Madrid Dia Dos

Today I did not get lost and no one hit on me!  Although I suppose that last observation is only a guess since several people spoke a lot of fast Spanish to me today and got blank looks in return.  Unless the question someone is asking is spoken very slowly and includes the words 'hola', 'Beunos Dias'  or 'cerveza', I am not going to be able to understand it at all.  Even then sometimes I catch myself smiling and nodding and saying 'si,' and I just now realize I might want to amend that tactic because I could be agreeing to all sorts of really dodgy stuff.

While Meg slept off jet leg I snuck off and saw the wonderful Caravaggio paintings by myself.  You really must see paintings you like in person if you can--  I thought I knew these paintings in great detail but more than once today I saw dirty toenails and surprise nipples that I didn't know existed!   (Calm down, I was not allowed to take any pictures of the paintings, so I can't show you.  And  I know that perhaps I shouldn't sound so excited about those things, but you do you, and I will do me.)

Other Madrid highlights;  I saw a 5 on 5 soccer game being played in a plaza where one net was the space between a tree and a light post, and the other net was a large graffitied metal box.  The playing field also included varying heights as there were long flat stairs in the plaza.  Why didn't I ask if I could play too?  It is my great regret of this trip so far that I was too chicken to ask, even though I was at least 30 years older than everyone playing, wearing a skirt, and don't speak Spanish.  And a female.  But I think they might have said yes, because I could tell they were my kind of people.  I don't speak their language but trash talking sounds the same in all languages.  Maybe tomorrow.

And I found a wine store around the corner from the apartment that sells the Spanish Champagne cava for less than 6 euros!  The kind that costs $20 in Canada.  We may have bought all the bottles they had. Shhhh...don't judge, I can drink that for breakfast-- it is grape juice after all.  Just as interesting: that wine store also sells Princess Barbie dolls!  How come no one in Canada has put those two things together yet?!  If I had a party and invited my forty/fifty something girlfriends over to drink wine and champagne and play Barbies, we would have a killer time.  Who's in?

And full disclosure: Today I ate Andre's cookies.  That is not a euphemism for anything, I just ate the actual package of cookies he forced me to take from the plane because I found them in my purse and I was starving.  I didn't want to eat them on principle, but I failed.  Damn him for being right about that.