Meat me in Madrid

late night in Madrid

After 30+ hours of travel from NYC via Florida, I landed in Madrid this morning, where I met Chris Low who had gotten in a few hours earlier. No problems at customs. Stamped. Now what?

At this point we had no plans whatsoever. I remembered how nice it was in 2002 to have a car in Europe so I decided to rent one – we got a Volkswagen SomethingorOther from Hertz (or El Hertz since we’re in Spain), a diesely beast with plenty of room and a GPS to help us get lost without getting lost.

I hadn’t driven a stick shift in a while and the tranny knew it (no, I’m not calling Chris a tranny, the stick has 6 gears and a hidden reverse, which makes it go “crrrrrrunch” once in a while. ok, all the while). We drove to the city center after several circles. The GPS lady – we call her Hertzena – pronounces stuff weird and there’s cars bearing down on you from every direction, so yeah, there’s lots of circling.

We found a giant P, which apparently signifies parking so we parked the car and headed over to the Ham Museum to get lunch. Yes, Ham Museum. It’s like a real museum except instead of paintings of ladies and abstract art, there’s shanks of smoked ham and abstract meat. Plus you can eat the art.

Mmmmm, salty hammy art.

The curator

We walked around the city a while and took a much needed siesta, after which I realized it’s 09/09/09 so I had to go out and take a picture of this momentous date.

09:09 on 09/09/09

We grabbed some local grub (paella) which was half food, half sea vermin tentacles/particles to be spat back out. The city was alive with people late into the night, but being tired, jetlagged, and full-bellied we called it a night. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Crunshy