This time around, Madrid is much cooler, European and American travelers are everywhere and the tapas are the same. We found Hotel Moderno that was super quiet, has free WiFi and located just off Plaza Sol. The only weirdness about the place was that two seperate groups of American highschool students were on tour and suffering from jet lag and the realization that pizza in Spain is not really an edible substance.
We did a few tapas crawls and ended up with some extremely challenging servings. The oddest item placed in front of us was: potato chips with smoked oysters on top with oyster oil poured over the chips. Who came up with that?! Beyond the standard cholesterol clogging sausages and chorizos everywhere, the item ordered by the men next to us was just heart stopping: a dinner plate of french fries, fully covered in mayonaise, covered in chopped (runny) fried eggs, covered in slices of sausage and all the oil that a hot sausage can leak. We figure they were examples of future ‘low-end of the life expectancy scale’ in Spain. We did get a few good items that actually made it into the edible category, smoked salmon on freshly toasted bread with olive oil, garlicky potato salad, marinated olives, shrimp cooked in olive oil and red pepper, chorizo sliced on french bread, liver pate on french bread (um, well, not quite good, but very mysterious), fried almonds, sauted mushrooms on french bread, and finally, one fat-free item, a mini-fruit plate of fresh watermelon and kiwis. We decided that between the night hours (10pm to morning), the smokers (everyone, everywhere, all the time), the bar food (see above), and well, of course, the bar drinks… Madrid was shortening our life-expectancy.
Did you know you can buy a particular type of smoked Jamon Iberico for around $190/lbs? No, we didn’t either…
As for daytime events, we only had one rather disturbing and extremely unexpected moment. Sitting ever so relaxed at a breezy cafe along a cobblestoned side street, sipping a lovely cup of espresso, gaily talking about nothing in particutlar as the sun dappled the trees… We noticed a dead pigeon in the middle of the street. This turned us to pondering why we don’t really see more dead pigeons, but we soon returned to our aimless conversation. We then noticed two finches taking notice of the dead pigeon. We ignored them poking at the bird, since that doesn’t go well with coffee. The next thing we hear is a Mercedes rolling ever so slowly down the road, a balloon popping and the girl at the next table gasping and bouncing in her chair with disgust. We turned to the cobblestone street and sure enough, one of the finches had been flattened turning the cobblestone street into a bloody crime scene. That was it for the cafe and us. Two dead birds is our limit.
