Day 35 - Trekking

Fell asleep around 11pm last night, maybe, and woke up at 11am this morning. It felt awesome. I realized that I missed the free breakfast, which was a huge bummer but a nice leisurely wake up was the trade off.

I guess I've yet to mention here that the hotel gets only one satellite channel in English and this channel has the lamest line-up of shows ever constructed. I didn't think that it could happen, but I'm definitely excited when I turn on the TV and Diagnosis Murder is on rather than The New Adventures of Flipper. This morning I finished up an episode of DM, as I affectionately now call it, and traced my walking plan in the newly purchased Madrid City Guide and set off for breakfast. I am definitely swinging into another "high sensitivity" phase wherein smells and thoughts of food make me nauseous immediately. I was looking through the menu of my now favorite madrid eatery "Cafe y te" and I couldn't help but gag at the picture of a bowl of rice and vegetables with a big crawfish or something on top. I mean it looks like it's still alive, just laying there superimposed onto the bland looking spanish dish. Who the hell would look at that and feel compelled to order it? Why not just go for a hike and dig your hand into the first creek and eat whatever you pull up out of the muck? So gross. On the less extreme side, anything with chicken is nasty and anything grilled is equally nasty. Basically the only appetizing thing, that I've had twice now, is the tropical smoothie. I could have 5 of these a day. I can't wait to have another one tomorrow pretty much.

Me ordering is pretty comical too. I think because I am alone I am slightly more likely to attempt using the native language which has been a disgusting salad of english, french and spanish. Yesterday I got a grilled cheese sandwich and I ordered it like this:

"uhhhhh Sandwich queso..... solo queso"
and the girl was like:
"only cheese"

Deflated look, yea.

Then I spent the next 20 minutes thinking about how I could've improved that order and came up with this:

"sandwich con queso, solomente queso por favor"
which is perhaps perfectly correct, and i got excited for making the order today.
Unfortunatly the idea of a grilled cheese sandwich was stomach lurching today.

Ok, enough about food, for now. After lunch I ventured out of the immediate radius of the hotel and walked to the palace and through the gardens. Very beautiful. Then I ended up hanging in the huge church right next to the palace for a good amount of time. I was thinking as I was sitting there very peacefully, that it was very unlike me to enjoy being in a church and decided that it was mostly the beautiful choir music being played through the strategically placed bose speakers that was keeping me entertained. I decided that when john and I aren't broke from life/baby, that strategically placed bose speakers are a must.

Then I walked across the viaduct and down through the little alleys finally ending up in the Plaza Mayor. There was heavy contruction taking place around the center statue which detracted from what I can imagine is a very impressive open space.

From there I walked back to the hotel, watched an episode of DM and put my feet up. Then went back out to check out a store I saw something in the window of earlier but was closed for siesta. Then across the street to a buffet bar where I forced salad into my trap fighting negative thoughts and a rejecting throat. I read my book there for about an hour and here I am, making the lobby of the hotel much more decorative with my presence.

I have to hold my breath everytime I climb the stairs to my room because the landings smell so strongly of human urine.