Escape from Madrid
On Monday, we fled Madrid and its crazy city chaos to catch up with friends down on the Medeterranean. We stored half our bags at the Atocha train station, as you see in the photos, the kids fit just perfectly in the lockers - but in the end we decided to bring them along. Atocha has an awesome turtle habitat right in the middle of the station - it’s huge.
Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been impressed with train service in Europe. The train from Madrid to Alicante was awesome, especially for 2nd class - lots of room, very fast, good food in the bar car…excellante. The next day we hopped a bus and caught up with Nina, Francis, and Cisco in the small beach town of Santa Pola, where Francis’ parents live. It was an awesome reunion for Zeke and Cisco. We swam all day in the Med, and had a 3 hour lunch at their local joint and then Francis and I hung at the beach cafe while Nina, Alison and the kids took a paddle boat way out and swam some more.
Mmmmmm, Croquettas.
Some may think we’re spending weeks in Spain finding new culture, people, art and music. Not true. It’s all about the Croqueta. Soft creamy patata with bits of jamon or calamare on the inside and crusty and crunchy on the outside. mmmmmm.
El Rastro
El Rastro is the biggest damn flea market I’ve ever seen. For about 10 city blocks streching in many directions, every inch of street space just west of the La Latina barrio is packed with Madridrilenos selling and buying pretty much every and anything. My favortites were (see photos) Rubber Band Man and Tape Guy. You look down sidestreets and there are specialties - one side street will be all electronics stands, another will be Anarchist politics….lots of fun, we finished in La Latina drinking many Tino el Berano and eating tapas…
Madrid Gay Pride
Our 4th of July was spent celebrating freedom of a more current nature than Jefferson and Sam Adams. In a country that has such a history of repression against anything not specifically blessed by Jesus or one of the church’s henchmen that used his life to keep the masses in line and torture those who rebelled in any way, it was amazing to see the wonder of 2 million people out to celebrate the freedom to love anyone you want.
We’ve hung at a bunch of Pride parades in San Francisco where the parade route is defined by barriers manned by many cops that protected the elaborate floats passing by in a seriously organized fashion. The Madrid parade parade was much more of a 2 million person street party with a conga line snaking through the crowd - no floats, but lots of drums and singing and dancing of everyone. It was good times, good cervezas (Estrella Galicia), good sangria and alot of freedom!
