford Swimming tshirt probably helped them deduce. We then all sat down at our respective tables and did our own thing. The couple left after their gezpacho and when the three ladies were about to leave, Brian, who had churros on his mind all night, got up to ask them if they knew where to get good churros. They didn’t know, but they talked about other tapas bars to try and said goodbyes while hoping that we’ll cross paths again. Afterwards, Brian noted to Amy that the ladies and the couple were on a different level of Rick Steves travel. They were all staying at 3 dollar sign hotels! We’re still at 1! We saw both the couple and the ladies together one last time in front of La Casa de Abuello, where we had shrimp in olive oil (gambas al ajillo) earlier. We didn’t say hi, though, and went on to our last tapas stop for the night.
