Madrid

When I first arrived in Madrid I thought I was in LA. It just seemed really dirty and full of seedy people. Fortunately I was just in the bad part of town and this wasnt how the actual city was.

The keyboard realyl sucks on this computer.

Madrid is a really big city, and since I am all about walkign and not taking the metro whenever possible, I h ave been getting a ton of road work in. Looking at my shoes ,they look terrible. They will barely make it through this trip in one piece. Hopefully. I have had great weather in Madrid so far and am actually getting a tan. It will be funny to come home with a tan I think. I am going to San Sebastian next, which is a beautiful surf town from what Ive heard. Bryce I know youre jealous. After that Ill really have a tan.

Madrid is full of nice streets, good people, good food, nice parks, and some nice monuments and museums. I found myself getti ng lost in the almost too big Museo de Prado. There is also a massive central park type area that I spent a nice afternoon in. The chorizo (not the mexican kind) is a delicious spicy sausage that I have been eating a lot of. The meat in Madrid i ssome of the best quality in the world, from what Ive tried and heard. There is even a museum of jamon (ham). I have been getting good at makign lunch while on a budget. I have been having nice unches of sandwiches with cheese and meat, a couple pieces of fruit, and a fruit juice drink, which is essentially a mix of fruit juice water milk and sugar. Sounds gross but its good and gives me all my vitamins.

There is a nEgyptian temple on a hill overlooking most of the city , so it has lots of good views. Its a really cool part of town and the story behin dthe temple is very cool. It was a gift from the Egyptians to the Spanish for helping them divert some flood waters and move some temples out of the way of a flood in Egypt. So the Egyptians gave them a temple of their own, its quite nice.

I have been doing lots of cool things that my friend who lived in Madrid for a year has told me about. There is a tapas bar in general where you go there and order a cana (small beer) for about a euro and then they bring you mounds and mounds of greasy delicious tapas. After the first cana im stuffed and after the second I couldnt possibly eat any more. The place is always packed and its really easy to meet and talk to people there. My Spanish is not as bad as I t hought it was, and I can actually undestand a lot and hold a conversation with most people. I can ask for directions and order food a swell... pretty cool , but I think its one of those things Im going to want to perfect when I get home.

Iwandered into the Cathedral on sunday and randomly got there in time for the fiesta de la misericordia, which is a pretty big deal in Madrid and I had no idea about before. From what I understood, since it was all in Spanish, its celebrated on the 9th day after Jesus was put on the cross to symbolize the 9 hours of misery. At least I think that is what wa sgoing on. There was standing room only in the Cathedral and I got to see the senior cardinal or something. It was pretty cool.

I had the best meal of my life the other night. I walked past a restraunt one night and saw that they were roasting pigs, and the place was p acked, so I made a reservation for the next night. I decided to splurge and go for the Cochonillo Asado, something I really wanted to do in Spain. So I show up to the place in my ´rock star clothes´which my friends have started to call them, and am escorted to a table in the middle o fthe place and surrounded by people wearing suits. It was a cool feeling to be eating alone in a restraunt like this and knowing that everyone was looking at you. I got the cochinillo asado which is a tiny baby pigthat has only been fed the milk of its mother, which is then taken and shoved onto a spike and roasted on a fire for hours while the chef dumps sauces on it to make the skin ncie and crispy. I also ordered a half bottle of a tempranillo from rioja in spain from 2004. Baisically my favourite wine. So I look like a baller to everyone in the place, the suckling pig is amazing, its meat is some of the most tender Ive ever had, like biting butter. The flavour is amazing. The crispy skin is i cing on the cake. There is a nice layer of fat between the meat and the skin which is also exceptional. I was chewing all the meat off the little baby pig ribs. I ate the cheek meat which was delicious. I had a couple pig organs. I ordered extra pan just to soak up the 100% fat juice that the cochinillo was served with. There was not one p iece remaining of the poor little guy. I could make this description beter but I seriously hat e this keyboard right now and am running out of time o nthe internet.

Ciao.