Jamón, Prostitutes & Chocolate delight

  Madrid, Madrid, Spain and Canary Islands
Sunday, August 17, 2008

Rows of ageing ham

On arrival in Madrid we were lucky enough to meet up with an old colleague, Frank from South Africa who had relocated to Madrid a few years earlier. Frank was then kind enough to act as tour guide and took us on a luxurious drive past some of the cities major attraction. Once the historical tour ended the gastronomy tour began. We visited various tapas bars where we were treated to some of Madrid's best tapas including the legendary Spanish hams, Jamón ibérico.

Dinner with Frank

We had a fantastic evening chatting about work of all things, reminiscing about South Africa and chuckling at the similarities we experienced when we relocated to Dubai. We had such a great time that we only got home some time after 2am. (Thanks Frank for the wonderful evening and showing us around your lovely city!)


Madrid is very different to Barcelona in many ways it seems. Firstly Madrid is said to be a better 'Spanish experience' than the tourist haven of Barcelona, also the food and general way of life seems to be a lot more Spanish and focused on Spanish people. Therefore as apposed to Barcelona there are a lot less touristy attractions and the biggest draw cards seem to be Madrid's many fine museums. Because of this much of our time was spent simply walking the streets and exploring the old part of the city and I left the museum visits up to Inge-Marie. She took one for the team.

Working the square

Our hotel was very centrally situated and clearly in the heart of the sex trade area. Apparently prostitution is legal but pimping is illegal and many of the ladies working in the square in front of our hotel clearly had no effective marketing or advertising campaigns. You would have thought if you were in the trade of selling your body you would at least try and whip it into shape!

Our creepy hotel room

The business below was one of the highlight of the hotel cum hostel. The rooms were creepy and reminded me of the movie the Shining where Jack Nickelson loses his mind and begins hacking up his family, very creepy. They did however have free internet so long as you entered a code into the machine every 30 minutes, a bit like Lost. So while Inge-Marie was doing the museum thing I took advantage of this free internet and finalised out Canadian leg of the trip which took me much longer to do than anticipated as we had find an affordable rental car company that allowed a pick-up and drop-off a car in different states. It wasn't easy but we're glad it is done and are now becoming very excited about our visit to Canada!

Dinner with Kate

On our last night in the city we had dinner with a Busabout friend, Kate, who we'd spent some time with in Rome. We tried a little restaurant nearby the hotel on recommendation of one of the Busabout guides called Gloria's or something along those lines. The meal was fantastic and very good value for money! We typically stay far away from restaurants that have white linen tablecloths and napkins as they are usually way out of our price bracket. This little restaurant however had all the white linen, silver cutlery and fancy wine glasses but also a very reasonably priced menu.

The chocolate beast

The food which arrived very quickly after we had ordered was amazing and the portions were huge. It was obvious to see why people queue to get a table. The show case of the night was the dessert Inge-Marie and I shared. A chocolate soufflé filled with a melted chocolate center delicately placed on of a pool of melted dark and white chocolate. It hard to describe how good it was but the minute the chocolatie concoction hit my mouth all my taste buds simultaneously sang ... (click on the link)--˃

The taste buds song

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