La burbuja que rie

We went to this place last night to celebrate David’s birthday. It’s an Asturian restaurant that serves typical food from the region and cider, which they pour into glasses from a considerable height. Asturian cider is less sweet than English-style ciders and much more refreshing. One of my roommates, Marina, is from Asturias, so I’ve had the opportunity to try their delicious cheeses:

My favorite is goat cheese, the one with the blue tint; it crumbles easily, smells bad, tastes strong, but it’s SOOO YUMMY!

You can read an article that appeared in the NYTimes last year about Asturian cheese caves: http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/travel/23explorer.html

Hennyway, we had one of these assorted cheese tablas, chorizo in cider, fries with cheese, a salad with tuna and red pepper, and mussels. Everything was really good, and I also liked the decoration of the restaurant — very rustic, as if you were in a tavern in the countryside.

Wish there were something akin to Yelp in Madrid; I think it’d be a good idea to start writing reviews of different places here.

Good Times

Yesterday I received an email that directed me to a compliment on Yelp which read:

For your review of: Public Assembly

Who’s your favourite Vampire Weekend member to hit on?? Also, you were featured in today’s Weekly! Check it: http://www.yelp.com/weekly?edition_id=OtEqx7ZndmJGqi_XR83MVQ

Bwahah, obviously I had a good laugh over that with Googly, who was with me that infamous night we “assiduously hit on half the band members.” I began to browse through all the Yelp reviews I had posted and forgotten all about and started reminiscing over the brick house summer (and autumns and winters past) in New York. I love Madrid, but to compare the energy of the two different cities I can probably best sum it up in a quote from something I had written before:

Somehow listening to Bach in Madrid is different. The mood is lost in the brightness of the city, the buildings. In the open spaces. There is not enough dirt, or heaviness in the air, or the oppression that comes from a city that is too abandoned or busy to embrace you. You walk here and happiness emanates from the crowds. Sometimes the smog that seems to crowd the minds of New Yorkers, their desperation and instability, that feeling of living on a precipice – is comforting. Then are you able to think and feel things and separate them from you in the form of music, or words. Life here is so normal, so agreeable and sunshine-y — people congregate all the time because they have no worries. I love it but there is this feeling of happy complacence, a lack of ambition, of the angst that usually fills a city.