Madrid, Caliente

Today's my last full day in Madrid.

It was 36 degrees out.  So what did we do? Naturally, we decided to walk uphill in the hot sun for about 15 minutes to get coffee with hot milk at a cafe. Since we hadn't eaten breakfast, the next obvious thing to do was walk a little farther, to the famous 'Chocolateria San Gines', which sells churros-- hot fried dough sticks-- that you dip in hot chocolate sauce.  (Don't judge; I'm on holidays here.)  And why choose to sit inside, in the air conditioned restaurant, when you can sit at a cafe table outside in the sun, and soak in the Madrid street atmosphere?  The inside of the restaurant is for chumps, not for stylish, seasoned travelers like us.

It was a trifle hot is all I'm saying.

Afterwards we did some sightseeing as we walked back, and then we had a hot lunch that my friend had recommended.  (I'm serious.  Some people never learn.)  We then walked off the heavy food at El Retiro park, a beautiful big park in the city that is of course a hot, sunny, uphill walk away from the restaurant.  The park has some shade!  But also very, very hot, sunny sections that have beautiful views of hot people doing hot stuff like rowing rowboats in the hot sun.  I sat down on a rock to watch the hot people row each other around and immediately leapt up because the rock was insanely hot from baking in the sun all day.

Did I mention I chose today to dress all in black?

Eventually we did the long, hot walk back home.  We stopped at the square near our apartment and bought cans of lemonade and drank it down all at once as we sat on a shady bench.  And guess what happened? A soccer ball rolled over to my feet.  I looked up and could tell it belonged to a little boy who was playing with his dad.  His dad was standing a ways away, very tanned and fit and dark and shirtless.  If you were middle aged and your eyes were starting to go, and you were squinting in the heat, you could mistake that dad for Cristiano Ronaldo.  I'm just saying.

I kicked the ball back.  It was hot.  And also kinda hawt.

Spanish Sisters in Madrid

Today Meg popped into a coffee shop while I waited outside and she came back grinning.  "I just played soccer in Spain, and you didn't!" she said.  It was very obvious gloating.

"What?!"

"Yeah, there were three boys in there kicking the ball around and one pass rolled right to me and everyone kinda waited and looked at me so I smiled and kicked it back."

"Damnit!!  Not fair!"

Huge Meg smile.  I have never seen so many teeth and gums on her.

I have to admit I owe a huge debt to her for agreeing to come to Madrid with me at the last minute.  She works a lot-- like fifty hours a week maybe?  And she has kids too so we don't see each other as often as we should. But in late July I sent her a text that said "So.... Do you want to go to Madrid with me for five days in August?"  And then within 24 hours she sent me a text back that said "So, looks like I could book a British Airways flight on air miles...." ..and before I knew it it was all booked and she sent me a series of 3 emojis: an airplane, something I couldn't recognize, and a smiley face.

"What's that middle thing?"  I texted back.  "The emoji.  Is that a tampon?"

"It's a picture of money with wings.  As in 'my money is flying away on this trip I'm taking with you'," she texted back.

Can I just interject here that I'm really glad there's no tampon emoji?

Anyway, I'm lucky to have her.  Today she came to the Caravaggio exhibit with me and patiently listened to me drone on and on about it and then when we came home we opened a bottle of cava and I drank way more than my share of it and she totally noticed and didn't say anything at all.

Madrid Cuatro

Madrid highlights of today:

1. When you order a beer in a bar, there is no choice of craft beer or anything, in most places there's just the one kind.  And when they bring it to you, they also bring you a snack without you asking for it.  Yesterday it was a dish of olives.  But today it was two little slices of French bread, each soaked in some kind of oily green stuff with a silly little whole fish on the top of it, topped with some strawberry jam.  Not joking.  Mmm...fish and jam.  "Are we supposed to eat it or laugh at it?" I said to Meg.  We did it, we ate it, and we were feeling pretty self congratulatory, but then I swear I saw two hombres peeking out from behind the kitchen door giggling at us and saying "Dude, I told you they'd think it was a Spanish specialty.  You owe me 5 euros."

2.  Kids as young as six were playing soccer in the square until 11pm tonight, and every single one of them is wearing a Real Madrid jersey which makes it really hard to make teams because everyone is wearing red. I  SO wanted to join but I was a little worried about playing in the dark on stairs in flip flops.  The ball did roll towards me at one point and I almost had my chance to kick it back but it hit a tree instead. Meg kindly said "I totally would have gotten out of the way so you could have kicked it," and I said, "yeah, don't worry, I would have pushed you out of the way if it meant I could have kicked it."  We're close like that.

3.  There's a whole lot of Jesus in Madrid.  Like, A LOT, a lot.  Today we went to the Prado museum and saw happy Jesuses and sad Jesusus and skinny Jesuses and kinda Nordic, Swedish style Jesuses, and even one baby Jesus that was the spitting image of Betty White.  For real.  It's probably for the best that I can't post photos of that one.  It was a little disturbing, I'm not gonna lie.

4.  I've done three museums in three days, so tomorrow, I'm going shopping.  I'm going to try to buy myself a Sergio Ramos.  Google him.  You can thank me later.