El Rastro

Right, this is me finally getting round to getting my ass out of bed early enough on a Sunday to go to El Rastro, the huge weekly Madrid flea market and take pictures so I can write about it. I've been meaning to for ages but I'm always too lazy/hung over/tired on a Sunday morning to do it. But this morning me and my friend Melissa got up, shook off our Malasaña hangovers and headed over to Embajadores to see if it was even on on Easter Sunday. Easter's quite a big deal in Spain with parades and crying and all sorts (more so in the south though). I haven't actually seen any of the Madrid parades, partly because many of them have been rained off over the past couple of days. Anyway, I shouldn't have worried, the Rastro was in full swing and busy as ever when we arrived at around 12.

We headed straight for the notorious El Caprichio Extremeño tosta shop near the bottom of the market. I wrote about this place and it's baby eel tostas (toasts) a long way back when I first went to the Rastro. Well, now I finally got round to eating one. The 'gulas', a Madrid delicacy, are traditionally eel featuses, but, luckily(?) for me, far more common are imitation ones made out of reformed fish. Mmm. To be honest, looking down at them  on the little plastic tray through my still considerable hang over, they didn't exactly look appetising, but I'd been building up to this for a long time and I'd come this far so I pulled a face and took a bite.

 

Actually, they weren't that bad. A bit of a funny texture (they squish between your teeth but not quite all the way) and a mild fishy taste, but with a cup of sangria on hand to wash it all down it was ok and I polished it off eventually. Just try not to imagine them wriggling...

So then we headed off into the Rastro itself, past the more practical stalls at the bottom between Embajadores and Puerta de Toledo, and up the steep narrow streets lined with jumbled antique shops and people on the pavement selling all sorts of wierd and wonderful stuff. There's just too much to describe really, from paintings to gramaphones, crossbows to a life size bronze elk. It's part Camden market, part Marrakesh souk, part Salford scrapheap.

Other highlights include a frenzied little everything-€2 clothes stall that permenantly has people picking over it and a rusty old chastity belt complete with serrated holes (see below). I ended up spotting an old Super 8 video camera for €15 and thought 'why not'?

 

 

 And just in case you didn't think I'd eaten that tosta...



Ramos Linguistically Innocent
So, it turns out that although Sergio Ramos was holding the cup before it fell, it wasn't strictly his fault, as far as the Spanish language is concerned at least. The British press quoted him as shouting "The cup has fallen!", which sounds hilarious in English, but I'm told by someone knowledgeable in these matters that there is no word for 'drop' in Spanish. Things are much more passive in Spanish and hence you say "It fell from me" rather than "I dropped it". See? Not his fault.

Phrase of the day: ¡Ha caído! - It has fallen!