Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part Two

Being that we were flying into Spain for free and because we were going off-season and managed to pick up a Madrid apartment on Air B and B for an insanely low price, we decided to make this trip short, sweet and focused on fact finding; kind of like meeting for coffee on your first date.  We were looking to preserve vacation time for a longer trip later in the year, so we left on the Thursday night flight of a Monday holiday weekend, flew overnight to Madrid and had a Friday through Tuesday trip that cost us only two vacation days.

Flying on an overnight flight deposits you in the country of your choice at some point in the morning (depending on where you fly to and from).  This was a process that we were familiar with from making the overnight flight from JFK to Fiumicino in Rome.  We knew that we had to do our best to sleep on the plane. A lifelong fidget, I have never been very good at this, but I usually land at my destination filled with so much adreneline, that I can hit the ground running and make it to mid-afternoon before I crash hard and need a nap. 

When we de-planed and headed through Barajas airport in Madrid, the first billboard that I saw was this, which tickled me and somehow made me feel instantly at home.  I am a sucker for a sense of humor.

We had short-listed certain foods and attractions for our five day trip and the first thing that was on our mind were churros. Let me start by saying, there are better churros and worse churros, but to me, there is no such thing as bad churros.  Our first stop was to a chain type churro shop on the way to our apartment and with luggage in hand, we rolled our bags in and got our first churro of the trip.  Maybe because we were hungry or maybe because they were actually good, we really enjoyed them.  We knew that there might be better ones in our future as we had plans to hit San Gines for their exceptionally rich and rightfully famous hot chocolate later in the trip, but we needed to break the seal on our Madrid vacation immediately.

The first churro is good, even if it's not the best churro.

We did not hold it against our first churro shop that they sell a "Pikachurro"

Being that it was January, there was not as much outdoor dining and cafe seating as there normally would be, but I give the shop owners credit for their creative approach to offering a warm place to sit outside for their hardier patrons.  Space heaters and furry blankets were a common sight.

After breakfast, we checked into our Air B&B and set out for the first sight on our agenda:  The Mercado de San Miguel.  We arrived at this beautiful glass jewel box of a market at 11:00 am and found it busy and full of people that had no qualms about having wine and vermut prior to lunch hour; we fell in line. I can easily say that this was love at first sight.  This was to be the first of three visits that we would make to the market while in Madrid. We were captivated by this place for the variety of food and drink that was available and for the sights, sounds and smells that filled the air. 

Whipped Burrata. Need I say more?

So many of the tapas that are available in the market are savory, umami-bombs that pair amazingly well with wine and vermut.

Stunning produce.

This looked like art to me.

Vermut at 11:00 am? Don't mind if I do.

On tap, as it should be.

San Miguel Market at night

When we were doing research for our Spain trip, my husband was bingeing on travel videos and I had walked through the room while he was watching one and saw the statue of "El oso y el madroño", which is a bear eating strawberries.  Seeing it quickly out of the corner of my eye, I yelled back to him, "what is that? A cat eating broccoli?".  That is what we referred to this famous statue in Puerta Del Sol as for the entire trip.  Try and get that image out of your head. You're welcome.

The "cat eating broccoli" statue that is actually a bear eating strawberries.

Since we were doing a quick trip, we felt that at least one guided tour would be beneficial, so we booked a Tapas and History Crawl with Devour Tours, which was fantastic.  I would highly recommend this tour company for their expertise and professionalism. We ate and drank across four bars until we thought we were going to burst. The tour was filled with great information and even better food.

We also learned on our trip that Madrid has casinos.  The most unassuming, quiet and elegant casinos that I have ever been in. So quiet and unassuming that they were almost not fun, but that is not what we went for.  What we went for was food, drink, art, architecture and churros.  We got all of that and more, packing in a ton of fun in a five day trip.  

Stunning.

One of several Patatas Bravas.  This one was from "Las Bravas".

Gran Via in all it's splendor.

La Hora de Vermut, which is technically between lunch and dinner but actually all day, every day.

My first lambchop since I was about seven. Amazing.

Someone or perhaps some thousands of people have been rubbing his behind ( I see your hiney, so bright and shiny....).

We came home from this five day trip to Madrid completely satisfied and ready to go back.  Will it supplant Italy as our number one go-to?  No, but hopefully, it will serve as an add-on to a trip to Italy as country hopping is easy and inexpensive within Europe, thanks to carriers like Easy Jet.  Next time, Granada and Seville.  But first, I have to make sure that Rome isn't mad at me. I plan on some make-up pasta and a nice Brunello.

P.S. The churros and hot chocolate at San Gines were everything.  This alone was worth the trip.

Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part one...

It wasn't really planned. It just sort of happened...or at least that's what I told myself.

After years of traveling for both business and pleasure, my husband and I finally racked up enough frequent flyer miles to book a trip outside the country; at the same time. That had never happened before, one or both of our flights were always on our dime . And it would seem like the obvious choice that we would jump on the horn to Delta Airlines and arrange what we had been faithfully doing for the last ten years; a trip to Italy. As a matter of fact, we traveled to Italy so often that when I responded to my mother's inquiry of "where are you going on vacation this year?" with Italy, she would roll her eyes and say "ugh, again?". But there are no limits to my love of Italy. There were regions still to be discovered and our favorite places, like Rome and Palermo magically offered up surprises and new experiences with every visit. So why did we plunk those miles down on a trip to Spain?

Strangely, it had nothing at all to do with Italy, which is kind of like saying "baby, it's not you, it's me". For years, our neice has been extolling the virtues of Spain, having studied there for two semesters and travelled the entire country. She knew that the wine and tapas culture of Spain was a perfect fit for us, but we had previously been in such a passionate affair with Italy, that we couldn't concieve of a plane ride that delivered us to anywhere but back to her loving arms. Honestly, I blame it on Japan (needle scratch). Yes, Japan.

In September of 2017, my husband took a two week business trip to Japan. Accompanying him on this trip was a hulking a six foot six, bald headed, goateed giant of a computer programmer named Dale, who had never left the country before. Always one to immerse in the local culture and do his travel homework, my husband took it as his duty to introduce Dale to the sights sounds and tastes of Japan. In many ways, this posed new challenges to be solved and broke him of the comfort and complacency that we felt when travelling to Italy. Shortly after that trip, he started to tiptoe into research about Spain.

It all began very innocently. A YouTube video here, a dinner at a local Spanish restaurant there. We even took another trip to Italy in Spring of '18, which provided the mileage boost that we needed to get the free tickets. Before we knew it, we were on the seven hour flight to Madrid.

Sitting here, one month post-trip, all I can think about is how and when we can go back. I am completely torn between two lovers and definitely feeling like a fool. To be continued...

Anatomy of an Unintentional NYC Wine Crawl

As we age, the ability to entertain my husband and I has narrowed to a scant sliver.  Throw in the fact that we want to be in Italy every day of the year and aren't and you get two generally cranky and irritable people that need a lot of wine to be tolerable. This was the reason behind my husband's Christmas gift this year.  My gift to him was a wine and cheese tasting at Murray's Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village and a night at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square.

We took the day off work on Friday and got an early start into Manhattan.  We live about 60 miles away from NYC, so the trip is about an hour, depending on traffic.  During this trip, my husband was on the phone with work for the duration. Somehow he manages to keep his call going inside the midtown tunnel, amazingly he kept yacking away, red-faced with stress and frustration.  When he finally got off the phone, I turned to him and said in my best (terrible) Nicholson impression "You need a lot of drinks...to kill the bug that you have up your ass." He didn't disagree.

After checking in to the hotel, we grabbed an Uber and went further west of 45th st and Broadway toward 9th and 44th. We would have walked but it was bitterly cold and windy.  Problem was that at 4PM on a Friday on the West side of Manhattan, everyone and their Aunt Sadie is trying to get the hell out of there.  The tunnel based mass exodus makes the traffic on the West side an absolute crawl. Once the driver had us sufficiently West of the Times Square area, we jumped out and hoofed if for two blocks to get to an adorable place called Gallo Nero, a pint sized Italian wine bar in Hell's Kitchen.

This is what I look for in a wine bar.  An espresso machine. Helps keep up the stamina while the wine does its level best to put me to sleep.

Sustenance is key to a long bar crawl.  If you try to make it on an empty stomach, you won't be vertical past 8PM.  For starters, I like a sled of meat with a chaser of good bread and olive oil.  Our wine selection - Me: Pinot Bianco  Him: Cabernet Sauvignon

MmmmmMortadella

 Our next location was Murray's Cheese Bar.  Murray's is a wine and cheese bar in the west village, two doors down from the Murray's retail cheese shop location, where our class was being held.  In advance of a wine and cheese tasting, what do you order to nibble on? Cheese of course. But not just any cheese Buratta mmmmmmmm (Sorry, I can't say burrata or mortadella without making a yummy noise).

Me: Sauvignon Blanc  Him: Nero De Avola

We sat for a long time waiting for our Burrata, long enough to polish off our wine.  When the waiter came by we mentioned our missing cheese and they kindly enough, gave us another glass of wine on the house.  The burrata came shortly after.  By 6:20 we needed to giddyup to the Wine and Cheese tasting.  On to Murray's Cheese Shop, where we were greeted by this:

I cannot name a single wine or cheese that we tried.  I did not take notes as I had a glass in my writing hand at all times.

The thing about having wine before you have wine is that it takes away all inhibitions.  So when the instructor asked us what we smelled in the second white that we tried, my preposterous answer was "European Petrol" which turned out to be both accurate and "astute" (I would say buzzed or tipsy, but to each his own).

Class wrapped up around 8:00 PM so we grabbed another Uber and went east to Via Della Pace on 7th street near 2nd Ave.  This is our regular spot in NYC.  We spent a couple of hours here. I may have had a glass of wine.  I definitely had an espresso (and burnt my gullet because I didn't wait for it to cool) and a shot of limoncello.  My husband told me that I had Lasagna Bolognese.   I am going to have to believe him. 

An icy shot of Limoncello is the traditional parting gift at VDP.  Love the Italian hospitality.

We ended up here.  It was at this point that I started drinking seltzer like my life depended on it.  Not my husband though.  He went on to have some Sake.  Might be why he thought "Jesus of Suburbia" was a good choice for Karaoke.  It's a looooooooong freakin song, but the bar was packed with a crazy cross section of people that made it fun and interesting and a great way to end the evening.  

By the time we got back to the hotel it was after 2:00 am. We got out of the cab and my husband took off toward Times Square.  I assumed he was off for a cheesy selfie amidst the glittering lights, but I was wrong.  He returned back with some street meat on a stick and a couple of bottled waters.  I refused his offer to share the mystery meat, but happily took the water.  It was an epic night out and as I tucked in for a much needed sleep, I was thankful that we make it a point to take advantage of our proximity to NY.  By this point, "Jesus of Suburbia" was already asleep.