Day 17: July 1, 2016 (Alcalá de Henares, Spain)
Iceland and Barcelona taught us that we couldn’t plan on such a whim... we need to start planning ahead in weeks, not in days. So, here we are, in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, a small town outside of Madrid where we have decided to put ourselves for five days. We are purposely outside of an area that would pull and tug at our urge to explore so that we can focus on planning our trip throughout the rest of Europe, especially the details of the coming month. In fact, we managed to book a stay in a place so far out of the way that spotting a nearby grocery store fed my worry that we wouldn’t have a proper way to eat all week without so much as a bicycle for transportation.
Our warm welcome to the town of Alcalá de Henares
As we got off of the 1-hour bus ride from Madrid, we walked towards our blue Google Maps dot to find a closed bank, locked gym, and garage doors with graffiti. Not encouraging. After a here-and-there game with a few people, we manage to find the reception for our accommodation--a college dorm open for the summer. Our room is just what we need to accomplish the task at-hand, a desk, couch, dining table, private bathroom, twin beds, and a kitchenette, along with a nice little patio that overlooks the very dusty grass that this 90-degree heat has created this time of year.
Very hungry, very hot, and very relieved to be in a place much safer than our original intuition led us to think, we head back to the one open restaurant we spotted earlier. It was just a short walk away with a €9.50 Menu del Día. “Menu del Día” simply translates to "Menu of the Day" and is very popular in Spain. For around €10, the menu is typically a drink, starter, main course, and dessert or coffee. Here, the drink includes a beer, which we are sure to indulge this afternoon. As we ordered, we translated unknown words with the unhelpful assistance of Google Translate (we rely a lot on Google), followed by our attempts at asking the waiter about the menu. This generally left me just smiling at his response, more confused than before I asked the question because he didn’t say any of the keywords I was expecting. (We have a long way to go before we backpack through South America!) The meal was enormous, even by American standards, and we left knowing that we’d return.
On our way back, we visited the lone grocery store I spotted. I learned that we must weigh our own produce, must pay for bags, that wine is cheaper than water, and that these transactions always feel far more hurried when they are in another language. We walked back to our dorm alongside the road in the dry heat with our groceries wrapped in our arms since I didn’t learn the lesson to ask for a bag until we had already paid. What gringos.
I LOVED having a little kitchen to cook our own meals for the week. Notice the tiny containers of olive oil we found at a little shop in Spain that came in very handy!
The result of our first grocery store trip. The essentials... breakfast food, laundry detergent and wine!
Our evening was spent getting to work. At this point, we have very little planned. My head is spinning. Spinning. I barely know where to begin. We have a one-month gap between an early July WorkAway in Granada, Spain and an August meet-up in Venice, Italy with Daniel's Mom and Aunt. Now, what do we do in-between? What are our must-do activities or places? How do we get there? Can we find a place to stay that is within our budget? What will the weather be like in July? How long should we stay in each place? Are there any events or festivals that we should try to attend?
We began to answer these question over a bottle of wine, the first of many Spanish grapes this week.
This story is part of our first 300-days of international travel, shared from my daily journal.