Madrid: Toros & Tapas

After 8 1/2 hours in the air and four transfers, I arrived in Madrid, Spain's cosmopolitan capital for one night. It was the ideal place to launch out on my odyssey as surely my basic, yet long lost competency in Spanish would return immediately and soon I'd be conversing with the locals over tapas and Rioja. Think again.

With just a few hours to enjoy Madrid, I headed to Plaza Mayor, a 17th century gathering place in the historic centre of the city. While the square is now flooded with tourists sporting iPods and digital cameras, herders once drove enormous fighting bulls through the streets of the city to do battle with matadors on these cobblestones while earlier, accused heretics faced gruesome executions here during the Spanish Inquisition. Welcome to the Old World, where 'ancient' means something quite different than 'born before 1950.'

Plaza Mayor, Madrid

Two passions of the Madrileños are tapas (tasty appetizer-sized dishes) and bullfighting (for and against). I decided to get a flavor of both at once. La Torre del Oro is a tapas bar and temple to the art of bullfighting located on the Plaza. If anyone thinks it’s always the bullfighter that wins, think again. Dozens of photos of matadors being gored by 1200 pound fighting bulls decorate the walls along with the heads of several massive bulls, including one that the barman claims was killed during a fight famously attended by both aficionado Ernesto Hemingway and General Franco. Those who are still following this blog when I return to Spain at the end of June will likely hear more about bulls, but suffice to say after seeing how enormous these Spanish bulls really are, I’d be wise to rethink any close encounters that may occur down the road...





 Onward to Morocco!

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 9, 2010 at 9:56 AM

    CMac-Awesome buddy-keep it coming. I never knew you had such a flair with the written word.

    Ig

    ReplyDelete
  2. JanMay 9, 2010 at 11:48 AM

    Gross picture Craig Im not sure I could handle eating or dinking in that pub!

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMay 10, 2010 at 8:29 AM

    Hi Craig, following closely, enjoy!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AllyMay 11, 2010 at 1:28 PM

    Eagerly awaiting the end of June.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownJune 1, 2010 at 3:23 PM

    keep them comming great writing and pics write a book when you get back or get a job with a travel publisher

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sahara: Dunes & Dromedaries

Image
Two of us were missing. We were going to have to leave them behind. Perhaps they were hopelessly lost in the maze of alleys that make up the Marrakech medina. Or maybe, like thousands of others, the erupting Icelandic volcano had cruelly interrupted their trip. That they would choose not to show up is unimaginable. Still, we had delayed our departure for more than an hour and we had to move on. So began the most memorable stretch of the Great Odyssey (so far). I awoke that morning at 5 a.m. It was a full two hours earlier than necessary, but I was far too excited to sleep. I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since the email from Omar popped onto my iPhone screen, confirming my spot on the excursion. Even if I had wanted to sleep a little longer, those damn chirping birds in the Dar Balthazar courtyard weren’t about to allow it. So, at 7 a.m. I ducked through the Hobbit-sized front door into the cobbled alleyway of Bab Doukkala, leaving behind yet another opulently decorated riad, w
Read more

Fes & Beyond: Melodies and Magic Carpets

Image
Fes Leather Tannery Fes Leather Shoes It was bound to happen and I suppose it’s not really a bad thing that it did. If I had any fear that my trip would peak too early, it was well warranted. For unknown reasons, I’m prone to habitually elevating my expectations – every new experience needs to be bigger or better than the one preceding it. After setting the bar so high during the Marrakech – Essaouira – Sahara legs of the Great Odyssey, a fall (or at least a plateau) from such great heights may have been inevitable. There are worse problems that one could endure. So it was that I arrived in Fes, exhausted from a few weeks travelling in a strange land, but exhilarated from one memorable experience after another. In hindsight, I’m quite sure that two days in Fes , Morocco’s third largest city, would have been sufficient. Instead, I struggled to re-capture the excitement I’d felt during the first three weeks. I stayed four days too long. My brother warned me that I’d have moments lik
Read more

One Night in Paris: Photos from the City of Light

Image
The Pyramid at the Louvre "After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe -- Paris, Venice, Rome -- collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only..." - Jay Gatsby As with all good things, this Great Odyssey of mine will soon draw to a close. Like Gatsby, I lived life in the greatest capitals of Europe and North Africa this year, even if only for a short while. After many months on the road and countless extraordinary, perhaps even life-changing experiences I will be returning to Canada in a few days. Even Odysseus eventually found his way back to Ithaca. Only time will tell what comes next. I joked along the way that once the hard drive on my Mac is full with photographs, it'll be time to return home. As I arrived in Paris, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, I was determined to capture the most beautiful memories in the precious few megabytes of space that I had left. Perhaps
Read more