Update

On Monday we walked around Madrid and had lunch at home. S made pepitos de lomo y pimientos. That means "delicious sandwiches with pork loin and red peppers." You may remember our lauditory post of November 20th, entitled, "Celebration of Death and Pork," in which we feted the death of Spain's extra-special late dictator with the same kind of sandwiches. An interesting article in today's El pais reports that the former dictator will remain the honorary mayor of the city of Salamanca in perpetuity. Guess which party runs the local government there?

Below, we enjoy our sandwiches with a salad in our small but comfortable flat.


After lunch we walked to the Atocha train station to buy our tickets to Toledo. Then we walked up to the Corte Ingles at Sol to do some shopping. S and G took an hour off from shopping to have a beer at the Fontana de Oro, the Madrid bar named after a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós. Click here to read the novel in plain text format: Boom. There will be a quiz later.

For dinner we stopped into one of the Las Bravas branches that can be found on or near Calle Alvarez Gato. We had a ration of patatas bravas and a ration of pulpo a la gallega. We washed these fine morsels down with a couple of beers.

On Tuesday, we took the AVE high-speed train to Toledo (1/2 hour ride). S accidentally deleted all the gorgeous pictures from that fun-filled trip so we will have to wait until we get copies of the pix that J took on her camera before we can share that experience with our readers. S feels bad about what he has done and will be more careful in the future.

On Wednesday we all went out to Majadahonda to have lunch with S's aunt and cousins. Rafa and Elena also came to enjoy aunt Loli's top-notch paella and to meet A's parents. A good time was had by all, quite in spite of the inevitable linguistic barriers. See below the paella before we dug in.



And above, the plate that A enjoyed. All the rest of the photos from that fun-filled visit were also deleted by S. He is still feeling kind of sheepish about it.

On Thursday we decided not to go to Cuenca because it was snowing there. It was also snowing in Segovia. Basically, it is snowing just about everywhere we thought about going, so we are staying put in cold, windy Madrid. Also, J was unlucky. She caught a bad cold on Wednesday afternoon and has been nursing it since then. Today she is staying in bed at the Armesto. We are hoping that she and G will come over for dinner tonight if she is feeling better. It sucks to be sick when you are on vacation. We think she will feel better after having a bocadillo de jamón. Salted cured pork can do a lot for a cold.