Notes from Madrid

[baratron]

1. Madrid is tiny. The central Madrid area with interesting historic sights, big department stores, embassies and tourist trap shops is about the same size as central Brussels. Which surprises me a lot considering that Brussels is the capital of a very small country, and Madrid is the capital of a very large one. Certainly, I have been constantly surprised by how the scale on maps compares to the distance on the ground. Restaurants I thought would require travelling by Metro for several stops turn out to be a 10 minute walk at my speed.

2. Tourists walk very very slowly, and have no peripheral vision. Some of them even lack focus on what is immediately in front of them, because they're too busy gazing into the middle distance at some old monument. I walk quite slowly because I have a mobility impairment, but even I get annoyed at tourists in London for their lack of speed. But I always thought that was because I'm a local and know where I'm going. Here, I am most definitely not a local and Richard & I are both on our first visit - yet we're overtaking virtually everyone else on the pavements!

3. The locals are strange. It has been the promised 15°C with much sun during the daytime on both days, yet people from Madrid are walking around in the thick winter coats and scarves that I would consider appropriate wear for London at 5°C, and that the majority of Londoners wouldn't need until 0°C. Granted, I don't have the ability to cope with 40°C in the summer, but it's still surprising that people could consider it cold. Actually, this weather reminds me of Iceland in June - a comfortably warm 15-16°C in the sunshine but slightly chilly in the shade.

4. There is much art - in museums, on the streets, outside and inside shops. Most of it is tasteful. We have seen famous paintings by Picasso, Matisse Magritte, Dali, Bosch, Bruegel (the elder), Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian and lots more. I will probably write a post about art (!) for those of you who've ever been interested in what I like.

5. We need to come back to Madrid soon to see all the stuff we didn't have time to see. And to go to the two theme parks that we didn't have time to go to. One of them is easily accessible by public transport and is minutes away from the city centre.

6. Today was a Sunday, Richard was in a foreign country, formally on holiday and it's his birthday. He got a phone call from work at 5.30 pm. Ye-es.

7. Firefox keeps telling me I've spelled things wrong because I use British English. I'm sure I've downloaded the British English custom dictionary and installed it 5 or 6 times now. Grrr.

Comments

[pir.livejournal.com]

While fidgetmonster's sister lived in the US Virgin islands, where even at it's coolest it's too warm for me to do much of anything except swim or drink, we were all in Washington DC for a family thing. I was in a t-shirt and jeans and rather warm, she was in a sweater and shivering. It's all about what you're acclimatised to.

Firefox kept switching my settings back to US English... when I downloaded this copy after upgrading my laptop I specifically downloaded the British English Firefox release. No US English dictionary installed so it can't switch me back :)

Have fun in Madrid! Hopefully Wuzzie won't get any more work phone calls.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

3. The locals are strange. It has been the promised 15°C with much sun during the daytime on both days, yet people from Madrid are walking around in the thick winter coats and scarves that I would consider appropriate wear for London at 5°C, and that the majority of Londoners wouldn't need until 0°C. Granted, I don't have the ability to cope with 40°C in the summer, but it's still surprising that people could consider it cold.

That's how it is here. I laugh at myself for it all the time.

At 15C we aren't quite in thick coats, but I'm generally wearing a wool sweater at least.

We do have temps in the 40C+ range much of the summer, and we had temps around 32C just a few weeks ago.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how subjective temperature is. In Budapest last week, the Bulgarian delegates were complaining that 18C was too cold. One of them is planning on coming to Aberdeen to do her Master's - I told her she'd need her wintriest winter clothes!

[rhialto.livejournal.com]

3. I remember being in Lisbon once around christmas, and it was considered to be really really cold, it hadn't been that cold for many years. It was around 15 degrees C. Well, maybe 14. But of course it is cold if your house doesn't have any heating because it normally doesn't need any. I bought long underpants that time :-)

7. Firefox 3 seems to be better for me in that regard than Ff 2. Ff 2 would change the default from English/UK to English/USA, and occasionally forget about the existence of Dutch completely, iirc. Now that I use Ff 3 (and also installed French, maybe that makes a difference) the default seems to stick better.