Madrid – Page 5 – don't confuse the narrator

no joke

One more post prompted by my trip to Madrid this week: at metro Bilbao, my attention was caught by this advert:

There has to be a joke there somewhere, but “Yo momma is una auténtica terapeuta tailandesa – a real Thai masseuse” just doesn’t seem to work.
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musings on the metro

My trip to Madrid this week involved a lot of rushing around, and a lot of trips on the Metro.

At Gran Vía, the whole of the station is currently plastered with posters advertising The Hobbit – due out in Spain today. As I scurried up and down escalators and along dank tunnels, I remembered the book’s opening: Continue reading

taxing times

This glorious building is the former Palacio de Comunicaciones in Madrid.

It used to house the headquarters of Correos – the Spanish postal service – and in my early days in the city the arrival of a parcel would involve the added joy of a chance to roam around the vast interior, tracking down the right delivery point, maybe climbing the spiral stairs of one the turrets, whose walls were decorated with ancient ceramic tiles, or venturing upstairs in the central building where you had a marvellous view down into the great hall.
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tooth in advertising

Having suffered at the hands of the dentist yesterday – and I do suffer, with the only consolation that, as a writer, I may later find it useful to know what it feels like to have hysterics – I was glad to see that the old Especialidades Juanse tiles are still in place in Madrid’s Malasaña district.
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pan y paz

Bread and peace. Those are the basics (is peace a basic?) that the strikers are demanding.

I’ve just watched the TV news and there are huge crowds demonstrating in Plaza Colón and around the fuente de Neptuno. But this photo was taken just north of Neptune about five hours ago, when the mass of manifestación was elsewhere. The tall building just visible in the far distance (click the image for a closer view) is up by Colón.