¡Hola! ¿Habla Ingles?
I must've said those words over a dozen times in the past 2 days. Conversing with people in Madrid has been really hard and somewhat frustrating. Even though we're staying in the centre of the city, there's clearly a lot less tourists visiting Madrid because most locals don't speak any English. Couple that with the fact that the only Spanish we know is the very little I learned in a 1st year Spanish course in University and we ended up having some rather awkward conversations. It's all worth it in the end though because I feel great when I actually manage to communicate with someone!
Along the same lines though, I think this is the first time on the trip where we feel a bit out of place. Since there's very little English spoken, and we can't have meaningful conversations with locals it definitly feels like we're outsiders. Things might get worse in some of our later stops because we'll have zero knowledge of the local language but most of our destinations are pretty touristy so hopefully there will be enough people who can speak English.
Ok, so enough about language. From the little we've seen of Madrid society, it's pretty different from home. For example, for the most part, you can only buy food from restaurants between 12-4 and 8-12. Also, we were walking around last night (a Tuesday night) and there were guys handing out flyers for free drinks at various nightclubs. We went to one place for a free rum and coke (which was 1/2 rum - not bad for a free drink) and the place was pretty full. It was amazing to see so many people out on a Tuesday night. Also the decor was different from what you'd expect back home in that it was relatively well lit and there was actually art on the walls.
Back on to the topic of food, we went last night to the "World's Earliest Restaurant" according to the Guiness Book of Records! We had a set menu with house specialties - I had lamb and the others had "Suckling Pig". The food was all amazing and towards the end of the evening, four guys came out and started playing a bunch of songs in Spanish. We got some photos and a movie which I'll hopefully be able to get uploaded soon enough. On that note, I've managed to upload 2 more albums so take a look. One is pictures and movies from the soccer game we went to in Manchester and the other is pictures from the three cities we visited in Scotland. Unfortunately today I was looking through the pictures on my camera and I noticed that the pictures weren't showing up for some of them. It looks like I lost about 25 pictures or so. I'm pissed off because I even paid a little extra to get the brand name SD card. I'm hoping I can find similar pictures from some of the other guys' cameras.
I didn't want to risk losing any more pictures so I bought a new card today when we were at a new mega-mall that they built here. For the most part the mall is the same as any other mall but instead of just having stores it also has a movie theatre, miniature golf and an indoor ski hill!! Adam decided to go skiing and he said that the snow was pretty mediocore but it's all man-made snow so what can you expect?
Barcelona tomorrow!
Some quick things Jon forgot to mention about his post on Paris:
- While we were in Paris an amazing event occured. We were sitting in a cafe and the clock struck 12:34 PM. The date was May 6, 2007. What does that add up to? The date was 12:34 05/06/07! We took pictures of the clock and where we were at so we could remember that moment and yes, we are giant nerds!
- When that wondeful time was passing we were actually eating lunch in a Kosher restaurant/cafe and drinking Macabee Beer or "The Beer that the the chosen people choose" as Jon likes to say and claims is the slogan. In our walking the streets of Paris we actually stumbled across three different Jewish areas.
Along the same lines though, I think this is the first time on the trip where we feel a bit out of place. Since there's very little English spoken, and we can't have meaningful conversations with locals it definitly feels like we're outsiders. Things might get worse in some of our later stops because we'll have zero knowledge of the local language but most of our destinations are pretty touristy so hopefully there will be enough people who can speak English.
Ok, so enough about language. From the little we've seen of Madrid society, it's pretty different from home. For example, for the most part, you can only buy food from restaurants between 12-4 and 8-12. Also, we were walking around last night (a Tuesday night) and there were guys handing out flyers for free drinks at various nightclubs. We went to one place for a free rum and coke (which was 1/2 rum - not bad for a free drink) and the place was pretty full. It was amazing to see so many people out on a Tuesday night. Also the decor was different from what you'd expect back home in that it was relatively well lit and there was actually art on the walls.
Back on to the topic of food, we went last night to the "World's Earliest Restaurant" according to the Guiness Book of Records! We had a set menu with house specialties - I had lamb and the others had "Suckling Pig". The food was all amazing and towards the end of the evening, four guys came out and started playing a bunch of songs in Spanish. We got some photos and a movie which I'll hopefully be able to get uploaded soon enough. On that note, I've managed to upload 2 more albums so take a look. One is pictures and movies from the soccer game we went to in Manchester and the other is pictures from the three cities we visited in Scotland. Unfortunately today I was looking through the pictures on my camera and I noticed that the pictures weren't showing up for some of them. It looks like I lost about 25 pictures or so. I'm pissed off because I even paid a little extra to get the brand name SD card. I'm hoping I can find similar pictures from some of the other guys' cameras.
I didn't want to risk losing any more pictures so I bought a new card today when we were at a new mega-mall that they built here. For the most part the mall is the same as any other mall but instead of just having stores it also has a movie theatre, miniature golf and an indoor ski hill!! Adam decided to go skiing and he said that the snow was pretty mediocore but it's all man-made snow so what can you expect?
Barcelona tomorrow!
Some quick things Jon forgot to mention about his post on Paris:
- While we were in Paris an amazing event occured. We were sitting in a cafe and the clock struck 12:34 PM. The date was May 6, 2007. What does that add up to? The date was 12:34 05/06/07! We took pictures of the clock and where we were at so we could remember that moment and yes, we are giant nerds!
- When that wondeful time was passing we were actually eating lunch in a Kosher restaurant/cafe and drinking Macabee Beer or "The Beer that the the chosen people choose" as Jon likes to say and claims is the slogan. In our walking the streets of Paris we actually stumbled across three different Jewish areas.