Remiss...
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Madrid,
Spain
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Suspend your disbelief, if you will, and pretend, for the next few minutes, that I really did write this on April 8. You'll then understand why I titled this entry "Remiss..." because, of course, it isn't April 8 at all as I write this, but a few weeks later, which means I have to skip a few details, and wrap up our Madrid trip with this entry. A bit of a tall order, frankly, considering there's a whole week to cover...
Since my brain works chronologically, that's how I'll relate the week:
1) Sunday, April 1: we walked all over Old Madrid, starting at Puerta del Sol, and strolling through narrow cobblestoned streets, made our way to Plaza Mayor, City Hall, and eventually to the Cathedral, the Royal Palace, Plaza del Oriente, Plaza de Espana with Don Quijote, Gran Via, Palacio de Telecomunicaciones and Cibelles, before heading back to our hotel. Beautiful sunshine until showers late in the afternoon. Fantastic day - tiring but rewarding. Ah, the glorious feeling of figuring out a city...!
2) Monday, April 2: training, followed by our last group dinner, at Casa Ciriaco. The place is overrated... but it was still an enjoyable dinner, in pleasant company.
NOTE: I'm inserting here an anecdote that actually took place the previous week, during one of our lunches at the client's cafeteria. As the "cafeteria ladies" were asking us for our choices, Radha, unsure as to the identity of a dish in front of him, asked me what it was. I quickly answered, "onion rings", and Radha nodded and pointed to the onion rings, which the lady loaded on his plate, next to French fries. Radha being vegetarian, there weren't always many entrees he could choose from, and onion rings and French fries were going to be it that day.
Sitting at our table, Radha took a first bite of his onion rings. He frowned, grimaced, looked at me, and said, "are these really onion rings? They must cook their onions in a really different way, because this is really chewy, and doesn't taste like onions." I took a bite of mine, and realized, with a mix of consternation and amusement, that Radha had tasted, for the first time, fried calamari. It wasn't on purpose, Radha, I swear! :-)
3) Tuesday, April 3: last day of training!!! A few technical glitches, some cold sweat and hard work and urgent phone calls along the way, but all in all, things worked out reasonably well. Of course, all the Fab could manage was that the training this time had been "a littel beet betteur" than in December. But most importantly, we KNEW we had done a very good job. I'm very proud of our team -- we "did awesome" under pressure.
Around 4-4:30pm, the trainees started streaming out, saying good-bye quickly as they left for the airport. By 5:30-6pm, we made our way to the nearby hotel, dragging The Beast behind us, and grabbed a taxi to get back to our hotel. Where did we have dinner that night...? Hum... have to think about that one. Oh - was that our Indian dinner night? Mmmmm! It was wonderful: spicy, tasty, fresh, not to mention the fact that the restaurant was devoid of smoke... It was great to see the smile on Radha's face as he finally ate things he knew and liked :-) The chicken Vindaloo was hot!
4) Wednesday, April 4: morning meeting with the Fab and the head of the Business group we had trained. After getting off the subway at the wrong station -- the one that the Fab had told me -- we walked in a cold drizzle to reach the client's office building. We met the Fab at the coffee shop next door. After a somewhat-tense discussion, we realized it was time to go to meet the head of the Business group in her office. Before I could get my coat on, the Fab had walked out the door, sticking me with the bill! Granted - it was only coffee, but what manner of manners are those? Looking at Steve in disbelief, I shelled out the few Euros, and headed towards the door. The Fab was outside, and suddenly said, "Oh! I feurgot to peh!" Hummm... "forgot" or...?
The meeting was pretty good -- it did involve having two generous colleagues back home, Lorr and Daniel, join us via phone and Webex. Why "generous"? It was, after all, 5am back home. The Fab wasn't going to express any gratitude, but the head of the Business group recognized that this was "going beyond the call of duty" and thanked us. Some people are more pleasant than others... After saying our good-byes, and after I took the Fab aside to let him know of my plans to be away this summer, it was suddenly true: our - work - was - done.
We had agreed that Wednesday afternoon would be devoted to Julia's favourite activity: shopping. So we first headed to El Corte Ingles, a large department store located next to the client's office building. We headed upstairs to the restaurant, where the pictures in the menu helped everyone figure out what to order. As we sat and ate, the restaurant filled up, such that by the time we left, around 2pm, there was a short line-up at the entrance. That's when we heard what would become one of the funniest quotes of the trip.
A very tall, and I must say, good-looking, nay - very attractive - gentleman (mid-thirties?), was standing next to (presumably) a female colleague. Both were wearing suits, and looked quite professional. As Steve walked past them, he distinctly heard the man, in a clipped British accent, say in English, "Who do I have to shag around here to get some food?"
As we laughed our way out of the restaurant into the men's fashion department, we convinced Steve (it wasn't very hard to convince him, mind you) to try on some pants. Nothing too flashy, just bright red.
As we headed back to Puerta del Sol, we decided to split up and meet later, allowing each of us to shop on our own for a little while. I fully expected Julia to have shopping bags hanging from each arm, weighing her down, by the time we re-connected. But to my surprise, the shopping girl had spent a grand total of 2 euros, on an ice cream cone. And there I was with bagfuls of souvenirs and other goodies.
More shopping later, we all reconnected at the hotel for dinner. We headed for the district of Chueca, one of the last main areas we hadn't visited yet. It wasn't until I saw store windows filled with kinky leather outfits that I remembered that Chueca is known as not only a great entertainment district, but also very "gay friendly".
We once again played our game of, "I don't know, what do you think?" three or four times before finally venturing inside a restaurant. Turned out, it was a decent meal - Radha and I shared a huuuuuuge vegetarian paella (much better than the OK paella of Toledo). The appetizers and other tapas were all pretty tasty.
We headed "home" that night, with full stomachs and light hearts, knowing our work was complete, and the next couple of days were ours.
5) Thursday, April 5: Museums, museums, museums, and - oh yeah - McDonald's. We started at the Museo del Prado, once of the world's most renowned and famous repositories of great historical art. Goya, El Greco, Velasquez - all names I had learned way back when, but to see "Las Munenas" up close and personal was great. Lots of wonderful paintings and sculptures. Unfortunately, by lunch time, we'd lost Radha. We weren't going to see him again until the evening, when we reconnected at the hotel. We figured out that we had missed him by minutes at least twice in that afternoon - but in the end, we went in separate directions.
Steve, Julia and I stopped at a few shops along the way to the "next museum", the Centro Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia. Ahhhh, you say, the museum of modern art, where Miro is center-stage, and Guernica leaves people breathless! Yeaaaah... Not so much. We walked around, Steve and Julia clearly unimpressed. As much as I knew I should be impressed in the presence of such famous art - I just couldn't even fake it. Not even the very large, very... impressive... Guernica managed to have much of an effect on me. We were, as they say, "museumed out".
Making our way back to the subway, Julia spotted a Mickey D, and announced that she was hungry for a snack, chicken McNuggets specifically. Steve and I followed her in, with the result that we had "dinner" at a reasonably normal time of about 6pm, eating a burger with fries. OK - so we "caved" and ended up at McDonald's... but we were hungry! And we didn't feel like struggling through another "where do we eat, and what's on the menu?".
We got back to the hotel, reconnected with Radha -- who was hungry (no McD for him!). We all walked to the "pasta place" up the street, and Radha and Julia had a big bowl of pasta (those 6 nuggets hadn't filled Julia up). Steve and I kinda regretted the burger at this point, as the pasta looked good but we had no room for it.
This was to be our last evening all together. We got back to our hotel, and said good-bye. I was sad to lose my friends... :-(
6) Friday, April 6: Alone at last!
Just kidding. I did miss my friends, as I woke up Friday, and realized I was all by my lonesome. Feeling a bad cold coming on, I decided to take it easy and sleep in. I got up around 9:30, packed my stuff, and finally headed out to the Gallery Thyssen-Bornemisza. Hey, if you're going to visit museums in Madrid - you can't leave that one out, no matter how museumed out you are. It turned out to be amazing... Rodin's, Monet's, Pissaro's, and so on, and so on, with the world's most famous painters all represented in one great, easy to navigate location. By 1:30pm, I was hungry, tired, satisfied of my visit, and in need of a pick-me-up. I headed to Starbucks (which we had found the day before), for a coffee, a sandwich, and a wickedly comfortable armchair. I finished the last bite of sandwich and nodded off. A few minutes later (15? 30? 60?), I woke up when someone said, in English, "... and of course, there are those who come here, monopolize a chair, and do nothing but sleep!" ... Heyyyy! That's ME you're talking about here, isn't it?
Well, I finally mustered the courage to get up, and get walking again. It was drizzling and cold, but I ventured back into the little streets of Madrid on Good Friday afternoon, on purpose avoiding the map and simply following wherever my feet took me. I was really feeling at home in Madrid.
Going back through Plaza Mayor to Puerta del Sol, I decided to walk all the way back to my hotel. A stop at the Retiro on the way completed my tour of Madrid, and a short-ish detour later, I was back at the Hotel Zenit Abeba after having walked for a couple of hours, just in time as a "thunder boomer" exploded above my head. What a way to end a great visit...
7) Saturday, April 7: I woke up early, checked out of the hotel, hopped in a cab, headed to the airport, and said good-bye to Madrid.... The flight to Munich was uneventful, and the Air Canada flight from Munich to Toronto was quite good. Back on home turf, the trip was over...
And with this, I say to Madrid, Hasta la Vista, Baby! I'll be back...
