I Speak American

A Spring Sunday in Madrid

We started out the day at the famous

Sunday morning flea Market, El Rastro.

Since it was so crowded we all said if we

got separated we'd meet back in Sol Square.

In the first block, we got separated.

The kids found Rob & I in an antique shop

but there was no sign of my brother.

After the market, we popped into a coffee

bar for pastries and cafe con leche and

who should walk in but my brother.

I guess we have the same taste in coffee bars.

We headed back to Sol Square

to check into our apartment rental.

We settled into our funky and

I mean funky with a capital F

apartment.  We took a little siesta

and headed back out to explore.

We spent the afternoon roaming through

the Museo del Prado admiring the works

of Goya and Velazquez.

And one of my favorites, Bosch's triptych,

The Garden of Earthly Delights.

By now we are hungry again so

we went to the wonderful supermercado,

El Corte Ingles.  We wanted to have tapas

and sangria our first night in our apartment

but we had no pitcher for the sangria.

I tried to ask the check out girls but I had

no idea how to say pitcher in Spanish.

I even did a quick sketch on the

back of the receipt and tried "vaso grande".

They sent me to another section of the store

where they sell paper goods and plastic ware.

Still nothing.  The cashier there was trying to

explain where I had to go to get this but even

though 4 of us had studied Spanish we had no

idea what she was saying.  Finally, she called out

to the other shoppers for an English speaker.

And here comes a gorgeous Spanish guy to

my rescue.    I showed him my sketch and told

 him I wanted to buy a pitcher.  He asked, "picture?" 

No, I explained, "I want to make Sangria." 

Now he understood.

He explained that I had to go to

another Corte de Ingles that is up the street

and they would have a kitchenware department.

But it closed in 10 minutes.

After I thanked him, en espanol, I ended the

conversation as I often do with "cool."

And then I heard "Coooooooollllll", we looked

in each others eyes and smiled.  And we both

realized, yes, he can speak English but he

just spoke like an American, and he liked it!

All this time a tiny Spanish Grandma

was standing behind us at the checkout.

Though she didn't speak English she

knew exactly what was going on.  We sent

Rob and the kids home with the groceries

 and my brother and I were off on the quest

for the pitcher and the little Grandma was in

on the caper.  She showed us the proper

door to exit from and took us to the correct

street and as we were thanking her, she

barked, "rapido, rapido!"  or we would never

make it before closing.  We got in and ran

up 6 flights of escalators and split up to search

and in the end... success.

And that night, over tapas & sangria,

we toasted all our Spanish helpers.

Salud!