Eat, Drink, Be Merry

Cumulative Miles Traveled: 18,478
Current Location: Madrid, Spain
Current Mood: Buzzed and Satiated

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A few hours into my stay in Madrid, I realized why I love Spain so much. The one and only other time I was here previously, in Barcelona, I was basically buzzed 100% of the time! Cava and rioja flow faster and cheaper than water here, there is absolutely no reason you should not drink cava and rioja all day long. After checking into my hostel, I set about visiting the Museo de Reina Sofia, but ended up making a pit stop at El Brillante, a hole in the wall cafe right across the plaza from the museum that is famous for its bocadillos de calamares - basically fried calamari stuffed into a French roll. I had two glasses of rioja to wash it down and had a wonderful time at the museum - modern art is so much deeper when you have a happy buzz going on!

After resting a couple hours at the hostel, it was time for a tapas crawl. I waited until a respectable hour for España (9 pm), even though in my real life dinner is usually at 6 pm. I went to Calle de la Cava Baja, which is supposed to be the best street in Madrid for tapas. My first stop was Taverna Txakoli, which serves up pintxos, the Basque version of tapas - pieces of crusty bread topped with anything and everything including salmon, anchovies, grilled chicken, sausage, cheese, bacalao, tuna, eggs. I had an amazing pintxo that was basically a disc of creamy goat cheese on top of a thin slice of tomato on bread, topped with a sweet onion marmelade - sooooooo good. Needed a glass of rioja to wash it down, of course. I don´t really understand how tapas are just snacks before your actual dinner here - a couple pintxos are more than enough to constitute a dinner....but of course I wasn´t going to let a full stomach stop me from trying more tapas. I stopped by a little place called Tapas del Mundo for another glass of rioja, a wedge of Spanish tortilla and a half portion of pimientos de padron - green peppers marinated with olive oil and sea salt and grilled until the skin is all shiny and charred. I absolutely adore Spanish food.

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This is the first proper hostel I've stayed at...ever, really. On my previous backpacking jaunts I stayed at some pretty dinky places, but they were usually grimy guesthouses, not actual hostels. As I was taking a shower I felt a sense of deja vu. Haven't I been in a hostel before? Why does lugging my shampoo and soap and change of clothes to an all girls' bathroom down the hall seem so familiar? Oh yeah. It's just like college dorms! Which is not so bad, actually. But then I remembered that the last time I lived in a college dorm was 10 years ago, which made me feel really, really old. Too old to be crashing in a hostel with little things in their teens and early 20's. Although actually, there are quite a few people here who appear to be even older than I am. Thankfully J is arriving in Madrid tomorrow and I'm moving to posher digs for the rest of my tour of Spain since J insisted that we are too old to be slumming it and so we are staying in nice modern hotels.

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My stops in Latin America were all about active pursuits: learning Spanish, volcano climbing, surfing, hiking the Inca Trail. My stay in Spain is all about living life the Spanish way: eating, drinking, and being merry. Viva España!