Month: August 2016

Getting Acquainted / Madrid

Odelay: An Ode(to)Delay

I have been a bit delayed in writing my first blog post from Madrid – we arrived Wednesday – but as we have learned in only a few short days, the art of delay is very Spanish. (On a side note, Doer has written several posts. He’s pretty good at the Doing). Delay is apparent everywhere in Spain, from pedestrians conversing in the middle of the sidewalk to the hotel breakfast diners who linger over the coffee long after the hotel staff begin clearing the room. And unlike the fast-paced tempo of the United States, it tends to relax you – once

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Food / Restaurants

La oreja del cerdo de Van Gogh

What better way to start out detailing our food experiences than this perfect dish at Gastromaquia in Madrid’s Chueca neighborhood, the Wilton Manors of Madrid if you get my drift… and the residents certainly want to make sure you do, from the first moment you arrive at the rainbow-painted Metro station! Gastromaquia was easily our best meal yet in Madrid. Since we went for dinner at 9:30 PM like rubes, we miraculously got a table on a walk-in and watched as everyone showing up after us without reservations was made to wait up to an hour. All of the courses we

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Getting Acquainted

Making your phone work in another country on the cheap

I’m guessing I’ve spent about 10 hours over the past day and a half getting our cell phones to work here without spending an arm and a leg. I’m sure it is just the first task of many that seemed easy in theory, but actually will turn out to be quite complex. To put things in perspective, I remember the last time I was here in 2000, I brought my first iBook (Blueberry, but I always kinda wished I’d gotten Tangerine). It was one of the first computers with WiFi and I had to explain what wireless Internet was to

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Getting Acquainted

Spain, meet Doer and Dreamer!

We’re heeeere… After a great flight to Newark, it figured there’d be maintenance issues with the plane to Madrid. It only added five hours to our journey, which we’re taking in stride at this point. By the way, thanks to United for a $10 food voucher to a food court where a cold sandwich costs $10.25 and for waiting until a half hour before boarding to give it to us… Not that we’re complaining. That’s why they plied us after the fact with a few miles or a small travel voucher, right? Anyway, this put us into Madrid around 2:30pm.

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Planning

When the workin’ day is done…

Sometimes, life just wants you to know you are on the right path. I had an “Official Song of Moving,” too. And for some inexplicable reason it was Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I don’t know why, but this had become an earworm for me as I spent all of my recent days packing up the house. And when I fired up the U-Haul to make our penultimate trip out to the storage unit, it was playing on the radio. I don’t mean it came on sometime during the drive or I was flipping channels or anything: literally I

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