May 22 to 23—Apartment Living in Madrid

Dear Family and Friends,

Oh, glorious day to get settled in our ‘home of the month’! We awoke today at Cat’s just in time to get some breakfast and put our packs together once again. We left most of our baggage in the secure room at the hostel, and walked the streets of Madrid until our 3 PM meeting time with Carlos, the representative from Rent4Days who was to meet us to give us the keys and take the rest of our payment for the month.

We seem to be guided well on this trip, as we ecstatically learned that our apartment was in the same neighborhood as the hostel, just a few blocks away! So instead of having to navigate the metro again with all that baggage, we had a simple change of residence. And therefore lots of time to enjoy walking through an amazing park of dahlias (la Dalieda de San Francisco) overlooking broader Madrid, our city. We walked through the park areas, past the guys playing futbol/soccer, by an old Moorish landmark, over a bridge with plastic walls that we were learned were put up to deter folks from committing suicide off of the bridge, and up to Catedral de la Almudena and the Palacio Real.

We walked through the intricate doors of the grand cathedral, just completed and consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1992, and then on towards the palace, located right next door. We sat down in the park outside the palace, with its statues aligning the pathways between the busy road and the palace to listen to the accordion player, watch the students go by, witness the taping of a yoga video, and enjoy memories of having walked those paths ourselves as students a decade and a half ago!

Soon, the afternoon arrived and we walked to Calle de Meson de Paredes, our street! No sign of Carlos as 3 PM approached, but someone did let us into the building so that Martha could sit with what few bags we still had while Dani ran off to find a phone … and figure out how to work it! Thankfully, a nice gentleman in the pub where she found a phone was kind enough to help her, and within the next half hour, Carlos arrived with our keys. We took a tour through the apartment to see that it was in “good” condition, paid for the month, and quickly unpacked and explored our space. It was so nice to feel so settled after running around so much in the past week!

We have everything we need here, including a coffee pot, juicer (we don’t even have one of those at home), washing machine, Internet access, and Spanish television to help us expand our vocabularies and keep up with the news. It rained again today, and we learned that the rains in Spain do not just land on the plains, as several towns were completely flooded by impromptu rivers that dragged cars, tore down trees, and destroyed roadways and crops. And the weather report for the rest of the week and the weekend calls for more rain!

The plaza and metro stop closest to our place is Tirso de Molina, which happens to be the flower market! We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the restaurant of the same name—Martha had a big salad with shrimp and egg while Dani enjoyed potatoes and sausage with seven sauces! YUM! We will return there sometime soon, I anticipate. Martha took a long walk to pick up milk, coffee, margarine, marmalade, and other basics to start our next day right. We then enjoyed a nice early night in our new apartment.

Day 9, Wednesday, May 23 brought an overcast day with smatterings of rain, a feeling of being well rested, and a quick morning trip to the panaderia (bread shop) in the plaza for Martha to bring a simple breakfast of fresh bread and coffee to Dani in bed. After some writing and meditation time, we headed into the streets to experience our neighborhood, which is lined with shops full of cute cute clothes (we cannot wait to go shopping before we head home for clothes that fit our more-fit bodies—these shops are awesome inspiration!), shoes, jewelry, fruit, and more. We slowed down today, enjoying a vegetarian lunch near Plaza Lavapies, just down the hill from us, followed by a trip to the grocery store as we came back up the hill. We had heard that Spanish wine in Spain is pretty cheap, but we learned that even rioja red wines are REALLY cheap here … some bottles were between one and two euro ($1.30 to $2.60)!

We filled our arms with a couple of meals’ worth of food, some wine and san gria, and water before climbing back up the hill to our place. Martha turned on the television to learn that world futbol’s league finals was being played between Milan and Liverpool. Watching soccer in Europe is always a good time, as the pubs fill with folks who are emotional and rawkous for their teams. Without a Spanish team in the mix, however, we found the pubs to be pretty subdued. It was still fun, though, to enjoy green olives (well, Martha enjoyed them … Dani has tried both black and green olives in Spain and still believes that olives are nasty!) and san gria. We also stopped in the square to try again to call Martha’s sorority sister, Alisa, who is from Bosnia/Herzegovenia (the former Yugoslavia). She happens to be dating/about to marry a Spaniard, so was supposed to be in Madrid this week to meet his family for the first time! Unfortunately, we were told that her phone as no longer in service this try, so headed back to the apartment to email her again and try to catch Mindy for our weekly "Wednesday date."

Much love,

Martha and Dani