Seeking a quiet day afuera de la ciudad, Charlie and I hopped a bus out to Chinchón, a tiny pueblo to the south of Madrid. On our first pass, we actually overshot the town completely, and ended up down the line in a village called Colmenar de la Oreja (yes, “Colmenar of the ear”). This was a smallish village in true Castillian style, with not too much beyond the central plaza and beautiful (but locked) old church. Before too long, we headed back to the bus stop and had a caña and bocadillo de tortilla as we awaited the bus back to Chinchón.
The latter town was precious, and really well worth the effort it took to visit it. We had been told that the central plaza was one of the most picturesque in the region, and the reality proved true to form, in my estimation. Rising above this plaza was a bluff with an old gothic church and a separate campanile, from the base of which there were impressive views of the plaza beneath, and an old fortress alcázar on an opposing hillside. In the evening light, several of the town’s elderly had congregated here on a bench and just whiled away the time, smoking and chatting, as cats played on the terra cotta tile roofs beneath and wisps of pungent coal smoke arose, wafting all around.
We felt we had to sample one of the local products – anís – before hoofing it up to the castillo for a sunset vista. The drink was quite like Sambvca or Ouzo, though the Chinchón variant was not as flavourful as one called Zoco that I later tried in Valencia.
The view from the castillo was quite lovely, and really made the trip worthwhile – really quite a contrast to the crowded, noisy barrios of Madrid.
That night, after a large Argentine meal, we went out with a group of backpackers from the hostel to an Irish pub near Puerta del Sol called O’Connell St. This began quietly enough, but turned into quite a session. And it was here that we met Susana (Su), a madrileñan singer (at one point in the evening, she translated “piano man” into castellano for me, as it was playing in the background) who was hooking up with an American she had met earlier in a salsa club. It was an interesting relationship, since neither one spoke the other’s language and Charlie and myself, as the only capable hispanohablantes in the group, ended up translating for them for much of the night, before they ended up heading out for a walk.
I left the club a bit early (around 2) and walked through a very empty Sol while work crews took down the remaining Christmas decorations. After calling into a 7-eleven for an empanada and sitting down to eat it in Plaza de la Reina, a cop car pulled up with Leah, a very tall Canadian girl who had been with us in the club. Apparently she got lost on the way back, by herself, and the cops picked her up.
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