Lazy sightseeing

Lazy sightseeing

We repeated our breakfast at Museo de Jamon.  My breakfast drink of hot chocolate was a delicious thick drink of the consistency of pea soup or warmed up chocolate mousse.  I had expected something like in Argentina where they give you a chocolate bar to dissolve into hot milk.

After breakfast, we walked along Gran Via, Madrid’s grand shopping street with ornate early 20^th Century revival architecture.  Rather than continue where we had left off yesterday’s walking route, we took the hop-on, hop-off tourist bus.

The route took us through some very wide boulevards (road, tree, road in both directions, tree and road again).  Apart from the ornate architecture, we did see an area with high modern skyscrapers and a stadium.

We took some stops including lunch at Pans & Company, using a discount voucher from the bus. In all, we did two out of three available routes.  We had already overloaded on palaces and museums and weren’t interested in going into anything.  It was a lazy way to see the city.

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Evening

We rested in our room till about 1815 and headed downstairs.  In our neighbourhood, we could order four raciones (similar to tapas) and get a free bottle of wine or beer or a jug of sangria.  We opted for the sangria.

We selected a salad, tortilla, chopped mussels mixed with potatoes and stuffed back into its shell then breaded and fried, and finally mussels cooked in tomato and garlic sauce.  They were delicious.  I especially liked the mussels here because they were more tender than the New Zealand variety and come with less grassy hair.

We finished our stay in Spain by buying souvenirs for various relatives.  Street number plaques, to go on letter boxes, make good gifts.

Great value dining in simple surroundings.

Parting thoughts

The weather in southern Spain had been perfect during our October visit.  Generally cool and pleasant, sometimes hot and moments when we needed an extra layer.

As for the sights of Seville, Cordoba and Granada, they were quite similar.  It’s easy to fall into the “more of the same” rut but we seemed to have done OK.  We probably would have appreciated everything more if we had visited each city separately a few years apart on different trips.

Madrid is great for museum lovers.  Even though I’m not one, it was a nice stay.  And I could have found more to do if I had an extra day.