Madrid, like most European cities, is made up of some main vector points, main avenues, main points of reference, and then somewhere around 12.43 million little streets going absolutely everywhere other than exactly where you want to go. In Madrid it is possible to get there from here, just not directly. But then, that is what makes traveling outside of the Roman gridlined cities so pleasant. For instance, New York and Boston are both wonderful cities, but Boston’s roads are made up of blacktopped cow paths, whereby those of the Big Apple are built for precision moving to and fro in carriages/cars/and someday jet packs.

So, in Madrid, should one wish to travel from, say, the Puerta del Sol to anywhere directly out of your line of site - presuming you are standing on the corner of Calle de Arenal and Calle de Preciados - then it will take you two hours. Two perfectly pleasant hours of wandering about, but two hours nonetheless.

Here’s the thing, though. All that wandering about makes for hungry wanderers.

Enter the bocadillo.

It is true that the Brits can lay a righteous claim to the best sandwiches in the world. But that claim rests on the propensity on God’s Sceptered Isle to put almost anything that can be placed between two pieces of bread between two pieces of bread. The results are often as stunningly delicious as they are confusing. Not so elsewhere, for sure.

The chorizo or jamon bocadillo is what happens when everything superfluous gets out of the way, and nothing but unencumbered (and I’m going to use a term of art here, so bear with) umph remains.

Nothing more than a delicious bit of chorizo or delicious jamon between two pieces of crispy, and often still warm bread, the bocadillo has a lot going for it. If, at the hour mark, after passing that delightful but slightly decaying monastery (for the third time), an opportunity for a glass of wine and a fortifying bocadillo presents itself, what is one to do?