when we catch a plane take us to a extremely hotely so as not to leave the hotel, it is common for some acquaintance (go who knows why the hell he has that note on my phone) to ask me: “But it compensates you for the trip not to leave the hotel? And don't you stay wanting to know the city?
The second thing I do is delete his contact: because he has not understood anything. The first thing is to take me for a walk (in a dressing gown, of course) around the room on duty, romp between pillows fluffy like a crawl lazy, tell Laura that I don't know whether she should order a riesling or a champagne tonight ( "Cheerful, petulant, loud, rowdy, womanizer and braggart", Julio Camba wrote about a single possible drink), looking through the small windows how Madrid it turns toasty in the middle of the afternoon and the buzz is sensed fire: they are the three million people from Madrid taking to the streets without permission, in search of the transcendence of a terrace (he has it) and almost asking for another round, “let's see what happens”. How not to love this city where only vertigo dwells.
Laura. Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid.
We are housed on the second floor of the Mandarin Oriental Ritz and I just went upstairs after eating by myself (I love it, it's the best way to enjoy a gastronomic restaurant) in Deesa, that branch of Quique Dacosta in the triangle of Art with El Capo (great chef, what must it be like for everyone to call him 'El capo', huh? ) at the helm of a very elegant kitchen, marvelous room, Silvia Garcia's class in the cups, here we have come to play all the time.
I thought about it when the caviar cart arrived, I was reading The summer my mother had green eyes, by Tatiana Țîbuleac (Impedimenta publishing house) under those ceilings as high as the sky, smudges that are a paragraph from Scott Fitzgerald, then I took this note coming a little higher: "Luxury is (must be) unattainable, excessive, resounding, incandescent, sensual and even with a decadent point", is that how lazy with the ditty of democratic luxury (oxymoron!), the minimalism of the nose and the dictatorship of the normal: I want to feel like a Sultan, the queen of an ancient palace, silks and screens, fresh flowers and beauty wherever you look, we returned with our senses ecstatic; I recently read to Thomas Carlyle that “Contemplation is luxury; action, a necessity”. I subscribe to every word.
Deessa, Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid.
The afternoon coffee under that glass dome (that the architect Rafael de La-Hoz has recovered, luckily) that adjoins the Prado Museum, with memory and the indigo sky; strawberry trees and olive trees, tables full of men and women from Madrid filling this space with life —the spaces are the sum of our experiences in them, nothing more—and it's great for La Grande Dame that the city makes her its own. And this hotel is pure Madrid.
Before dinner at champagne-bar (when I learned, some time ago, that Dacosta would be in charge of the five spaces, I had no doubt: the Mandarin Oriental Ritz would be a Macondo for hedonism), an Old Fashioned in the cocktail bar, holding hands on tapestries (by Clara Sullà) and rugs on which Laura doesn't walk, she slides several steps above the ground; In the hall there is a golden forest if you look up. The room was filled with white roses. We didn't leave the hotel. So that.