Day 13 - July 11th

  Madrid, Spain and Canary Islands
Friday, July 11, 2008

Well, this is what I get for skipping on a couple of days - I'm having trouble going back and figuring out what I did on Thursday the 10th...so sorry!  I'm thinking hard about it - but honestly, it probably wasn't much.  So, as for Friday.  Oooooh, I remember what I did - I'll get back to that one.  But, as for Friday, I ate my lunch in the dorm room...as always, it probably wasn't that appetizing.  But, se la vi!  So, after that, I think I took a siesta or ran my mouth like I always do - but in the end, we decided to have a night on the town and head into Plaza Mayor to find some real Paella!  They kick us out of the dorms for dinner on Friday night so we decided we would use that opportunity to find some real Spanish food.

Plaza Mayor

My first plate of Paella!

 
After searching around and around, we finally settled on this place in Plaza Mayor...it looked decent.  So, we decided to go in and have a bite.  Started off with some bebidas - Fanta Naranja sin hielo for me - and then some pan (bread) for the table and then I got my paella con carne.
 
So, how was it?  Eh...not so wonderful...it was just food.  I think Mommy makes a better one - shout out to Mamma Nancy!  My momma knows how to cook!  I swear, for anyone who plans on making a trip out to Spain, bring your own thing of Seasoning Salt in your backpack, you may need it for some of the meals.  That is, unless you can deal without seasoning on all of your food.  Excuse me, let me correct myself, if you can do with "olive oil" seasoning and that's it...then you'll be okay! 
 
After our meal, some of the Spanish kids in our program decided to come out and join us...a little late, but hey, that's how they do things here!  (I wonder, don't they get hungry???  How can you eat your dinner after 11 and be okay every night?)  When they came up to us they said - "Paellador, why did you eat here?!?!"  Paellador is apparently this Paella chain that makes paella and sells it out to restaurants...so basically they buy it and reheat it when people buy it.  Thus, it's the nasty stuff - I guess I didn't have any "real" paella.  Too bad that was my first try, it didn't seem too hot...so, I don't really have a big craving for the real stuff...but maybe I'll go for attempt 2 one day!
 
After we received la cuenta (the meal), we realized that there was this random charge on it and we couldn't figure out what it was - it was the bread.  So we asked, why are we being charged for it?  They told us it's because we didn't tell them no!  Can you believe that's the way they do things over here - if you don't want it, make sure you tell them up front, don't assume it's free!  How rude! 
 
Anyway, we went home and hung out for the rest of the night (mind you, it was already about 2 o'clock in the morning) and packed for our next day in Sevilla!!!

I own this city!!!