Madrid

It was back to Madrid today, where the morning was taken up with a guided sight seeing walk. Lots of history in Madrid, not all of it good. Seems like it mattered what your station in life was, and whose side you were on as to whether the good old days were good or not. What’s that saying, those who yearn for the good old days and want to turn the clock back are likely to die the same horrible death they did the first time around back then.

That doesn’t have anything to do with the photo, but it has been a couple of days since I went off on a tangent, and the Catholic Church did so many horrible things in Spain that I won’t even mention the Church today. Back to lunch: cod tapas, fried pieces of cod and cod coquettes. A wonderful white wine for Linda and a vermouth for me, both from the barrel. We are definitely eating too good. And paying virtually nothing for it. It is unreal how inexpensive good food is in Spain.


In the afternoon we visited even more churches. They seem to be on almost every corner, and horror of horrors, it isn’t enough that they charged the parishioners to get out of purgatory, some now make additional money charging visitors to look at the inside of the church. Needless to say, our shadows never darken those interior, that is unless it is one that the tour is going inside, and even then we paid in the sense that the money we paid to take the tour is paying our entry.


I’ve decided that this is going to be a food day. Cheese, goat and sheep cheeses by the window full. No! No, Linda you can not buy a piece of each. Has that woman ever changed. The last time we were in Europe she would run the other way if I dared even look at goat or sheep cheese. Now I look at one of those cheeses and she is getting her money out. Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but that doesn’t mean a grizzly bear can't develop a taste for almost anything. And you know what a hungry grizzly can be like, or at least I do.


We absolutely loved this wine we had with dinner. You can even see Linda checking up on me to make sure I took a good photo of the label.


The back of the label. It’s all Spanish to me, I think it says something about this being a great wine. The other reason for the label photos is because it is imported into the US. They said something about the label being somewhat different as this was private labeled for this restaurant, or at least I think that was what they said. We hoped that between the front and the back maybe we could figure it out.



During the meal the four of us at our table had gone through two bottles of wine when I realized Danny was the only one drinking wine at his table. He drove a very hard bargain, but in the end I was able to purchase a 3/4’s full bottle for .02 euro. Since the wine was furnished with the meal I thought he made out great. He thought I should pay more, but being the great guy he was, and he really was a great guy, he settled for all I had in my pocket. Note that I was careful not to tell him that my money pouch was in my other pocket. It’s little things like this that make being on tour so much fun and make for great memories.