Let's Go Somewhere-9/16/2014 Paris, Madrid

John Says:

I’m sure there are several others, maybe millions of others, who have the distinction of beating me in this category, but I’ve managed to get drunk enough in two European cities.

The first one is the beautiful city of Paris.

The details of my debauchery are pretty hazy.  I suppose I could fetch my journal and look up all of the gory details, but I think this was probably the day that my wife and I got into a huge argument around one of Hemingway’s old apartments, and, in typical Grochalski fashion, I stormed away.  I specifically remember cooling our tension over several beers at an Irish pub off of the Rue Git-le-Coeur, which, for you literary buffs out there, is the same small Latin Quarter street where the infamous Beat Hotel is located.  The hotel was once home to ex-pats William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso (amongst other luminaries), and now feeds off that legacy as an over-priced relic with a faux-bohemian flare.

The wife and I ended up here for more debauchery.

 The list of artists who have gotten toasted at La Rotonde include such big shots as Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani.  Yours truly cleared a couple bottles of red and ended up like this.

The next day was almost a wash.  I pretty much spent the morning in our hotel throwing up wine and peanuts and begging my wife for an exorcism.  But when she informed me that I don’t believe in Jesus or other myths, I settled on aspirin and water.  I was pretty well out of it until about the middle of the day when we ventured down toward the Eiffel Tower.  As soon as we hit the ground a Parisian started shouting “Obama ca va” at us.  It must’ve been the American flag that I had draped over me.  The first thing I was able to get down was a French vanilla ice cream cone (they call it French vanilla in France as well).  And I only made it mid-way up the tower before the shakes hit me and I thought that I was going to make history again.

Next we have the beautfil city of Madrid:

We were drinking beer from 10:30 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. with the great Spanish artists Oscar Varona, Aida Corrales, and Gemma Vegas.  That’s twelve hours of Spanish beer in the Plaza Santa Ana with the ghosts of Hemingway and Lorca.  The wife and I were so drunk we couldn’t find our way to the hotel that night, and some Ex-pat American student had to guide us there.  As a nightcap we killed a bottle of Tempranillo next door at a bar.

I thought I felt all right the next day.  The wife and I like to walk in cities as opposed to taking public transit.  You can always see a city better that way.  I think it was about four or five miles from our hotel to the Reina Sofia museum.  For those of you who don’t know, the Reina Sofia is home to Picasso’s Spanish Civil War era masterpiece Guernica.

 Midway through the walk in the heat I start feeling…well…NOT well.  By the time we reached the Reina Sofia I was in full-blown hangover mode.  I had a headache.  The stomach was doing cartwheels.  I’d pretty much sweated through my shirt.  

Me...on the way to full-blown hangover

While my wife viewed Guernica I was safely ensconced in a bathroom shitting and vomiting my brains out.  I did manage to view the painting for a moment before we had to leave.  It was nice.  

But by the first floor the waves of nausea were at me again.  The first floor men’s room at the Reina Sofia only had urinals.  So I had to make the best of it.  I began vomiting in a urinal while some Spaniard yelled at me in his native tongue, and in between vomit bouts I kindly told him to fuck off in mine.  After a struggle with the Metro we managed to make it back to the hotel where my wife tried to OD me with these Spanish horse pills that killed all of my pain and essentially knocked me out until the Sun went down.  Then we had a lovely dinner of Paella and met Oscar for another round of beer at this wonderful Irish joint called Finnegans.