EVERY DAY IS AN EXPERIENCE 15 MARCH MADRID

Every day is an experience.

I took the photo of the ornamental cabbage "tree" yesterday on my walk home.

Breakfast: We get totally dressed, leave the hotel (hostal) and go to the bar on the corner, next door to our hotel's street-level door. We order hot water (Kathryn brings her own caffeine-free tea) and cafe-con-leche and a couple of sandwich-mixtes (fried egg, ham, cheese) and enjoy it with a score of other people. 

Every day so far, a blind lady comes into the bar and stands smiling inside the door. One of the girls behind the counter goes and takes her by the arm to the stairs behind where we sit; this morning the manager marched over, offered her his arm, and escorted her through the bar. I believe she might work at the restaurant above the bar.

Today we did the laundry. We combined our clothes into a single laundry bag and set forth to the "Lavadores" (washing machines) we located on yesterday's excursion. We stopped to pick up a box of powdered soap. We loaded our clothes into the machine (14kg max), tossed in the soap, and fired it up. There was still soap in the rinse water. We noticed, after two other people came in, that no one added soap. Ah. Ran 'em again. Clean, folded clothes. The dryers also had a 14kg max. The entire establishment was three washers and two dryers.

Then we took lunch in a dive where the locals hang out. The "locals," as I think about it, are everybody but us, though there's not an apparent tourist in sight anywhere.

Hamburgers come with carne or pollo . . . beef or chicken. They were out of carne, so we took pollo. The buns were crossed buns . . . the four quarters were divided by a half-inch stripe quartering the bun as it baked. There were french fries as well. We're trying that same place tomorrow for the next thing on the menu.

Then we went fabric shopping for Kathryn . . . bus to the post office to show her the art exhibit and the glorious cartoon-themed shipping boxes and holographic stamps, then a more-than-a-mile walk across the city to what appears to be the fabric district. Three fabric stores - as day is fading into night. The first one had two floors, and K. scored big-time with several fat-quarters (it's a quilting term). The second one had two floors up and two-and-a-half down. She scored even bigger with amazing fabric. The third one had two floors and she got even some more stuff. (I'm getting worn out here.)

Note: West Side Story is playing live at one of the theaters on one of the plazas we went through.

This town is vibrantly alive all day. But at night it positively riots with people in bars, in restaurants, in chairs and tables on the streets, filling the plaza with conversation, bonhomie, and laughter. A little boy was singing in his pram as his mama searched one of the fabric stores. A little girl was opening and closing her mama's fingers, counting uno-dos-tres-cuatro-cinco as mama's fingers folded and unfolded on the handrail in the bus. Younger men and women (forties) stand to surrender their seats to older (my age) men and women on the bus. 

We found a bus (not the number 45) and asked the driver if he went to "our" Plaza Lezgapi. He didn't but he, and the passenger behind him, told us to go to the Plaza Mayor, just up the street (where we saw West Side Story was playing), and catch the Number 6. We made it to the plaza as Number 6 was pulling in. All the way home . . . no transfer. Let us out on the opposite side from our hotel.

We dropped Kathryn's loot off on our beds and went back out to have a cocoa and a pastry at yet a different pasteleria around the plaza. Then wended home, smiling "Hola! Buenas noches" to one of the girls from our breakfast bar as she waits at the bus stop

Incidentally, cocoa here is pretty much a liquid pudding; it's that thick. It's wonderful. Superlatives are only extraneous.

This town lives. It breathes. It radiates life.

I love it here. Unreservedly.