Estoy en Madrid

Bueno, que ya esta llegada en Madrid desde algunos dias en Inglaterra con mis amigos Kate y Dave..

Well, since most readers of this blog don´t speak Spanish, I´d better do the English thang..

I went on the Hip Hop Tour in NY led by Grandmaster Raheim from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5, and it was great.. I then hung out with my cousin Judith´s husband Jonathon, and we went to the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe for a beat poetry night, which was excellent! Judith joined us after work, and she got to see one of the best performers of the night, which was really good timing.

My last few days in NY were filled with doing things I´d never done before - the transit museum, which was having a film and transit exhibition; catching the 59th street overpass to Roosevelt Island and wandering around (for the record, nothing much to see there), going to an absolutely awful film at the new ImagineAsia Film Centre as part of the Asian Film Festival.

Dave and I aslo caught the ferry to Staten Island, and then straight back again, because it didn´t seem like there was much to see there at all - even less than Roosevelt.

I stayed a little longer in NY just to finalise some things, and to make sure I got to see my liddle bro and Rach, as they had to go to a wedding the last weekend I was there. London was really good too. Caught up with my fabulous friends Kate and Dave, who very kindly let me stay with them, and Jasper the cat who actually remembered me from Sydney. Also saw Roz a few times for dinner, so it was just like having that old gang back, except that Dorani was missing...

London was much like I remembered it, fun but very expensive. tried to minmise costs as much as poss, but it´s just hard.. I went to the new Tate Modern, walked across the new millenium bridge, went on the London Eye, check out the surrounds of the restored Globe Theatre, Brick Lane Markets and saw a great photo exhibition by final year students, went to the Brixton markets, and checked out Marble Arch where I stayed in an apartment in 1992. So mainly things that weren´t there last time I was, or that I didn´t get to do.

Kate and Dave also took me to 2 parties/bbqs of friend´s of theirs, both of which were unique in their own way.. The first involved the roasting of a whole lamb on a spit over a pit dug in the back yard! The lamb was absolutely delicious, and watching the woman do the carving (she´s a vet by trade) is something I´ll never forget.

The second party was amazing for its venue - this incredible 2 story apartment with a pool table right in the heart of the East End, near Brick Lane. The view out the top story window of the whole city was pretty incredible. The best bit was catching up with Jeanette (who had also been Kate and Dave´s flatmate for a bit in Sydney) and also with her friend Andreina, a Venezuelen girl who´d been living in Spain. Both of them were at my 30th, so we had a big catch up and I met their friend Christina who gave me her brother´s phone number in Alicante (near Valencia).

Hanging out with Kate and Dave was great, as well as seeing them, I got to drink Belgian fruit beer, see Kung Fu Hustle which was hillarious, and then had the (not so) traditional London farewell meal - an Ethiopian dinner in a small place in Finsbury Park. Kate, Dave, Roz and I had an incredibly tasty lamb dish, and several other dishes of varying degrees of tastiness, eaten with our hands using a special bread to mop it up. Dave thought it looked like toadskin, or grey tripe, but it served its purpose pretty well. And this magnificent feast was all washed down with Ethiopian honey beer.

And then I flew to Madrid. I´ve never been here before, and so far it´s just so Spanish. The Plaza Mayor is a huge open plan square with a big statue of a man in armour on a horse, and magnificent buildings with tiny balconies that all face the square. I booked a hostal before I came, and I´m really glad I did. It meant I knew where I was going, and the metro ride with all my baggage and three changes of line at least had an end point. It´s pretty cheap for a hostal (which is a family run place - like a pension) but it isn´t hostel prices.. But - I have my own room, and it´s wonderful. I think there does come a time when you get a bit old for dorms... The couple who run it are really lovely - Angela and Alfonso. They were very suprised to find out I´m Australian and not Spanish.

Apparently my Spanish isn´t as rusty as I thought. I even managed to buy shoes today after joining a huge queue of people. Describing shoe styles in Spanish is kind of difficult, especially when there are lots of impatient people behind you in a queue, but I´m proud of my shopping achievement ;^)

The only question really is where the hell I´m going to put them...

Anyway, I´m going to head back to my hostal now - just have to work out where it is from here...