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| Grocery store, or cleverly disguised trap? |
It's been an interesting couple of days here in Spain. Jessica and I were caught in this weird space where we are not quite tourists and we're not quite residents. We would have fun walking around and seeing the sights, but since we were viewing apartments and trying not to spend too much money on exhibits and food, we would end up walking around for a bit and then returning to our hostel to hang out for an hour or two and then repeat the cycle. I'm not saying this was a good or bad thing, just a little awkward.
Luckily, we have found a lovely apartment close to a big beautiful church. Having a place to call home where we can stock food and unpack our clothes, etc, etc, has been a big relief and it finally feels like we're settling in.
And yet...we are still having many experiences that remind us that we are very much newcomers to Madrid. We are getting better at ordering food (a skill developed through necessity) but there are still moments where the waiter will ask us a question and I will have no idea what is going on. Luckily Jessica's Spanish is good enough where she can usually get at least a rough idea of what is being said.
I've also been figuring out coffee (again, a necessity) and have had to make a few mistakes along the way. The default coffee is a half coffee/half milk mixture (cafe con leche), and for a while I tried ordering just plain black coffee ("Uhhh...cafe negro, por favor?"), which apparently doesn't really exist in Spain. It's either espresso or americano. I've taken this as an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone (Wow Steve, changing your coffee?? So brave!) and I've been getting my coffee con leche.
Oh, also, we almost got stuck in a grocery store. Not one of our finer moments, but for the life of us, we could not find an exit that didn't involve buying anything. I ended up paying $0.40 for a donut just so we could get out of there.
The heat has also been a bit of a shock to the system. The heat in Madrid is a dry heat, thankfully, but it is a pretty relentless 95+ degrees for a majority of the day. Not to get into the gory details, but I think I've sweat more in the past three days that the last year combined. I view it as an opportunity to cleanse the system, so to speak.
Anyway, we're getting there. Slowly but surely we're settling in, even if we feel a little lost at times.
And now, here are some pictures:
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| Jessica checking out the jamon situation |
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| Us at Plaza Mayor for our first real sit-down dinner. There just so happened to be a symphony orchestra practicing that evening, so we got some nice music to accompany our meal |
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| Prado! We'll be back here many times |
