The Rastro
On Sunday we woke at about 8:30. It was very nice to have slept through the night, and we were ready to go as soon as we arose. We showered, had coffee from our little moka pot, and decided to make our way to El Rastro, a flea market held on Sundays here.
The Rastro was a strange thing. There were many, many booths, but they all seemed to sell more or less the same thing – t-shirts, skirts and blouses, or leather goods. This went on for BLOCKS! We finally got to a cross street where there were some other items were being sold – old books, old cooking implements, and some various pieces of hardware. Nothing too really catch our fancy, so we decided to amble over to the Atocha train station to see if we could get to Segovia for some suckling pig.
As we were leaving the Rastro, I asked Doreen if she had noticed how many people were drinking Diet Cokes from the can. Old folks, young folks, just about everyone we saw had a Diet Coke and were drinking it from the can! This is unusual in Europe in that almost everyone will pour a can or a bottle into a glass before they drink it. I wondered what phenomenon had taken place in Madrid to encourage this behavior.
We soon fond out that it was girls giving away free Diet Cokes around the corner. We each took one (though neither of us finished them) and walked with everyone else with a free Diet Coke.
We wandered through some interesting older neighborhoods on the walk over. There were many older folks, and quite a few Muslims as well. We walked by a horribly ugly edition to the Thyssen museum that seems to just be getting completed, and then finally made it over to the train station.
The Rastro was a strange thing. There were many, many booths, but they all seemed to sell more or less the same thing – t-shirts, skirts and blouses, or leather goods. This went on for BLOCKS! We finally got to a cross street where there were some other items were being sold – old books, old cooking implements, and some various pieces of hardware. Nothing too really catch our fancy, so we decided to amble over to the Atocha train station to see if we could get to Segovia for some suckling pig.
As we were leaving the Rastro, I asked Doreen if she had noticed how many people were drinking Diet Cokes from the can. Old folks, young folks, just about everyone we saw had a Diet Coke and were drinking it from the can! This is unusual in Europe in that almost everyone will pour a can or a bottle into a glass before they drink it. I wondered what phenomenon had taken place in Madrid to encourage this behavior.
We soon fond out that it was girls giving away free Diet Cokes around the corner. We each took one (though neither of us finished them) and walked with everyone else with a free Diet Coke.
We wandered through some interesting older neighborhoods on the walk over. There were many older folks, and quite a few Muslims as well. We walked by a horribly ugly edition to the Thyssen museum that seems to just be getting completed, and then finally made it over to the train station.
posted by Dan Piette at 12:38 PM
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