Reading Materiel

 So today is the last full day in Madrid; we are flying out at 1 pm-ish, and it's a 8-hour flight. I dread it. I saved most of Catherynne M. Valente's "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making" to read on the plane. I admit that this is because I forgot the logon instructions to re-download the computational linguistics textbook. There is a point there of some sort.

(Over this vacation, I read most of the Viscount of Adrilankha twice, and also read my brother's biology textbook In Praise of Plants by Francis Halle, which is actually a really really good textbook, beautifully written and accessible even to 'I'm not a biologist, I just occasionally play one on a quiz team' me.) 

We went to the Museo del America and then to the Museo del Lazaro Galdiano, both of which are free on Sundays. ( Read more... )

Wir vielen bitte bezahlen

Thinking of getting paella, just to say that we did, for our last dinner in Madrid, we asked the concierge downstairs to recommend good restaurants close by. Of course, he recommended the one in the hotel as being close by and pretty good, and then, one called La Finca de Susana, on the next block.

We went to La Finca; its menu showed surprisingly adequate prices --- nothing above 10 euros. If we assume that the prices in Spain are just like Canada, only in euros, food is amazingly cheap; for a restaurant of that class and style in Toronto or Ottawa, I would have assumed a menu ranging from $9.95 to $35.95 or so (which proves that I've spent too long in Toronto with a meal allowance and a thirst for various ways to spend it, which is another story.)( Read more... )