Enjoying the Spanish Life

This morning I looked at myself in the mirror, and I swear my face is getting rounder. That’s never a good sign, right? What with Vicki’s baking last semester and all the Spanish pastries this semester, my freshman 15 might just be showing up two years late.

Yesterday I finally tried a palomera choco, or chocolate-covered elephant ears. I’ve seen this pastry at every pastelería in town, but I’ve been waiting until I really craved it to finally try it. Unlike that vanilla cream pretzel pastry I ate in Germany (which had to be the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted), the palomera wasn’t actually very sweet. The pastry underneath was flaky and soft and the dark chocolate coating melted in my mouth. *Sigh* I might as well just give up and accept that I’m not going to fit into any of my clothes when I return home.

Last night Amber and I got together for some sangria at this tiny tapas place in Sol. Amber said their tapas are really good, but seeing as I’d already eaten dinner, those would have to wait. After finishing off our pitcher, Amber was craving chocolate con churros, so off we went to Chocolatería San Guijón. We split an order and since Amber isn’t a fan of dark chocolate, I finished off the cup. Nothing like melted chocolate to finish off the night.

Then today Amber and I went shopping. We walked over to Serrano, which Señora said is the city’s ritzy shopping area. We didn’t actually find very many stores, but just walking the city was perfect enough. The cream-colored buildings lining the streets were all quintessentially European, none taller than five or six stories and every window with its own ornately decorated balcony protecting it. The other thing we noticed while on our paseo was the amount of fountains this city has. Amber and I both agree that there’s nothing like a fountain and some flowers to add some class to your city. The weather yesterday was also just beautiful, with the temperature hovering around 70 degrees Fahrenheit all afternoon. The past few days have all been unseasonably warm, but none this nice. I guess global warming really is global :-P

All that walking left us with pretty big appetites, but of course most of the places we passed were closed. After rejecting a Chinese restaurant and Tony Romo’s, we settled on a Mediterranean place. I had a spinach and mushroom salad with parmesan cheese, balsamic vinaigrette and, you guessed it, bacon. (They really can’t eat anything here in Spain unless it has some form of pork in it). And although ideally I would have liked to eat some tapas, those fresh veggies did hit the spot. It’s weird, even though they eat a lot of fruit here, Spaniards just don’t seem to like vegetables (unless they’re covered in mayonnaise). Of course as soon as we left the restaurant and turned the corner, what else do we find but a street full of cafés and tapas places.

We walked some more and ended up back in Sol, and while Amber was quite successful in her shopping endeavors, I unfortunately was not. Every piece of clothing I tried on fit weirdly, and despite the fact that seemingly every store carries them, I still haven’t found the perfect pair of boots. All that walking and shopping left us quite exhausted, so we decided to call it a day. I’m feeling especially tired, since the combination of my congested nose and the noisy drunks outside robbed me of a good night’s sleep last night. So I’m taking it easy and watching Jane Eyre tonight. (And though I wanted to take the easy way out and just watch it in English, this DVD seems to come only dubbed in Spanish. Good thing I already know the story lol.)