Author: cpcrowley

I eat, I sleep, I suffer

Post by Wynette: For the past year, I’ve been studying Spanish and found a great podcast/website that provides listening practice:  notesinspanish.com

It is done by a delightful young couple who live here in Madrid.  Ben is originally from England and Marina is from Madrid. In one of their conversations for listening practice they mention how people in Spain like to complain. (Charlie and I have been trying to write a song about that, maybe fitting in the word “plain” somewhere, but haven’t come up with much yet.)

When we were in Cadaques we found a little bar that served great coffee so we went there several times.  On one visit the woman behind the counter greeted us with a warm hola, took our order for dos cafe con leche, served us our coffee, then carried on her conversation with the only other person in the bar.  She was talking loudly in the small room so I was getting in some good listening practice.  I heard her say “Como, duermo, y … nada mas”.  I think she was saying, “I eat, I sleep, and nothing else.”  Then I heard her say “Yo sufro”, which means, “I suffer”.  Too bad I didn’t get many of the details.  I was thinking she might have been talking with her boss.  I hope she was just complaining and didn’t really live such a terrible life.

 

Food and coffee in Madrid

Post by Wynette: We’ve been in Madrid for 3 days.  Tomorrow we head back for the USA.  We have liked Madrid, more than we expected.  It’s a beautiful city and relatively restful, inexpensive, and easy to navigate for a big city.  Of course, we are tucked into our hotel room by 8 each night and we hear the city really comes alive at 10 or 11.  So, we are missing the main attraction: the night life (called la marcha as I have learned from Ben and Marina).

The first 2 days we were disappointed in the food here.  And, I have to take back what I said about coffee in Spain being consistently good.  We haven’t really liked the Madrid coffee very much.  It must be Catalonia that makes such good coffee.  The coffee at the place below didn’t taste very good but they sure had a cool looking coffee machine.  And all the waiters wore pink shirts:

But this morning we did find a place with good coffee, and yesterday we found a tapas market (really!) (Mercado de San Miguel) that had tapas fenomenal! (Yes, that’s a Spanish word.)  Here is Charlie trying to decide what to have for dinner:

And today we ate in an Asturian restaurant (Asturia is a province in northern Spain, so it’s like a foreign food place in Madrid) named Casa Lastra. Delicious food. Seemed like peasant food.  We had a white bean stew with sausages and ham.  I’ll dream about that one in days to come and try to make one like it but will never come close. Here is the bread and the huge helping of (fenomenal) blue cheese spread that they brought to the table before taking our order.  The only problem is that we were stuffed when we left. No, we didn’t eat all the bread and cheese.  We couldn’t finish the stew either.

I love the description of their restaurant in English on their website. (I’m pretty sure a computer program did that translation for them. Maybe Google Translate?)  I hope we go back to Madrid so we can go back to Casa Lastra several times.  Hmm, maybe we should go to Asturia someday too.

Stairways to the water

Post by Wynette: We are spending 4 days in a little village on the Mediterranean, Cadaques. Several places along the shore here we’ve found steps that go down to the water. Most look scary. I’m pretty sure in the States they’d be railed off and marked “Danger”. Or at least would be a good plot device in a Jane Austen novel. But, today we found one that didn’t look too bad. Charlie decided to check them out.  Here he is on his way down:

And at the bottom:

And with the camera zoom on:

Walking along the bay

Post by Charlie: Cadaques was made famous by Dali and other artists hanging out here. We are going to see his house across the peninsula tomorrow. Here they frame the picture of Cadaques for you, in true Dali fashion:

and I got friendly with the locals:

This house is on a little island, pretty cool, but I see some logistical issues:

On the way back we take a picture of a woman taking a picture of the frame. Maybe not surreal but recursive at least:

Almost back

to our hotel:

On the bus

Cadaques is in a peninsula and you have to take this winding, narrow road over the mountains to get there. I was glad I was not driving the bus. This is looking back at Roses, on the road to Cadaques:

This is the narrow road.

and this is coming down from the mountains into Cadaques:

Cadaques is very pretty

The weather is partly cloudy but often quite windy. We might be spending time in our hotel public rooms watching the bay.

It clears up on and off:

 

Strictly Forbidden

We took the bus from Girona to the remote, coastal town of Cadaques. The bus has some strict rules:

No smoking, I am behind that 100%. No ice cream, okay, it drips and gets the seats and floor sticky. No hamburgers, okay, lots of saturated fats. But no lollypops! That is going too far. Off the bus, Lolita.

And don’t worry, we were in the second seat and not the first seat reserved for the old guy with the cane.

Our Corner

Post by Charlie: Girona has a river going through it with several bridges. Our hotel is right by one of the bridges, a red steel one, designed by Gustav Eiffel tower of Eiffel Tower fame. On the corner is this redbud tree. There are lots of redbud trees around Girona. We come back from all four directions and it is always so nice to see our redbud tree and know we are almost back.

Bathroom Fixture Tour, continued

Post by Charlie: Some of you may think that I am obsessed with bathroom fixtures. Well so be it. Here is our sink in Girona. Still square but sloped for better draining and with a slider for hotel goodies on one side.

And you fellow bathroom fixture fans should check out our sink in Sorrento from last year’s Italy blog, linked to in a previous post.