How I faced my Fears and went shopping in Spain - Madrid - Part 3

Today, I had barely recovered from a sunburn, when the rainy season started.

Yesterday, I bought myself some sunscreen in a farmacia. They seem to have many farmacias - or drugstores - here, as many as there are coffeeshops in Amsterdam. I guess this is where you buy your drugs legally in Spain... So I bought myself some paracetamol and asked for sunscreen for a sensitive skin. They sold me an extremely expensive type of sunscreen that wore an expensive name: 'fotoprotector'. As I'm Dutch, I couldn't help saying that I found it expensive and then I added: "but I guess it's important (stuff)" and paid for it.

The start of the rainy season

I didn't get a chance to test it yet. As of now, less than 24 hours later, it seems like the rainy season has started. I just checked the long term weather predictions for Spain and they don't look good. There's an extreme amount of snow and rain expected over the next two weeks or so. And it isn't getting better where I'm headed tomorrow; the city of Granada in Andalucía, the South of Spain.

But you know what? No matter how hard you try, you can't change the weather, so you better adapt to it

Trying to change things, or people, is often useless. And, if anything's a waste of time, it's worrying, or stressing out about things that you can't influence. So instead of getting myself worked up over the changing weather, I decided to take some precautions and actually enjoy it.

Talking about enjoying the rain. If you experienced the nineties, here's a classic from A Dutch-Belgium eurodance duo that was quite famous in the mid 90s:

2 Unlimited - "Nothing Like the Rain"

Source

A quest for waterproof shoes

This morning, I thought I had figured out what to do today. I had an idea how to make the best out of my (for now) last day in Madrid. I planned to visit (El Museo de) La Reina Sofia. I have been there twice before, back in 2009. But the last time, just when I was looking at the amazing Guernica, a famous and huge painting by Pablo Picasso, a museum employee entered the exhibition room and told everybody to leave, as the museum was, apparently, about to close. I was somewhat disappointed, as I felt I needed way more time to check out and experience this painting. A feeling I hardly ever have with any piece of art.

If you have never heard of Picasso's Guernica, it's meters high and wide, and depicts the Spanish civil war in an abstract - but in my opinion - beautiful way. It's easy to keep looking at it for quite some time and to keep discovering new things.

So, today, Tuesday the 27th of February, after I had thought of making up for that lost opportunity, I checked the website of La Reina Sofia, only to find out that it is actually closed on Tuesdays. They are open 6 days a week and closed on Tuesdays! The thing is, I'm taking a bus to Granada tomorrow, at the start of the afternoon and - in between handing back my keys to the owner of this apartment and going to the bus station - there's not enough remaining time to visit the museum. I guess I will need to give it another try in the (hopefully near) future.

After learning about the museum being closed today, it started to rain. I then decided to change this day's mission into something completely different:

Face your Fears

I chose to face one of my biggest fears and to go shopping for clothes. I am exaggerating here, but I really dislike this activity. The last couple of years, I have bought almost all my clothes, even my shoes, online. But that is kind of hard, if you're staying in an airbnb in another country.

Anyhow, I decided to make today's mission a much needed one: to find myself some waterproof, hiking shoes. The sneakers that I brought with me are alright to walk on, but the opposite of waterproof. More like a sieve (they literally have this kind of gauze on top, these tiny holes, for - I guess - better air circulation). They leak as hell (if hell would contain any water).

Try to find the joke in the above 2 pictures. I couldn't help but grinning about this.

I took the metro to sol, walked through the rain and made my way to the biggest shopping mall of Spain, El Corte Inglés. I took the escalators to the sixth floor, where they sell mountain and hiking gear. Once there, I remembered that I still needed a towel (as mentioned in the first alinea of yesterday's post), and followed up on the advice of my brother to buy a self drying one. I am now the proud owner of a microfibre pocket towel. Compact, lightweight, super absorbent and quick drying. Pretty cool, right? From now on, I won't need to dry myself with a tiny kitchen towel or a shirt. Hurray!

Happy with my new towel, I headed towards the shoe department. A very sympathetic woman helped me out. I asked if they had any hiking shoes in my size, 45, and she said there was one model available. Luckily, I liked the color and design. But, size 45 felt a little tight. When I told her that, she said they might have 45.5 too. I tried those on and they were a little too big. I was slightly confused and asked her for advice. Eventually, I ended up buying size 45 and I'm wearing those shoes right now.

Here's a picture of me and my happy feet:

Mission accomplished!

I walked out of the shop with a smile on my face. In fact, I probably felt happier than most Spanish people today. I realized that I'm way more used to rain than most of them and while everybody looked grumpy, I liked the feeling of some natural water on my skin.

I decided to treat myself to some tapas and found this local place, recommended by people on Google Maps. It was named: Taberna El Sur and described as a Tapas restaurant. I set myself down on a bar stool, ordered a coffee and started talking to the bartender, who appeared to be from Venezuela

TO BE CONTINUED

How do you like my new shoes? Did you get the photo joke? Or do you have any other comment? No matter how much I like to talk, I always like to hear your story too ;>)

[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 40.417049 lat -3.703154 long How I faced my fears and went shopping in Madrid (on a rainy day) d3scr)

All pictures taken by me, except for that of Picasso's La Guernica and Edvard Munch's The Scream