So I wrote a post last week that I didn't publish because it was particularly dreary and foreboding.
Too much so even for me.
It seems like the death-of-summer has come to usher in a death-of-happiness for me more and more each year, and since still being stuck in New York, with it's "I swore I'd never be here for another one" winters rubbing themselves, lifeless and freezingly, harder and harder in my face as each one I thought I'd be gone by now for passes I'm forced to do the one thing possible for a prisoner in his own life to do; remember, and dream.
So with that I've decided to forgo the second, more cook-y one, of my posts from North Carolina and dream back to a time that smiles and suntans were more effortlessly gained.
I speak, of course, of the two blissfully-not-here weeks we spent in Spain.
As I've also alluded to, I have well over a thousand pictures from the trip.
So in an effort to prolong the agonizing, terrible pleasure I get form reliving, but not being there presently, I offer you this trip in as many small packages as I can stand to torture myself with.
I forewarn anyone foolish enough to be here for the "food" slant of this purported "food blog" that while there is cooking, and some pretty good cooking at that, in the days ahead the bulk of these posts are going to photo-and-pine heavy.
And with that being said what better place to start than the first picture taken, on the first day?
Don't remember much about it as it was a long, crying baby filled flight from New York where I barely slept, but it was the first picture taken in Spain, plus it's sort of Redskins color-y, so why not?
On our first day we stayed in a great little hotel in the La Latina quarter of Madrid. We were only there one day, so the breadth of photos I'm about to share with you may seem like a vacations worth alone, but I swear this was all from the first day.
We started our morning, which if you know Spain at all, you know it's not a country known for it's "mornings," wandering aimlessly looking for a place to get food and coffee. Having done little to no research on Madrid before arriving there, we found ourselves in the most likely of all spots to find glassy-eyed, woefully jet lagged tourist at 7 in the morning, the Plaza Mayor.
If you know me at all, you know how much I love certain things. Outside of my immediate family two of the things I love above all else are Spain, and ham. Here's one of the reasons I love Spain as much as I do:
This is one of the only things open in the entire city at 7am, a ham shop, and there are people in it.
Bravo!
But being with the company I was with, I wasn't going to talk anyone else into some slices of jamon Iberico, so soldier on we did, until we found a nice little tourist trap of a place that sold gringo breakfasts, so we went there. There's Thalia looking as tired as I've ever seen her.
And Liz was so tired she ordered this for breakfast...
Ham!
I got the European Gringo (English) breakfast, and if you need another reason why I love Spain more than America, next time your at a tourist trap restaurant in the equivalent of the Plaza Major in Madrid, order eggs sunny side up and tell me if they are this vibrant and "yolky" looking...
Didn't think so...
So here's just a bunch of random pictures from the daytime. We went from the Plaza Mayor down to the Palacio Real and then back up randomly through the streets of Old Madrid, so there's really no rhyme or reason to them, but just a very few examples of our day...
Enjoy!
So somehow we make it back to the hotel for a quick nap and then headed back out for a festival that was nearby, but we'll save those for another post as this one is getting too long to be appreciated properly (in other words, how adorable my children are).
So in the meantime try and fill your otherwise empty lives with some of that great new fall programming the networks are vomiting down our throats. I know I just need a new sitcom or two to get me back on the straight and narrow! Thanks network television!
Anyways, hope to see you soon!
n*
