Every time we come to Madrid the power goes out. I wanted to return to Madrid to make up for the day we lost last time we were here when the power went out in all of Spain. We had hit all the big tourist spots on the last trip but we didn’t get a good feel for the city as the day we planned to visit neighborhoods was wiped out by the power outage.
Ton provided me with a list of markets, chocolate shops, restaurants and bars in a couple of interesting neighborhoods near the center and our day was planned around visiting these places and sampling their offerings. We were also operating under a bit of pressure as the weather called for thunderstorms starting at 4 pm.
Our first stop was Chocloteria San Gines which is a must stop for all tourists in Madrid for their famous Churros. Even on a relatively quiet day there was a long line to get in. As we were waiting a guy in a chefs outfit with the company logo on it came to us and said there was another place to get in with no line. Taking him at his word we followed him across the street to a branch shop and walked right in. The Churros dipped in chocolate were worth the trouble. In the back room was a large wall of caricatures of famous people who had visited in the past. They told us ours would be up next time we came.
On our way to our next stop we came across a giant tent city on one of the main squares. The tent city was set up to protest the lack of affordable housing in Spain. The protest was started when a 87 year old women was evicted from her apartment she had lived in since 1956 after her rent was increased by 250% following the purchase of her building by a corporation. This story has been on going while we were in Spain and has even led to the Prime Minister calling a snap election after legislature he proposed to address housing costs failed in parliament. It was a big protest but very quiet, it had turned into a bit of a tourist attraction itself which is a little ironic as the protestors cite over tourism as one of the causes of the rise in rents in cities like Madrid, and Barcelona.
Our next stop was a place famous for their vermouth. Spanish vermouth is one of my favorite things about visiting Spain. The bar we visited had invented a vermouth cocktail called the Manuela. It was vermouth with a splash of Aperol. The vermouth was excellent and the atmosphere in the bar was cool.
After our vermouth we needed some food. Most of the tapas places were offering Torrenzos de Soria so we decided to see if the Madrid ones matched up to the originals. They were excellent but not up to the standard of Soria which is what we expected.
I like the atmosphere of the streets of Madrid. Paris is romantic, Vienna is elegant, Prague feels like a party, Madrid feels like a place with blue collar roots. There are cool buildings, but there are a lot more dive bars designed for 15 to 20 people to enjoy a beer snack and a chat, than big fancy 5 star restaurants. I think I like that in a city more than the fancy places with Michelin stars.
Our last stop for the day was one of those small bars. It was in a gentrified neighborhood that was once blue collar. But the gentrification didn’t mean the bars were replaced by fancy restaurants, it meant the beer went from San Miguel to Lagunitas IPA. The bar we went in had two rooms. To get to a seat in the back room you literally crawled through a hole in the bar to get back there. Luckily for us there was a table in the front.
It was time to head back to the campground as the skies were darkening up. We had about 1 kilometer to walk from the metro to the campground. We almost made it, but for the last 400 meters (yards) we got caught in a downpour and were pretty wet when we reached François.
There were a series of thunderstorm for the rest of the afternoon, and at the end of the third one the power went out in François. We were laughing that we were going to be banned from Madrid. This time we were lucky, it was only a section of the campground that lost power, and it was restored after about 45 minutes.