In Madrid, we're staying at the Hostal Salamanca. It's quite nice. We have a queen bed, desk, lamp, tiny tv connected to corner of the wall, closet mirrors (did i ever mention that there were very few mirrors in bedrooms of Japan?, alarm clock, and a nice window that leads to the outside (not like the place in Barcelona). The maid here doesn't knock before she goes into your room. We got woken up a couple times in the morning from the noise of jingling keys. Now she knows that we wake up late and to not bother us so early. But I don't know why I actually saw her knock on other people's doors and not ours. hmmph!
Anyways, there's 4 other bedrooms on our floor and 2 full bathrooms. We got to see some of the other rooms on the floor, and we really do have the nicest room. Our room door exits to the living room area that has 3 couches, a 4-person dining table, coffee table with old torn up magazines, and a medium big tv that I don't think is cable tv. The tv has about 10 channels, most of them are either tarot card readings or commercial ads. Oddly though, the tv channels in our room are NOT the same as the channels on the living room tv. We don't know what's up. There's wi-fi internet available, but no computers or anything. So we use our laptop, but there's only 1-3 bars of signal on our floor. Elgin walks around the floor with the laptop to try to get a good signal, but it pretty much sucks.
We're probably staying at this hostal the longest because we're staying here for 2 weeks and who really does that right? We did interact with a couple of the other roommates a few times. There was this one Spanish rocker couple that really bothered us. The guy had the dirty shaven look with long wavy hair and arm sleeves of tattoos. You knew when he was talking because you could hear it through the walls. It's a type of voice that resonates. The girl had somewhat big hair and always wore short skirts and off the shoulder shirts. They would leave their stuff in the bathroom area and the living room area. It just looked messy. You knew when they were going to shower because they would turn on the bathroom lights, turn on the water, and leave the water running and bathroom door open for 10 minutes or so before they would both go in the bathroom. What a waste of water! Then when they sat in the living room with us, it's like a PDA show. Public Display of Affection on the couch, standing at the fridge, looking outside the window, and even grabbing keys to open their room door. It wasn't even just hugs and kisses, it was like "Get a room!" type of inappropriate lovin'.
But then again, we've noticed that you can see a lot of couples making out anywhere in Spain. From ages 10-60 or so, heterosexual and homosexual, no kidding..really..full on making out (tongue and all). They could be sitting outside the Prado Museum on the grass, sitting on a bench, standing next to an ATM, next in line for the groceries, or just walking and stopping every other few steps. What's in the water?
Things we've seen so far -- we went to the Royal Palace, Plaza Mayor, Plaza del Sol, Caixa Museum, Prado museum, and Botanical Garden.
La Bola restaurant: madrileno stew (chickpeas, bacon chunks, and white noodles) tripe stew (blood sausage, fatty tripe, and chorizo), spanish ratatouille (very tasty diced veg dish), and catalan spinach (raisins and pine nuts)
-- for being so well known for their food off tourist books etc, it was ok and pricey. Our server was kind of ridiculous. And it's cash only.
El Rey de Tallarines restaurant: salad (mixed lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, and tuna completely drenched in dressing - after Elgin was done eating it, there was half a bowl of dressing left), stir fry shrimp noodles, stir fry pork, bowl of white rice (surprisingly served luke warm), and a soup bowl of noodles with vegetables -- this Chinese restaurant is known for their hand pulled noodles. It was decent and tasted good, but pricey compared to our Chinatown prices. We were having some stomach problems and thought some white rice and noodles would help settle our tummies.
Yet again, Elgin and I have been grocery shopping and trying to do our best with only a fridge. We really need an oven or microwave here. We just noticed that at the grocery store, people that buy a lot of groceries have their food stored in large blue bins and delivered to their homes directly later that day. pretty cool..
Whoever wants to do some business out in Madrid, they should really open a self-service laundromat, because there isn't one for miles!
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