buenos dias!

Not a lot surprises me any more, so when something does catch me by surprised, I'm speechless. Such was the case the other night at the Westin Palace Hotel in Madrid. I stopped at the bar to have a ¨proper¨ vodka gimlet. Now, I don't know if I have some how become much more frugal in the shadow of the global economic crisis or if I was just feeling that enough is enough. I was scheduled to address a crowd of mostly Spanish newspaper gentlemen the next morning in one of the hotel's stately rooms. (I was actually staying in a fabulous hotel around the corner from the Westin called Hotel Villa Real.)

While I sipped on the gimlet, I flipped through the bar menu, which touted the creations of some new French chef as the centerpiece of the restaurant. But what made me laugh out loud was this from the menu:

Energizing Snack

Club Sandwich
chicken breat, tomamto, bacon, lettuce and tartar sauce

Cost: 22.90 euros. That equals $30.6047! Thirty dollars for a club sandwich! Really, though? Really? I walked away just nodding my head. Wasn't it enough that my Absolut gimlet cost 16 euros? But 22.90 for a club sandwich ... Now, I love nice things and will spend on items that some others might think are ridiculous, but in my camp, most people would agree that a club sandwich (no matter how organic the chicken or how homemade the tartar sauce) is hardly worth what amounts to a days pay for some hardworking people in underdeveloped countries.

Next up: More on Hotel Vialla Real (a real Madrid jewel), food in Madrid and the language barrier.

Alison
9:34 a.m.
27 April 2010