Day 2 – December 31st, 02.00 pm

 Well, I’m exhausted. This morning we went out aiming to  increase our cultural level by visiting El Prado and Reina Sofia museums and thus to close 2007 a little more cultivated, but the cosmic energy must have decided that we’re cultivated enough, as you can see in the picture below that well summarizes our cultural morning trip in Madrid.

This is it: last day of the year Spanish think they had enough and just don’t go to work. We wandered for three hours ( following beloved Lonely Planet, mother keeping askin: almost there? almost there? almost there?) looking for something – anything - to see: El Prado was closed, Reina Sofia Art Center was closed, Royal Palace was closed, shops were closed, my feet were hacking and my stomach was starting to digest me from the inside. We decided it could be a good idea to have a little rest in a super nice quarter, called Chueca, have lunch and then decide what to do. Of course we didn’t tell Fulvio Chueca is Madrid gay quarter, so I think he is still convinced Spanish people are just friendly with Italian wine bar owners. We got into a very nice Cervezeria, and that was the best idea of the morning, cause, since it was a Cervezeria, it didn’t have a wine list that Fulvio can memorize, so it took only five minutes to ask for ( guess what?) cerveza y croquetas ( my liver is very much mad at me) and our first Italian-tasting coffee ( Italian espresso in Spanish = cafe solo, I know that because the waitress  was from Brindisi ( 40 km from my home town) so we could ask her the meanings of the dishes in the list, but I had the impression she didn’t understand them neither). 

Culturally enriching information: Fulvio, who must have lived in Spain when he was younger ( dunno for sure, his past is a little foggy) explained us that the dirt on the floors of every cervezeria, restaurant and wine bar we’d been in, is proportional to the fame of the place.  It’s pretty easy, actually: lot of success= lot of people = lot of dirt on the floor. Now I understand why I saw couple of times waiters throwing waste on the floor. That was marketing. Cool.

After a little tour to the Atocha train station ( the one in wich there was the terrositic attack on March 11th 2004), that has now become an indoor rainforest ( you could expect a monkey to pickpocket you all of a sudden), we started looking for a restaurant to greet the Last Day of the Year from. It’s useless to tell you that the same philosophy that made Spanish people decide to have a rest in the very only day we were there was applied to restaurants, bars, bistrots, cervezerias and post houses the Lonely Planet suggested, and the few ones that were open ( we didn’t miss any of them…almost there? almost there? almost there?) of course had something that made my mother change her mind about ten thousand times. There you are a list:

- Cheap menu

- Cheap restaurant

- Cheap table place in nice restaurant

- Unappealing waitress

- Don’t like the way the barman was staring at my sister

- Don’t like the material the tables are made of

- Don’t like the way the table is set

- Don’t understand the menu

In the end none of the place we visited was good, and we went back to the hotel a little concerned about our destiny ( Mother in a nihilistic attitude, Fulvio not caring about it, Sister and I singing at the top of our lungs a remixed version of Give me hope, Joana and Feliz Navidad). On the way to the hotel, we had a little tour in El Corte Inglés, a huge Galeries Lafayette and Harrod’s looking shopping center, that was surprisingly open.   

Now, as I told you, I care very much about signs. If this last day of 2007 is a metaphore of the old year that is coming to an end, well, there are a few word to describe it:

-  feet ache

- useless wandering

- nerves increasing

Hope the next one will be just a little better ( at least no more feet ache).