Madrid

Finally I was able to remove the virus from my laptop: I actually had to format the C drive (thank God I was able to back-up most of my data to another hard drive), reinstall windows and all other programs. In a kind of weird or sick way I'm happy it happened. It gave me a chance to clean the hard drive and only keep those files and programs which I really use and need. I have much more space now on the hard drive and the laptop is running faster. I feel I'm getting a clean start....which goes perfect with the New Year.

So here I am, back to my writing and trying to pick up where I left off...my Christmas trip to Madrid.

La Puerta de Alcala

I arrived in Madrid on Thursday December 20th with a delay of one hour since 5 passengers who had checked in for the flight did not show up at the last minute and their bags had to be removed from the plane. I know, I can’t still figure out why people in this day and age of tight security with everything that has to do with airports and flying would do something like that. The "funny" thing is that before taking the flight, a section of one of the terminals in the Orly airport had also been closed because someone had left an unattended bag. The police and firefighters were all over and they were even evacuating part of the terminal.
After leaving Paris I will be returning to Madrid for the final leg of the trip (as a friend of mine would say), to make that city my home base for my future "traveling" operation and also to take the flight back to Miami. So I took this opportunity to bring one suitcase with me and leave it there. My initial thought was to take 2 suitcases now and then 2 suitcases later when I go back, but since I was traveling with one of those low cost airlines (Air Europa) they only allowed one checked bag (20 kilos max). I took the biggest bag I had (20.2 kilos) and packed my backpack with the heaviest things I had (probably another 10 kilos…OK maybe I’m exaggerating, you know me. But if it did not weight 10 kilos it was very close to it). As a result I arrived in Madrid exhausted from carrying all of that thru the metro stations in Paris and from changing from one train to the other just to get to the airport. Many of the metro stations here don’t have escalators or elevators for us poor traveling souls. So you have to carry everything yourself up and down the thousands of stairs. I arrived around 7pm, Eliana picked me up and I finally got some help with my luggage. The first order of business after my arrival: grocery shopping. I was so happy at the supermarket I wanted to purchase everything. The prices in Madrid are sooo much cheaper than in Paris (or maybe I should just say that Paris is so much more expensive than Madrid and Munich) I wanted buy all the goodies I don’t get to buy here. After the supermarket it was off to go take a look at the fishes and make sure they were well and recuperating from their illness and then we finally went back to Eli’s apartment to have dinner. Ah…the fish story, I almost forgot. A friend from Eliana who was going to be out of town for the holidays left her in charge of checking up on the fish in his aquarium as 2 of them were sick with a cold. So we had to go there and see how well they were recuperating and make sure the water’s temperature was OK for the convalescent Nemos.

The week in Madrid was a good break from my Paris routine and the Paris weather as the temperature in Madrid was about 5-8 degrees Celsius higher. I had time to do a little bit of everything: jog in the mornings, see Jorge (my uncle), walk around the city, watch a couple of movies, eat excellent food at reasonable prices, and do some shopping. I met up with my uncle on Friday afternoon and we walked, and walked and walked. I don’t think I know anybody else in the world who can walk as much as Jorge. We walked half of Madrid. He also accompanied me to look for a true winter coat (the one I had wasn’t cutting it with the cold weather in Paris), he took me to eat churros with chocolate (mmmmm….it was sooooooo goooood….I can’t wait to go back and have some more), and we finished the night with a caña (a glass of beer) and some fried calamari at a Spanish bar/restaurant with tables full of people who seemed to be having their office or family Christmas dinner.

Plaza Mayor -- Puerta de Alcala

Most of the nights I spent them walking in the downtown area and looking at the different Christmas lights and decorations on the streets. One night, just by coincidence, we walked towards Cibeles (a fountain with a sculpture of the Greek goddess of the earth mother) to find that the streets were all closed and the placed was totally crowded. It so happened that there was a fireworks, lights and music show about to begin on the old Post office building right in front of the fountain. The fireworks show lasted for about 30 minutes and it was spectacular.

Old Post Office building -- Paseo de la Castellana

December 25th started out as a celebration of life: a 12km jog in the morning and a an afternoon cooking for our Christmas late lunch - early dinner. Juan C (a coworker from Eli) joined us, we had lunch around 430PM and we spent the rest of the evening talking and talking and talking. We all had a great time. Sometime around 9PM we decide to go check up on the fishes. What was supposed to be a pick-up-the-mail-check-up-on-the fish task of about 10 minutes turned into an hour and a half ordeal. Sadly, the 2 fish who were sick were dead. So our Christmas day ended by having to call Eli’s friend and having to break the bad news to him, getting the dead fish out of the tank (Eli’s task, not mine, thank you), putting them to rest, changing the water from the tank (which is quite a process), and cleaning everything afterwards. So as lively and joyful as the day started, it ended up on a deadly note. Unfortunately I had left the camera at home (remember this was supposed to be only a 10 minute thing) and could not make any pictures of the operation. I’m still disappointed at myself for that. But I learned my lesson: never, ever leave home without the camera as you never know when a Kodak moment will present itself.

Christmas lunch/dinner

The second to last day in Madrid I spent it with my uncle walking the other half of Madrid we did not get to walk on the first day. For lunch we went to a Colombian restaurant!! And yes, ladies and gentlemen after 7 months of "bandeja paisa" abstinence I had myself a delicious one with a "manjar blanco" for dessert (something similar to dulce de leche). I thought for a minute I had died... and I was in heaven!!!!

I left Madrid with minus 1 bag (3 more to go) in the afternoon of Thursday December 27th and arrived to a very crowded and full of tourists Paris. It seems that a lot of people do come to the city of lights to celebrate New Year’s. From what someone told me they had heard on the news, there were about 400,000 tourists here around those days to welcome in the New Year.