Madrid Street Musicians

The street musicians in Madrid are generally of very high caliber. Someone told me the other day--I don't remember who--that the street musicians in major European cities are often required to go through auditions to get a permit to perform. They are rarely slouches in the main tourist areas. These guys, a father, his two sons, and maybe a brother or cousin were astoundingly great. They were whipping out highly-arranged, technically-difficult classical pieces on hammer dulicmers with accordian and bass with nary a sour note.

Plaza de Cibeles

My very first clear memory of my first visit to Madrid was emerging from the Banco de España subway stop in the early evening. There was some sort of Xmas/New Year's holiday celebration going on, so the place was swarming with people. There were colorful lights hanging from the trees, and it was chilly. This fountain is located right at that metro stop. Madrid is lacking a super-iconic Eiffel Tower sort of landmark that screams, "Madrid," to the world. Instead, this fountain serves as one of a few of the few spots in town whispers, "madrid" to those in the know. Lisa and I took this photo about a year ago.

Bullfighting

Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, the main bullring in Madrid:


I've been to Spain four times now, I think. I've never been to a bullfight. I admit to being fascinated by the subject. I've read a lot about it. I've watched it in a limited fashion on TV. I've visited the bullfighting museum at the bullring in Madrid, and I've walked on the sand of the bullring in Ronda. I'm currently reading "Sangre y Arena" ("Blood and Sand"), a classic of Spanish literature in which the tragic protagonist is a proud, arrogant bullfighter. He strays from his wife for a beautiful society woman. When he gets dumped, he loses his mojo. Predictably, this leads to his death in the bullring. Despite all this, I've never been to a fight. I've never felt that I could enjoy the spectacle in which the horses and the bulls are treated in this way for entertainment. It appears that this sentiment is finally starting to shift in Spain as well now two parts of the country have voted to ban bullfights (NY Times article here). Still, the mythology of the whole enterprise is intriguing. I don't expect that we'll see a bullfight on our next trip, but here are some pix of our visit to the Plaza de Toros in Madrid a year ago. As a special bonus, I include a couple pix from my visit to the Ronda bullring in 2006 with Brad and Mom.

Here we are posing beneath an interesting bull-themed sculpture outside of the Madrid bullring:


Another interesting sculpture at the Madrid bullring:


Picasso did a famous series of bullfighting aquatints. This one was reproduced on a poster outside the Madrid bullring. I think it's really cool.


As promised, here I am with Mom and Brad hiding from the fierce toros at the Ronda bullring in September 2006:


Another shot of the Ronda bullring. In any bullring, the expensive seats are in the shady side of the ring ("sombra), while the cheap seats on on the hot, sunny side ("sol"):

Caracoles (aka "snails")

According to my interary, we arrived in Madrid on August 30th, 2009, and then we ate snails. This is true. "Where," you might ask, "did you eat those snails?" Or even more likely, you might ask, "Why did you eat those snails?" I will try to answer these questions.

The second question is easier, oddly enough. Lisa has heard me going on and on about Spain for years now. It was important for me to introduce her exactly right to Madrid. There was no way that we were going go hang out with all the Irish expats at some Irish pub just because they have better beer, that's for sure! Nope, we needed some really classic Spanish food in a really authentic Spanish bar. We needed to eat standing at the bar drinking una caña, the small-sized, refreshing draughts of beer that cut the sweltering heat but don't leave you bloated. You can bet that we'd be throwing our used napkins on the floor too!

Lisa never really got used to the idea of throwing your used napkins on the floor in Spanish bars even though everyone else in the place was doing so. This led to great fun for me throughout the trip, because I commenced with surreptitiously tossing my used napkins at her feet as often as I could just to "accidently" remind her that this was the local custom. Fortunately, I'm a pig. I use a lot of napkins. Otherwise it would've appeared that I was just intentionally throwing countless crinkled napkins at her feet just to be annoying.

So how did we end up with snails/caracoles? Well, the first bar que tenia una buena pinta (that looked good) had a massive pile of fried squid in their window. On my first trip to Spain, I noticed the many bars with pictures of fried squid outside by their front door. The squid in Spain is different from chewy-poor-excuse-for-calamare that you find in Italian restaurants here. In Spain, the squid is chopped cross-sectionally across the "head" of the squid. The head is hollow on the inside, so each cross section is a round segment which, when breaded and fried, looks just like a fried onion ring. One of my first impressions of Spain was that, "Gee, these people sure seem to love their onion rings!" Despite my initial ignorance, it wasn't too long before I learned that those onion rings were really fried squid. I did eat some squid sandwiches. They weren't bad. They were fairly tender and tasty enough dressed with lemon juice on some decent bread, but I never really got a taste for them. They are kind of bland. You can see a nice picture of an authentic Spanish bocadillo de calamar (i.e. a squid sandwich) here.

So again, why the snails? Well, the bar was authentic. We were in a touristy area, it was mid-afternoon on a Sunday, and the place was packed with Spaniards (and us). This is always a good sign. There were no Germans/Brits/Japanese here. I didn't really want squid, so I asked the bartender, "What is the especialidad of the house?," tripping over the word "especialidad" just like I always do. "Calamares and caracoles" was the answer. So we had snails. They weren't bad. They're a bit chewy, but the broth was flavorful and fairly spicy by Spanish standards. We ate the whole plate. Here's a closeup:


And where did we eat the snails? Well, I can only guess. I know exactly where the place is. Until yesterday, I was under the impression that there was a picture of nearly everything in the universe on the internet, but I have found at least one place in Madrid that has not been documented yet. This is quite crazy because you can go to Google Maps these days and get a street level view of nearly everything. If you go to Google Maps and type my address, 1311 South Pacific St, Las Vegas, New Mexico, and then double-click on the little icon on the map, it will take to a street level view of my whole street. My house is there, plain as day, with a little spring snow melting in the front yard. So why can't I find this specific bar in Madrid? I can't say. You can do street-level tours of many major streets in Madrid, but not of this one (Calle de Postas). This is most inexplicable, because Calle de Postas is the main, quarter-mile long pedestrian route between La Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor. These are probably the #1 and #2 on the most visited sites in Madrid. The Calle de Postas is full of life with all kinds of street performers day and night. There are loads of tourists and locals strolling up and down the street 24 hours/day. Why this street is not viewable at street-level on Google Maps is a mystery to me. Several adjacent streets are viewable in exhaustive detail on Google Maps.

My failure to pinpoint that specfic bar on Google Maps led me to spend several hours poring through Google Images searching various combinations of Calle Postas Madrid Caracoles Calamar Bar Cerveceria Etc. Again, this is one of the most lively, most visited streets in Madrid. There is a lot of action. I figured I'd find thousands of tourist photos documenting every crack in pavement of Calle de Postas from Sol to Plaza Mayor. I had no such luck. I did finally find some websites that recommend the best calamar in Madrid. They listed two places on Calle de Postas, Cervecería Sol Mayor and Bar Postas. After extensive searching, I finally found a picture of a mime performing on Calle de Postas with a picture of Bar Postas in the background. It looks like the place, but dang it, the angle is wrong. I'm pretty sure, but not 100% sure. I never did find a picture of Cervecería Sol Mayor, so who knows? Lisa seems pretty sure that Bar Postas is the place, so I guess we'll just have to go with it. This whole exercise demonstrates how much time a person can waste on the internet looking for answers to trivial questions. Here's the only picture of Cerveceria Bar Postas that I could find.

Chocolate Con Churros

Not far from La Puerta del Sol in the center of Madrid is La Chocolatería San Ginés. Although I am not an expert on the subject, I have been told by native madrileños that the CSG is the world-wide standard for chocolate con churros. It is the standard by which all other churros are measured. It's like the Yankees to baseball. It's Yellowstone to national parks. It's the Louvre to art museums. It's Elvis to rock and roll. It's Everest to mountains. It's El Camaron to flamenco. It's Coke to soft drinks. It's Saudi Arabia to oil. I could go on, but the point is that the CSG is the gold standard.


The churros at the CSG are served plain, without sugar. There are sugar packets at the table that you can add to your churros on your own. There is no cinnamon in sight. The churros are served with hot chocolate. As you can see, it's served in a cup, but it is barely liquid. It's more like warm, thin pudding. It's a very rich chocolate much stronger and closer to dark chocolate than your basic hot chocolate in the US. The churros are fried dough, of course, but are not overly greasy. There is a good crunch and a light, steamy interior. They are satisfyingly crunchy and chewy. You dip them in the chocolate.

Chocolate con churros is a common mid-afternoon snack, una merienda it is called. It is a very filling snack what with all the fried dough and the thick chocolate. It is substantial, but the truth is that you need a filling merienda around 5:00 p.m. to tide you over, because you probably won't have supper around 10:00 p.m. In other words, without la merienda, you'd starve while waiting for dinner.


By pure chance, we stopped for the night one night in Astorga in northwest Spain. Astorga is located along the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgramage route to Santiago de Compostela, the site of St. James' remains (more on this some other day). Aside from the pilgramage business (which was and still is a business), it turns out that back in the 1800s and 1900s, Astorga was one of the main chocolate manufacturing centers of Europe. There is not much chocolate manufacturing in Astorga any longer aside from a few artisanal producers. I guess the Swiss cornered the market somehow. Aside from chocolate, there are a few other interesting sites in Astorga. For example, there is a gothic cathedral for the pilgrams that is famous mostly for being overwrought (pic here).


Right next to the cathedral is the most famous site in town, the Palacio Episcopal (above). It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, a famous Spanish Catalan art nouveau architect who lived around the turn of the 20th century. The building was commissioned by the local bishop to be the bishop's residence, but upon completion, it was deemed so extravagant that nobody dared live there.


El Museo del Chocolate of Astorga.


The cathedral and Palacio Episcopal were interesting, but for us, the most interesting site in Astorga was El Museo del Chocolate. The museum itself was not all that interesting. There were lots of displays of antique chocolate-making mortars and pestles and forms. There were also a very large number of displays of antique promotional items like the one above. The coolest thing, though, was a video that showed the old-school technique that they used to make the chocolate. This was very interesting. Afterwards, the gift shop was also very interesting, because you could sample and then buy all sorts of different handmade chocolates of varying percentages of cocoa. After extensive sampling, we eventually bought some dark chocolates and some milk chocolates, both with almonds. They were all very good, but the milk chocolate had a richer flavor and creamier texture to my palate. The dark was good and flavorful, but a little too brittle and waxy. The brittleness lessened the richness and creaminess that I prize. We also bought package of the chocolate that you use to make the chocolate for chocolate con churros. I think we left the place with five pounds of chocolate (literally).



Here is a picture of Lisa's first batch of chocolate con churros from just a few days ago. It took us five months to get around to making them mostly because neither of us has ever made a churro before. The chocolate came from the bar we bought in Astorga. The churro recipe was from Lisa's brand new Spanish cookbook, Spain and the World Table. The first batch of churros was excellent, but next time, we will omit the cinnamon and probably use one less egg to see if we can come closer to matching the CSG churro gold standard. And the chocolate? Delicious!

Supper tonight!

Tonight we ate the last of our illegally imported pimientos verdes that we brought back from Spain (green pimentos or green chile as we call them in New Mexico). Whenever I'm in Spain seek them out. They are essentially a sweet green chile with a very tender skin. The New Mexico green chiles must be roasted to separate the tough, inedible skin from the flesh. A Spanish pimiento verde can be eaten raw or better yet, fried whole in olive oil. They are not spicy at all. Nor do they taste like a green bell pepper. They are an essential ingredient in many simple tapas. One of my long time favorites is piece of tortilla española (cold potato/egg frittata) with a piece of pimiento on a piece of a baguette. Another favorite is the same thing but with a piece of jamon in place of the tortilla. On our most recent trip, the new, life-changing eye-opener was to modify this recipe slightly and make a small sandwhich of pimiento, half-cooked uncured bacon, and a baguette. You can see a picture of one of these sandwiches which we ate at "El Brillante" a small bar on the plaza adjacent to the Reina Sofia Museum. This bar is classic Madrid. You sit on the terraza (ourdoor seating) and watch the world go by while you have a snack and refreshing drink. While I'm sure that many tourists stop by on account of its promity to the museum and nearby Atocha trainstation, it really seems super-Spanish to me. The clientele and staff seem mostly Spanish to me. The food and drinks are also very traditional.

A very peculiar local custom occurs on the plaza on weekend nights when the weather is nice: This is one of the main gathering points for the youth of Madrid as they go out with their friends for the night to learn how to get drunk. One night as we sat and enjoyed our bocadillo of pimiento and bacon, we watched in amazement as dozens of teenagers 14-18 years of age congregated on this famous plaza with sacks of booze and soft drinks. The most common concoction that they drank is a calimocho--half red wine, half Coca Cola. I've never seen an adult drink this drink(including myself), but the kids appear on the plaza with a two liter bottle of coke a bottle or two of wine, mix them up, and drink it down. I suspect it's an easy way to get a large amount of alcohol down easily. Coming from prudish America, this spectacle is even more interesting because it's just another ho-hum aspect of a pleasant summer evening in Madrid. There is nothing abnormal about this massive congolmeration of teenagers in a public place en route to serious intoxication. The adults in the plaza take no mind (and in fact some might be playing soccer with their toddlers in the midst of it all). The local bars and cafes take no notice. The police take no notice. It is all perfectly normal. In fact, even the pre-alcoholic kids themselves seem perfectly well-behaved. They're just out for the evening with amigos sharing some cheap drinks on the plaza. You can read more about calimochos here: http://thespiritworld.net/2006/09/27/title_134/

The second picture above is our replica of a pimeinto and bacon bocadillo from tonight's dinner. We took our last two smuggled pimientos from the freezer and whipped up our version. We paired it with an arugula salad with figs, balsamic vinegar, parmesan cheese, and walnuts. To drink, we had a "tinto de verano," a summer drink which is basically a poor-man's sangria--red wine on ice mixed with citrus soda (like San Pellegrino Limonata) on ice. I guess it's not that different from a calimocho, but is still very refreshing, even though the current New Mexico temperature is hardly summery--about 25 degrees with a low around 0-10 degrees tonight. It was all very tasty though our pimientos have suffered a loss of flavor after three months in the freezer. Guess we'll have to go back and smuggle some more. In the meantime, a friend of Lisa's, a local chile farmer, has agreed to try to grow our smuggled pimiento verde seeds next summer in his garden down in the Pecos River valley. Hope this works out. We cannot grow our own in Las Vegas, because it is too cold here.

Hmmm...learning about blogging and writing about Spain at the same time

OK, so instead of sending out lengthy e-mails with huge photos about my comings and goings, I am experimenting instead with this. The idea was to be able to simply share pix, travelogues, etc easily with those who might be interested to take a peak. Specifically, as I thought about my most recent trip to Spain, it occurred to me that I have so many observations about the trip that are interesting (to me, anyway), that it would be hard to write a long narrative ("On Day 1, we visited blah blah blah; on Day 2 we blah blah blah). I thought with a blog, I could easily write a shorter diatribe about a single subject, maybe food, churchs, or topless beaches (all three being fairly religious subjects to me).

But now, as I write and explore this idea, I realize it's more complicated. It's bad enough that I have to get motivated to actually write. Now I realize that in addition to writing, I'll also have to learn how this blog site thingy works. How do I post a photo? How big is it? How will it display in the formatting? Are there going to be ads along the side? What's the deal with the ads along the side? Will I really get paid if only my mom and Lisa look at this? I don't really want to get paid. I just want to say what I have to say so that I have some record of my thoughts. In this way, I'll be able look back tomorrow, next year, or 10 years from now and notice that my thoughts from yesteryear were really infantile. Also, how does cutting and pasting work here?

Anyway, that's the idea. I'm going to attach a photo from Spain somewhere along here just to see what it looks like. Ah yes, I see it now. Upper left. It's a picture of me in front the Restaurante Iowa on Calle Montera near Puerta del Sol in Madrid. This pic dates back to my first visit to Madrid, but I never ate there. On my most recent trip, Lisa and I stayed in a pension right around the corner from here. We discovered that this place is actually pretty good. It's cheap and they serve you massive empanadas de atun to go (atun is tuna, of course). There also a Restaurante Nebraska nearby, but aside from the similar Midwest name, they are two completely separate establishments.