¡Hola Ethspana!
Trip Start
Jan 28, 2008
1
26
83
Trip End
Sep 18, 2008
Madrid,
Spain and Canary Islands
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Angel picked us up from the Madrid Airport. Seriously, this was a miracle because Cameron had only met him and his new bride Esther 3 years ago on their honeymoon in Vietnam. They all did a kayak tour together for 3 days. So, from that brief moment in time, we had organised to stay with this Spanish family (they now have beautiful Mateo, their first son) for a week before we hit the road to travel in Spain.
I immediately liked Angel. He spoke English with a funky Spanish accent, wore glasses, had a shiny head on top, and was really tall and reminded me slightly of a Muppet character. Angel, I know you are going to read this, so please understand that I am a Muppet fan! He was also a great teacher, and started to teach Cameron and I Spanish words.
The first thing we discovered was you have to lisp. It is pretty funny to listen to grown men have a conversation in Spanish, lisping every 10th word. They also speak reaaaaaaaallllly fast. My first word that I really remembered was ¨ipo¨, which means hiccup. Obviously this is an important word when you are sharing a house with a 3 month old!
Angel and his mates Carlos, Pedro and Kristina took Cam and I out the first night we were in Spain. Although suffering a little jet-lag and culture shock, we had a great night. The Easter (Santa Semana) procession was happening. The chuch-goers have a certain loop they walk through the city. It takes them all night, in the freezing cold, to walk. They either carry a great heavy float with a statue of Jesus on it, or parade in front or behind in scary hooded costumes that look spookily like the Klu Klux Klan uniform. At the beginning of the evening, when the float was carried out the front door of the church, the large crowd of onlookers (mostly Spanish locals and tourists) went very quiet. A bit of a Mexican Wave effect, in opposite.
Anyway, we soon realised that the Easter Thursday night parade was just another good excuse for the locals to go bar-hopping. We quickly left the church after the action was over, and headed for one of Angel and Carlos favourite bars. The Spanish bars are very different to Australia. Rather than large, sprawling areas catering for hundreds, they are small, narrow places, where only about 15 people at a time can sit, drink, eat tapas and smoke. In fact, Angel and his mates had owned and run a bar in their younger days, which sounded like fun.
They ordered me a Mojito (say Mohito). I really like it, and you can try one too. Just follow my recipe in the ¨Cooking with Angel¨blog!
At about 2am, we all arrived back at Angels, and Cam and I crashed on the sofa bed, after our first successful day in Spain.
