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Best Of (Various Snippets) (approx. 100 words each) |
Best of...
March 2004 - InMadrid Best place for a picnic on a rainy day You’ve made your little sandwiches, salads and tortilla, and packed it all up for the big picnic outing. But alas, the unexpectedness of Madrid’s character is also manifested in its weather and, as we have recently witnessed, it does rain here. But don’t fret, we’ve got the solution. For a meal in the Amazon rainforest, there’s no need to go to Brazil, just spread out your blanket on one of the stone benches that border the trees and aquatic plants of this tropical bubble in the midst of a bustling train station, and you can leave the weather on the other side of the glass. Best place to feel cool There are too many places to feel cool to include in this feature, but we thought we’d offer the biggest concentration of coolness to be found under one roof, which just has to be the Mercado de Fuencarral. Start in the basement with a hipster hairdo at Op/Zon and then shop till you drop, tattoo, pierce, accessorise and enlighten yourself with styles from street-urchin-squatter cool to sophisticated GQ cool and everything in between. Now you’re ready to sit in one of the Mercado cafes and hiply sip your espresso as you leaf through your InMadrid Best of issue. If all that weren’t enough to make you feel cool, you just don’t have it in you. Go home. Best evidence of Globalisation For those of you who haven’t been to the States, I can vouch for the fact that there are good restaurants, and golden arches have nothing to do with them. There are good films, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the star. There is good music, and it’s not from a 50-million-dollar product of a recently defunct boy band. And there are places to have a good cup of coffee, yet Starbuck’s is the only thing that seems to have seeped its way into the adopted city I call home. And it’s spreading like the plague. The next person who asks you why we Americans have such a tainted reputation in Europe, politics aside, ask them to take a look at just what it is that we’re represented by. Best Safety Hazard A gaping 30-ft drop is sheltered from the public by nothing more than a little plastic sign on the floor saying, “caution, wet floor”. Greasy cogs taken from the mechanical depths below lie in a pile and unused steps are haphazardly stacked against the wall. No matter how late you’re running, take it easy going around those corners or you could end up further underground than |