My friends and I have been trying for about two weeks now to get reservations at this restaurant called Wagaboo (described by one guide book as an “exotic eatery serving global cuisine”) and keep failing to get a reservation. So, in our desperation of somewhere to go I turned to my handy dandy Señora. I asked Laura if she knew of any good (and not too expensive) restaurants that we would enjoy. She quickly informed me that, in fact, her cousin owns a restaurant called El Teletipo about 4 blocks from our school and that the food is fantastic (well that’s debatable but we’ll discuss that in a bit…) So Laura called and made the reservations and we were in for 9:30.
Jump to the next day: I’ve been fasting for a while (you know, that whole Judaism thing…) and haven’t really eaten so when we head off to dinner I’m pretty excited. Now, seeing as Laura told me that we’d need a reservation to get into this place, I figured it would be somewhat of a “spot”… Well, we walk in and it’s pretty much us (save Laura’s cousin, the wait staff and the private party in the back room). Okay, fine… So we sit down and get our menus. Good selection of things. I order the sole. Okay, so I have a thing with eating whole fish, I don’t know why but having it remain in the same shape that it used to swim in… Not so much my cup of tea… Anyway, the fish wasn’t bad and the wine wasn’t bad either (we got the house white, Laura’s suggestion) and to be honest this little Jew with his empty stomach started feeling it pretty quickly… Anyway dinner’s done (oh did I mention that my friend Mike ordered the deep fried brains, testicles, and sweet meats platter; also Laura’s suggestion… Yep…) and we order desert, some sort of chocolate pastry thing. WOW! Seriously, none of us could understand it but this slice o chocolate whatever-it-was, that didn’t look particularly intriguing was absolutely fantastic. Really, desert made the somewhat “meh” dinner worth having and made the restaurant worth going back to.
Anyway, we leave the restaurant and decide to go over to one of the museums (Why not right? It is free after all.) and settle on the Reina Sofia, Madrids more contemporary art museum and home to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Well needless to say, we made it to the museum with a minimal amount of lost-ness (and wow were the streets crowded, it seemed like every person of every age that lives in Madrid was out and about last night, or two nights ago by the time you read this…). Anyway, I have my heart set on seeing Guernica mainly because I’ve been studying the damn thing for, I don’t know, 10 years and have done maybe 6 reports on it, plus I like Picasso. So we make our way into this absolutely gorgeous art museum, (I mean really, the building itself is worth the trip) and up the elevator to the 2nd floor where Guernica is located. It is really breathtaking to see such a massive and important piece of artwork up close and personal. I know it’s an obvious statement, but there is just sooooooooo much more to appreciate and detail to notice when your not looking at something in the pages of an art history text book… So we stood for quite a while marveling at this painting and then decided it was time to head out and take advantage of this sure-to-be-an-absolute-shit-show night. So we headed off, stopping along the way to get some bottled water (hydration is good and for some reason I haven’t felt well hydrated since I’ve been here) and ended up at our first destination of the evening, the hip-ish, albeit a little gay, Chueca (Chicagoans: think of it as Lakeview but only in concept, the execution is really not so much). We sat for a while at an outdoor café and then made our way into one of the nearby clubs (it seemed that everywhere was charging a cover, probably because the could seeing as the entire city was awake and looking for places to go…)
[For those of you who care or my find it funny, a shirtless Edson just walked by my room and is now cooking tortilla, I believe] (UPDATE: I was wrong it was pista. Think of it as sautéed vegetables with French fries on top.)
Anyway, we stay in this club for a little while (it’s not so much fun… It’s in the basement and there is really no space). So we decide to leave and see what else the area has to offer. We end up putzing around for a little while when we’re approached by one of the now infamous (to us, at least) people offering either chupitos gratis or entrance without cover. This one tells us we can get in for free, ahead of the line and the have “música Franz Ferdinand”. We gee golly, I’m sold (if you couldn’t tell I’m being sarcastic only because last time we’re in Chueca and somebody offered us free shots and no cover to a “great bar with a mixed crowd”, we ended up in some lesbian bar. I mean I guess the crowd was mixed if having lesbos with both long and short hair is your idea of a mixed crowd… Anyway, moving on…). So we get to this club and it’s not awful, not super though, and the drinks weren’t super expensive. And so we stayed there for a while, maybe half an hour, and decided to move on to Calle Fuencarral, and area that we seem to be frequenting a lot lately, and an area where there was supposed to be live entertainment (Daft Punk I think…). However, by the time we got there it looked like some post-apocalyptic vision with people moving down the street in large clumps and garbage piled to the high heavens (you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been reading Stephen King lately). Anyway, before looking for another bar, the drunken munchies take all five of our bodies hostage and we go searching for this pizza place where apparently Mike had some really good pizza one night that he doesn’t so much remember… Well when we get there, now keep in mind this is Spain, they only have ham or pepperoni pizza… COME ON! I know slaughtering pigs is like a national past time here, but really… No cheese? It’s just fucking cheese pizza, it’s a staple… Anyway Sonja, Emily and myself (who don’t eat the pig) we’re pretty not happy… Mike and Merina we’re fine (they eat that). So after those two have their pizza, the other three of us set off on what seemed at the time like a life or death mission to find something to eat (and keep in mind its 3:45am and there are no good calories at this point.) So we walk around what seemed like half of the city searching for something, at the very least a Döner Kebap place where we can get some falafel or something…. But no… We just keep walking, and walking. Although in our mad hunt we did manage to find this bar that Emily had gone to when she studied here two summers ago where the serve drinks called minis which are anything but… These drinks are about the size of your head and according to Emily the ones at this bar can only be lifted with two hands. So in time, we ended up pretty much where we started and thankfully found a bar that served food. While the two carnivores went to get some more pizza, we ordered bocadillos of tortilla (think about an 8” long sandwich on French bread and tortilla, if I haven’t explained it, is basically an omelet like concoction with potato in it. Yeah, at 4:00 in the morning, that sandwich was like the second coming (or, I guess for me, the first coming, but that’s just a technicality and also a badly placed Jew-joke…) Anyway, after we finish our humongous bocadillos and the fries that came with them, we sat and digested for a while and then decided to head back to that bar with the minis… Well we got there and it was an America-themed bar (I’m talking American celebrities and sports posters all over everywhere)… I think it also doubles a s smoke house because I think I now have a black lung from just standing in the place for about 30 minutes… So, by the time 5:15 rolls around, we’re not feeling the bar so much anymore and decide to head out, find a bench and just wait until the metro reopens at 6:00… At this point, pretty much the entire city is still awake, still out, and some of them are even still drinking (don’t ask me how, I honestly enjoy sleeping a little to much…)
Well needless to say the Metro reopened at 6:00 and hordes of people piled down into stations and trains everywhere. Emily and I were fortunate enough to get on the train with a very hairy, very scary shirtless man who was rocking out a little too hard on a crowded train… By the time I got to my stop it was 6:45 and by the time I got to bed I think it was 7:15… It’s Sunday now so that means it’s gunna be a somewhat boring day. We’re all meeting up at this really interesting Spanish café to do our translation homework later though, it’s called Starbucks… I think they have a few in America, not really sure though.
At any point, I think the length of this post more than makes up for the lackluster description of Toledo, don’t you?
Hasta luego….
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