First Few Days in Spain (Con Fotos!)

I am finally in Spain! Steve and I settled down, went to IKEA, got me a phone number, toured Madrid and bought a lot of good food.

On the subject of food: it is remarkably cheap. A bottle of wine often sells for 1 Euro to up to 3 Euro. For more specialty imported wine such as an Italian Moscato it can cost up to 6 Euro! Alcohol in general is cheap, some of the American brands such as Bacardi, Bailey's or Bombay go for half or more off than their American counterparts. As Steve pointed out, olive oil goes for 2E per Liter, fresh vegetables and fresh seafood or poultry is low in cost too. It is difficult to go to a grocery store and spend more than 25E on a visit and be able to carry everything you buy back home.

As a city overall Madrid is clean. Traffic flows well as long as cars don't stall in the middle of a major thoroughfare because the driver is only used to using a Japanese manual shift stick and can't form a mental model of a new French shift stick. At that point you may get a honk, but they're just as likely to come out and ask if they can help.

This brings me to the third point which is that Spaniards are incredibly nice and polite. Genuinely so too. In all of my interactions with people here they have been patient and understanding as I stumble my way through Spanish and end up resorting to Steve's iPhone and it's translate application, only to find that the internet is not accessible. Just as often we find ourselves googling a photo of what we are looking for because we don't know a Spanish word for a vegetable such as a pumpkin. Or, the word we have may be a Mexican-Spanish word and Spaniard-Spanish speakers have no idea what you are talking about.

Steve is going back to work tomorrow. It will be a long 11 hours without him. However, as it turns out, my professor wants me to defend my thesis no later than December 18th so I will be making a trip across the pond once again in a couple of months for a day or two.

This is our street:

A Spanish Jorge Washington:

More photos on our Picasa page:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sanels/SteveAndSanelInMadrid?authkey=Gv1sRgCNPHgfa8osu4Nw#