Real Madrid

 

  After our hike along the northwest coast of Spain and after our week in Barcelona, we should have gone home, but for some reason we had tacked on a shapeless week in a small town in Andalusia, after which we had four days left over before our flight back to Boston from Madrid. 

  Madrid is an interesting place, but we had by now absorbed all the interesting things we could and were ready to go home. It didn't help that I had put off looking for a place too long and the hotels in Madrid were crazy expensive and all the Airbnbs seemed to be owned by the same guy. All his reviews were lumped together and you couldn't tell which places were great and which were dungeons.

  After much looking we settled on a place two miles north of the center of tourism. It cost much more than any other place we had stayed, but it had good reviews and the room photos looked good. The hotel appeared to be in a decent neighborhood based on Google street view. 

  "Should we be worried if he's never heard of our hotel?" Teresa wondered as we rode in a cab from the airport. The driver followed his GPS down a narrow street, craning his neck to spot Number 6. There was a sign that said Hotel Las Vegas, but it didn't look like there was a hotel behind the locked front door. With the cab gone, I felt like I was in one those dreams in which I'm trying to get somewhere but can't, and no one around me seems to care. 

    Fortunately the woman in the money transfer office at Number 8 made me understand that I needed to go to Number 12 to register. The door at Number 12 was also locked but the clerk buzzed me in. She didn't speak English, but found my penciled name in her spiral notebook. She gave me a key and a smile. Room 47, my birth year. This has to be good.

  The key was of no use getting into Number 6. Luckily two gentleman also going in indicated I needed to hold the little blue fob on the keychain up to a little 🔵 on the wall next to the door. Open sesame! We hauled our luggage up the steep steps to another locked door with a blue dot. It was reassuring to see that security here was top notch.

  We got in the elevator to the fourth floor. The two gentleman sensibly declined to join us since a sign said in Spanish and English "More than four people and you will be trapped". The elevator opened, rather weirdly I thought, onto a tiny roofless area with a chair and a potted plant. This must be the patio/smoking area. A doorway led to a hallway with our room and one other. Teresa was aghast when I opened the door.  Aesthetics are important to Teresa.

  I must give credit to the photographer who made this very ugly room look like something we would book. It was good that the room's ugliness was confined to such a small space. We had been spoiled by the roominess of our previous accommodations. The apartment in Barcelona had been strange, but this place outdid it. 

  The usual trim that cover pipes and wires had been left off which must have made maintenance a breeze. The window was tiny which was fine because the view was of a courtyard and many other tiny windows, which meant our room was blessedly quiet. The room was also clean. My three criteria for a room are cheap, clean, and quiet, so two out of three wasn't bad. And on the plus side there were excellent reading lamps. Yes, the lighting was good though what the lights revealed was bad.

The soccer pitch in front of No. 6, the Hotel Las Vegas.

  You don't hang around in a room like this. You get out and enjoy the sights of the beautiful capital of Spain.  The rain had other ideas. It rained heavily all the next day.  We walked a mile towards the tourist center which we would surely have had to ourselves had we made it that far. We had our raincoats on and Teresa had a little umbrella. I tried to buy a little umbrella for myself as we passed the many shops, but no luck. The next day I would see little umbrellas abandoned in the gutter.

  I had unwisely worn a pair of moisture absorbing pants and my sneakers were fairly soaked.  After a mile of this I called a halt. "Let's go into that cafe and have a nice cup of tea." Teresa gave the thumbs up. The great thing about Spanish restaurants is that you can sit over your cup of tea or coffee for hours on end. No Spanish restaurant would ever bring your check before you asked for it. That would be insulting. 

  We decided to order a late breakfast. We would share the Breakfast Americano. The huevos revueltos were not revolting eggs, but scrambled. The tortilla was a pancake with no syrup. The bacon was bacon. The fried potatoes were French fried potatoes. When dining in a foreign country, something is always lost in translation.

  We enjoyed the restaurant's Wi-Fi and after a couple of hours we split a late lunch. By three pm the rain had let up a bit and we walked back to our room. It may have been depressing but at least it was warm and dry. Wait a minute! Where's the Wi-Fi? As I headed over to Number 12 to complain, I noticed the Wi-Fi worked on the lower floors. I could not get that fact across to the clerk in reception. She kept pointing to the sign behind her with the password. "Take picture!" was her only English. I would have used the translation app on my phone, but Number 12 had a different password than Number 6. 

  When I told Teresa this she asked me to go down to floor three and download something for her to read. While there, I used the translation app to compose notes in Spanish describing the Wi-Fi problem. "Might as well complain about the mold spots near the ceiling too," Teresa suggested.

  Next morning there was a kindly old man at reception. He carefully read my phone note a couple of times then looked at me. I nodded and pointed at my note. He wrote my concern in his notebook. Then I showed him the note about the mold. He looked confused. I had used the Spanish word for the kind of mold you make jello in. Luckily a woman came in who knew English and supplied the right word. The clerk wrote the word moho in his notebook.

  The next two days were sunny and cool and we spent them down in the tourist district. We even went to the Prado Art Museum, not because we wanted to, but because two of our sons had gone there many years before during their season in Europe and it would have been shameful for us to blow it off.  We kept returning to branches of the restaurant that had sheltered us during the rainy day. The Wi-Fi clicked in automatically and we had their menu in English on our phones.

  When we returned to our room, the Wi-Fi was working and though we didn't expect this, the moho had been removed.  They tried at the Vegas, they really did.  No matter, we were up early Sunday morning, our suitcase wheels clicking over the quiet streets. We had figured out the mystery of the subway card system and spent a few stress-free hours at the airport awaiting our flight. I had my best meal of our entire month in Spain in the airport. Perhaps knowing Number 3 son would be waiting to pick us up at Logan had something to do with it.

Don Quixote was always in hot water because he lacked the sense to stay home.