Vagando

I woke up late this morning, but refuse to blame it on jet lag. More likely it's the combination of staying out late (by American standards, not Spanish) and the fact that I have the darkest hostel room--no light penetrates. Having gotten up so late, I skip breakfast all together. Breakfast is such a minor meal, it would have meant churros and chocolate, which is absolutely worth getting up for, but there's always tomorrow. In fact, a cup of chocolate is definitely on my list for tomorrow. Instead I meander down to Plaza Mayor, which is surprisingly pretty empty. This is usually a major tourist hangout because it's beautiful, lined with souvenir shops, and filled with overpriced restaurants that have both pretty patio seating with matching umbrellas and an arsenal of mustachioed waiters in vests and bow ties. Tourists love that stuff.







I sit and read my homework for a minute, but the street performer dressed as Yoda is not acting very Jedi-like and keeps bothering me. So I spend another hour wandering around to find the best sandwich shop ever. Casa Rua is a stand-at-bar closet sized "restaurant" with two men behind the bar. The first is an older man who seems so enormous that I think they put him behind the bar to work the grill and he just never moved--because he's stuck. Maybe they built the bar around him... The other is a young man with a giant 'fro who asks me where I'm from and totally lights up when I ask if he knows where Seattle is. "Si, Seattle! Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey!" And so I find my very first baseball fan. Of course it's too good to be true, no real European likes baseball, and so it remains; this guy is from the Dominican.

They menu has less than ten things on it, seven of which are sandwiches. He hustles to get me a bocadillo de tortilla and a coca light. It's amazing food, which is sort of silly since it's the equivalent of ordering a grilled cheese at home--it's not too hard to mess up, but it's nothing special either. It's vegetarian, it's cheap, it's fresh, it's delicious. The Dominicano gives me a postcard for the little restaurant when I pay and tells me to come back and talk baseball. They have a bocadillo de calamares (calamari (fried squid) sandwich) for the same price as the tortilla, so I'm pretty sure I'll have to go back and try it. Especially because this bar once belonged to the founder of the Plaza Mayor and it is high tradition to have a squid sandwich from Casa Rua and take it to eat in the Plaza...

Other points of interest from wandering aimlessly include:
*watching a stray dog squat and pee right in front of the veterinary office.
*watching a man basically own hackey sack in an empty plaza de arboles.
*having three of five members of a japanese family run smack into me, all in a row.



I'm off to find ice cream!