Day 5- We Arrive in Valladolid
The drive to Valladolid was beautiful. We passed field upon field of sunflowers and the views were quite lovely. It took us only an hour or so to reach Valladolid, and we immediately checked in to our hotel and touched bases with Thai. My cell phone was having issues getting a signal, so I emailed Thai to call us. As it turned out, there was something wrong with the phone in our hotel room as well, because when Thai called us it rang once then there was no connection. Next thing you know, the guy from the front desk was knocking on our door. When we opened the door, he told us our phone was broken and that he was having trouble connectiong "Señor Thai" to us. We let him in and he rushed over to the phone to check it. He apparently thought it was ok, because he rushed back own to the lobby to connect the call. I waited by the phone one minute....two minutes.....three minutes....then all of a sudden there was a knock at the door again. We let in the very out of breath gentleman from the lobby again, who went straight to the phone to fiddle with it's connections again. Finally, we decided I should go down to the lobby to take the call there.
When I got into the elevator with the man I had to try so hard not to laugh...the poor guy was panting, sweating, and panicking that he couldn't get my phone to work and that I might miss the very important call from "Señor Thai." Everything turned out ok, though. I spoke to Thai and he informed me that there would be a dinner party that night at 8:30 pm at Casa de Leon. The front desk clerk was not familiar with the restaurant, so I got the street name from Thai and the clerk was able to pinpoint the approximate location on our map of the city.
A couple hours later, Kim and I were on the road, walking the 4 or so blocks from our hotel to the restaurant. When we got to the correct street, we looked up and down for "Casa de Leon" but we didn't see it. We ducked into a bar and asked. The person we spoke to was unfamiliar with the name. We walked a little further and ducked into another bar with the same result. Finally we circled back the way we came and ducked into a cafe...this time the person we spoke to was familiar and told us it was just a few shops down. Kim and I looked up and down the street....no Casa de Leon.
We ducked into a 4th place...a restaurant that was in the approximate area the cafe worker had indicated that Casa de Leon should be...and asked the bartender there if he was familiar. He said "esta aqui." We were like....huh???? We looked at the sign above the entrance again...it read "Dover Restaurant." HUH?
Kim then said, "aqui esta una fiesta de Thai y Maria?" and the bartender responded, "Thai??? Eh???" At that moment, 4 people standing nearby turned to us and said, "Thai?" and we said, "Thai?" and then we all said "SI!" And at that moment, we all 6 realized we were in the right place. Of course, by this time it was almost 9pm and still no Thai...
Kim and I then got acquainted with the 4 "otros amigos de Thai y Maria." They were 2 couples, and one of the four spoke English best ("Jave" or Javier). We chatted, half in English and half in Spanish, and after a while there was a pause in the conversation. One of them remarked on the time, which by this time was about 9:15, and then I responded that Thai is often known to be a lagger. Jave groaned and shook his head, then threw up a fist in the air and said, "Puto Thai!" He was of course kidding, but we all laughed and thereafter "Senior Thai" became "Puto Thai" for the evening.
Thai rolled in shortly thereafter with his family and more friends followed. We had a great meal of various tapas and sangria. A good time was had by all, though we all gave Puto Thai quite a razzing for sending us out looking for a restaurant that had a completely different name at a time well before any others arrived. Ahhhhh....Puto Thai!
No comments:
Post a Comment