October 8th – Are we totally SAD (lame) or what?

 Today we did our first walking tour; of Old Madrid, the medieval part of town just southwest of the Plaza Mayor. We can’t seem to get out much before 11:30am so our first stop was the market to pick up some stuff for dinner. Mondays seem to be a basic down day for the market, so many of the vendors are shut down but we did manage to pick up some more fruit and some fish for dinner tonight. We saw what looked like a nice looking fish called ‘Panga’ but we couldn’t find any translation, still we bought two fillets. Then down to the old town for our tour our goal was to find this convent where the sisters sell cookies. You ring a bell outside the convent and they buzz you in where you find a turntable sort of apparatus and you order your cookies. They put the cookies on the turntable and run them around to you. You make your choice and place money on the turntable which they then bring in to their side. All this and you never see anyone, good cookies and now we’re thinking that we need to find the other convents that sell cookies as well. Around the corner is the ‘plaza de la villa’ where the town hall is located. The whole square is 16^th century and very appealing. Just a couple of streets away the tourists, other than us, completely disappear and it gets very quiet.

 

 

Deb has been on the search for a very desirable vinegar called Pedro Ximenez which is supposed to be the best sherry vinegar available. Well in our market we found a bottle of Pedro Ximenez right in the vinegar section so we bought it! Yahoo! We got it home and Deb opened it and it was sweet!! What the hell? Anyway I decided to taste it and it turned out to be almost like a desert wine. It tasted very much like a premium dessert wine we got from Navarro vineyards called White Riesling. So the next night we had some for dessert with our fruit. It has a very raisiny flavor with quite a sweet finish. Well I looked it up and it turns out to be COOKING wine, are we sad or what? Still in all it ain’t bad.