On Ham and Cheese
Hey Everyone,
Hil and I are in Madrid, we arrived this afternoon, it's about 11:00 at night. Took a nice 5 hour bus ride in from Cordoba - helped along by our palmtop DVD player and a couple episodes of The West Wing Season 1 (damn those comebacks are snappy!).
A couple of comments on Spain -
1) I love the schedule - We've adjusted pretty well to the idea of taking a long nap in the afternoon, thinking about dinner at around 10 at night and then going out for some tapas and a couple drinks. Now we're in Madrid, where late has a whole new meaning. The clubs open at 2am, and no one thinks about going out before 1. A big night out means home at 6am, and I've been told the streets are more crowded then than they are in the middle of the day. Since we're here for thurs, fri, sat we should get a good taste of that.
2) There is SO MUCH HAM - Here in Madrid there is a chain of restaurants called "Museo de Jamon", literally The Museum of Ham. I have never eaten, and enjoyed, so much jamon y queso (ham and cheese, you get the idea, I'll stick to english) in my life. Ham is in every meal, every tapas, and every window. Hil has had a little trouble getting used to the rack of pig haunches in grocery stores where they shave the ham directly off (some going for as much as 100 euros a kg), but I am DOWN.
3) The Christians won, and they want you to know about it - In Cordoba there is a beautiful 9th century mosque called the Mezquita, built on the site of an old Visigoth temple. In the 16th century, they knocked the middle out of this building and literally stuck a cathedral directly in the middle of it ... so you're walking around and it's all mosque, mosque, mosque, CATHEDRAL, mosque. It's pretty interesting let me tell you ... Anyways, you see this sort of thing a lot, and it makes for some very unique, very cool buildings.
So we've got a couple nights here in Madrid, then we're jaunting up to see Bilbao (scheduling prowess in action: the only full day we are there is Monday, the one day of the week the Guggenheim is closed ... sweet.), then we come back to Madrid to fly to Athens via London ... and a full quarter of our trip will be done.
Okee dokee! Hope all is well with everyone - just wanted to send a bit of a heads up update. If you're interested in seeing pictures, and reading little missives about what we're up to, you can head over to http://daneineurope.blogspot.com ... love to hear back from people, and brighten my daily internet stop.
I've posted this on the blog as well . .. just, well, because.
Alright, it's 11:30, so it's time to head out and find a nice cerveza somewhere - and probably a solid helping of ham.
peace
Dane
Hil and I are in Madrid, we arrived this afternoon, it's about 11:00 at night. Took a nice 5 hour bus ride in from Cordoba - helped along by our palmtop DVD player and a couple episodes of The West Wing Season 1 (damn those comebacks are snappy!).
A couple of comments on Spain -
1) I love the schedule - We've adjusted pretty well to the idea of taking a long nap in the afternoon, thinking about dinner at around 10 at night and then going out for some tapas and a couple drinks. Now we're in Madrid, where late has a whole new meaning. The clubs open at 2am, and no one thinks about going out before 1. A big night out means home at 6am, and I've been told the streets are more crowded then than they are in the middle of the day. Since we're here for thurs, fri, sat we should get a good taste of that.
2) There is SO MUCH HAM - Here in Madrid there is a chain of restaurants called "Museo de Jamon", literally The Museum of Ham. I have never eaten, and enjoyed, so much jamon y queso (ham and cheese, you get the idea, I'll stick to english) in my life. Ham is in every meal, every tapas, and every window. Hil has had a little trouble getting used to the rack of pig haunches in grocery stores where they shave the ham directly off (some going for as much as 100 euros a kg), but I am DOWN.
3) The Christians won, and they want you to know about it - In Cordoba there is a beautiful 9th century mosque called the Mezquita, built on the site of an old Visigoth temple. In the 16th century, they knocked the middle out of this building and literally stuck a cathedral directly in the middle of it ... so you're walking around and it's all mosque, mosque, mosque, CATHEDRAL, mosque. It's pretty interesting let me tell you ... Anyways, you see this sort of thing a lot, and it makes for some very unique, very cool buildings.
So we've got a couple nights here in Madrid, then we're jaunting up to see Bilbao (scheduling prowess in action: the only full day we are there is Monday, the one day of the week the Guggenheim is closed ... sweet.), then we come back to Madrid to fly to Athens via London ... and a full quarter of our trip will be done.
Okee dokee! Hope all is well with everyone - just wanted to send a bit of a heads up update. If you're interested in seeing pictures, and reading little missives about what we're up to, you can head over to http://daneineurope.blogspot.com ... love to hear back from people, and brighten my daily internet stop.
I've posted this on the blog as well . .. just, well, because.
Alright, it's 11:30, so it's time to head out and find a nice cerveza somewhere - and probably a solid helping of ham.
peace
Dane
posted by Dane at 2:28 PM
1 Comments:
Tell me you at least watched those West Wing episodes with the spanish subtitles on. That saying "When in Rome..." still applies in Spain.
R.
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