I really like and will highly recommend this apartment I rented in Madrid. Their slogan is “Be Mate: More than Apartments” and I find the whole “Be Mate” thing very confusing. Maybe it means something else in Spanish? It’s debossed on the towels, though, so they’re committed to it. One other thing weird is that the forks are really long, like Slenderman-style long. Everything else is normal-sized so…long forks. Okay, Spain!
Speaking of sizes my friend Clint kindly pointed out that the horses in Seville were likely Andalusians, which would make sense what with me having been in Andalusia and all, and I looked it up and while the backstory is too long to go into here it turns out there is (or many not be!) a special subset of horses within this bigger group and you can prove your horse might be one of the extra-special ones if it has warts under its tail and yes indeed I DO regularly contribute money to Wikipedia are you kidding me?
Still speaking of sizes, I am the kind of jerk who goes into Starbucks (only when I have to, I really don’t like their coffee, it always tastes burnt to me) and orders a large or a medium or whatever. I refuse to capitulate to their dumb naming system. However, today, I actually said “grande” because I am in Spain that is the word they use here! Isn’t travel wonderful?!
Also the grande coffee was still a goddamn café con leche just with a lot of leche. I worry I will come home and have a normal cup of coffee and die but there are worse ways to go. (I had this exact same thought/experience when I was leaving Australia and you would think that by now I would be over being surprised by how different cultures and countries do food and drink slightly differently.)
That said, I FINALLY found a vegetarian restaurant on my last night in Madrid and so I have FINALLY consumed actual vegetables and such. I ordered an app and an entrée because SO HUNGRY and the servings were comically enormous, to the point that when I stared up in disbelief the waitress had the grace to blush and apologize but then again REAL! FOOD! I took my leftovers home and ate them for breakfast. (This was my APPETIZER.)
I’ve noted before that I like to travel because I like the challenge of it, but I wasn’t exactly sorry to have my final café con leche and say my final gracias. Though a lot of signs were in English and pretty much everybody spoke English, I still spent a lot of time puzzling out why Spanish people put cod in everything. I went to the Mercado San Miguel and was up and down the aisles, passing leg after leg after leg for 15 minutes before I finally found a cheese empanada. Here are some of the fillings you could get at the empanada/puff pastry place:
• Barbecue chicken
• Chicken & avocado
• Braised beef
• Cod
• Minced beef & cheese
• Chicken & cheese
• Ribs of beef
• Barbecue beef
• Prawns
• Stew of bull’s tail
How you make a puff pastry from ribs of beef I do not want to know; let us all hope that stew of bull’s tail was an error in translation.
The whole fish-everywhere thing aside, Madrid was great. I really liked the vibe of that town and wished I had more than one day there. Still, I saw a bunch of sites, a couple of people were nice to me, and their Royal Palace is what I’m talkin’ about! That thing was glorious and whoever was in charge of Buckingham Palace could take a lesson. As I was walking around there were a bunch of horses just kind of parked there and I found a really nice statue of a guy who took his favorite shawl with him to his statue-posing session, AGREE.
There was also a string quartet playing Vivaldi and a group of schoolchildren playing just far enough away for their occasional shouts and laughter to be pleasant background noise so I found a spot on a bench in the sunshine and people-watched and thought about how in college someone once submitted a comment form to the dining hall that read, “Your baked cod makes me barrfffffff,” with a drawing of a cod and the barf. Why is this something I remember? I took a linear algebra class in college, passed it and everything, and today I haven’t the foggiest notion of what linear algebra even IS. But I remember the baked-cod feedback form, and I remember my friend Shannon and I laughing about it for years, who knows why it really isn’t that funny, but I guess those are the best memories to keep, the ones full of silliness and shared humor; linear algebra has probably benefited my life in some way but more importantly I know I can say the words “smooth and creamy” to my sister and she will immediately break into song, and just thinking about that makes me happy.
In conclusion, my Be Mate apartment came with a 56-page guide to the various appliances in the apartment and in the 8-page microwave section ONE they make it sound like it’s okay to microwave FISH (!!), and TWO, this is how they advise you to do so:
Fish, whole (P14)
Remove the skin of the fish first. Place the fish in the bowl in the “swimming position.”
That is the entirety of the direction and omg every time I think about it I laugh out loud. What in the hell is the swimming position??
So, despite this colossal fail at customs why did the man even let me through, it was a marvelous trip and yet it is good to be home. Xoxo to you for reading along!
PS I was in Madrid so briefly that I didn't get to do a lot of things I wanted to (including tour the Prado, my Uncle Don will be so disappointed in me, I just didn't have time!); skipping this bookstore might be the only one I truly regret--the Prado will wait; I don't feel as certain about these guys being around by the time I get back as this does not seem like a sustainable business model (but I love it!).
Speaking of sizes my friend Clint kindly pointed out that the horses in Seville were likely Andalusians, which would make sense what with me having been in Andalusia and all, and I looked it up and while the backstory is too long to go into here it turns out there is (or many not be!) a special subset of horses within this bigger group and you can prove your horse might be one of the extra-special ones if it has warts under its tail and yes indeed I DO regularly contribute money to Wikipedia are you kidding me?
Still speaking of sizes, I am the kind of jerk who goes into Starbucks (only when I have to, I really don’t like their coffee, it always tastes burnt to me) and orders a large or a medium or whatever. I refuse to capitulate to their dumb naming system. However, today, I actually said “grande” because I am in Spain that is the word they use here! Isn’t travel wonderful?!
Also the grande coffee was still a goddamn café con leche just with a lot of leche. I worry I will come home and have a normal cup of coffee and die but there are worse ways to go. (I had this exact same thought/experience when I was leaving Australia and you would think that by now I would be over being surprised by how different cultures and countries do food and drink slightly differently.)
That said, I FINALLY found a vegetarian restaurant on my last night in Madrid and so I have FINALLY consumed actual vegetables and such. I ordered an app and an entrée because SO HUNGRY and the servings were comically enormous, to the point that when I stared up in disbelief the waitress had the grace to blush and apologize but then again REAL! FOOD! I took my leftovers home and ate them for breakfast. (This was my APPETIZER.)
• Barbecue chicken
• Chicken & avocado
• Braised beef
• Cod
• Minced beef & cheese
• Chicken & cheese
• Ribs of beef
• Barbecue beef
• Prawns
• Stew of bull’s tail
How you make a puff pastry from ribs of beef I do not want to know; let us all hope that stew of bull’s tail was an error in translation.
The whole fish-everywhere thing aside, Madrid was great. I really liked the vibe of that town and wished I had more than one day there. Still, I saw a bunch of sites, a couple of people were nice to me, and their Royal Palace is what I’m talkin’ about! That thing was glorious and whoever was in charge of Buckingham Palace could take a lesson. As I was walking around there were a bunch of horses just kind of parked there and I found a really nice statue of a guy who took his favorite shawl with him to his statue-posing session, AGREE.
There was also a string quartet playing Vivaldi and a group of schoolchildren playing just far enough away for their occasional shouts and laughter to be pleasant background noise so I found a spot on a bench in the sunshine and people-watched and thought about how in college someone once submitted a comment form to the dining hall that read, “Your baked cod makes me barrfffffff,” with a drawing of a cod and the barf. Why is this something I remember? I took a linear algebra class in college, passed it and everything, and today I haven’t the foggiest notion of what linear algebra even IS. But I remember the baked-cod feedback form, and I remember my friend Shannon and I laughing about it for years, who knows why it really isn’t that funny, but I guess those are the best memories to keep, the ones full of silliness and shared humor; linear algebra has probably benefited my life in some way but more importantly I know I can say the words “smooth and creamy” to my sister and she will immediately break into song, and just thinking about that makes me happy.
In conclusion, my Be Mate apartment came with a 56-page guide to the various appliances in the apartment and in the 8-page microwave section ONE they make it sound like it’s okay to microwave FISH (!!), and TWO, this is how they advise you to do so:
Fish, whole (P14)
Remove the skin of the fish first. Place the fish in the bowl in the “swimming position.”
That is the entirety of the direction and omg every time I think about it I laugh out loud. What in the hell is the swimming position??
So, despite this colossal fail at customs why did the man even let me through, it was a marvelous trip and yet it is good to be home. Xoxo to you for reading along!
PS I was in Madrid so briefly that I didn't get to do a lot of things I wanted to (including tour the Prado, my Uncle Don will be so disappointed in me, I just didn't have time!); skipping this bookstore might be the only one I truly regret--the Prado will wait; I don't feel as certain about these guys being around by the time I get back as this does not seem like a sustainable business model (but I love it!).
It’s the one for me!
ReplyDeleteyes i like it in my shorts! hahaha :)
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