I am spending a week in Madrid so my daughter, who is a grad student, can attend a conference on Arabic manuscripts from the Andalusian period of Spain. She goes to her meetings for interesting sessions and I hang around, or we go to fun things like the bullfight. There is a big festival this week. Normally, the bullfight is held on Sundays but this week it is every day.
Madrid has a Metro very similar to that in Paris. The city is very clean and the people are the only Europeans I have seen who really are indistinguishable from Americans. The only difference is that there is more smoking and almost no obese people. This is a lot like Paris and the people dress very well, more like New Yorkers or San Francisco in the days before the present decline of that city.
Sometimes, the Metro provides its own entertainment. This fellow was very good and had his routine all organized. As we left the Metro, he left our car and shifted to another car. He collected about 5 Euros in our car (one from me) so he probably did pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F43-AdCfQCk
It is annoying that it loads slowly but that will take more work on compression.
Our hotel is a businessman’s hotel well located near the Prado, which I plan to visit today. Claire will be most of the day in her meeting.
Last evening (6 PM) we attended the bullfight and, while the toreros were middling quality, one Banderillero was outstanding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_NDQx6v6YM
Once again, these files load slowly. I’m still working on the format and may be able to compress more. MP4 will not play.
This fellow was terrific, in skill and guts. The woman next to Claire grabbed her arm in a death grip when he stumbled. Then he went right back and placed three sets of banderillas, each beautifully done.
This is a lovely city. I hope the coming financial troubles do not harm it.
More Madrid-
I am obviously having trouble getting the videos to play and I took my flip video camera this trip so all I have are videos.
Our wake-sleep cycles are really going to be screwed up when we get home. Her meetings ended yesterday so we spent today just wandering and shopping for family at home. We got Claire’s husband, Derek, a Boda bag, a real one that cost 45 Euros. There was one at the Plaza de Toros in a stall that was 50 Euros which we thought was outrageous but, obviously, it wasn’t.
I saw some shoes I liked at a shop near the Archeological Museum but I didn’t get them and couldn’t find them anywhere today. Some of the most popular brands of shoes here are Timberland and Rockport, which is a bit ironic as Spain is famous for shoes.
We got my grandson a complete soccer uniform for the Spanish team, which is in the World Cup. We got dolls for his two sisters. My daughter, Annie, got an official soccer jersey.
Today, Sunday, was a big day for the Plaza Mayor, where we had lunch each day in the same restaurant. I have video of that, too, but will have to solve my posting problems. There are lots of tables of men selling and trading stamps. This is a Sunday feature. Claire had lived in Spain a year and so had a lot more experience than I did in Madrid, although they lived in Grenada.
My house has been for sale for three months so, naturally, it sold while I was gone and we did some faxing and e-mailing plus a half dozen phone calls. Both of us have international packages on our cellphones, which can prove annoying when friends call at 3 AM having no idea I am 9 time zones away. The fellow who bought my boat called at 3 this morning to talk about how to rig the boat for racing today. Of course, he had no idea he woke me up.