We had breakfast at McDonald’s. The traditional local breakfast is minced tomatoes on toast; the McDonald’s version failed on both parts: the minced tomato didn’t have much colour or flavour while the toast wasn’t nice. Our other choice, the potato tortilla in a bun which much better.
There wasn’t much we specifically wanted to see today so we took it easy with a walk to Retiro Park. It was a very well kept park with lots of people walking their dogs, relaxing or running. There was a lake in the middle for hired row boats too.
From there we metro’ed halfway back to Puerta del Sol, where we stayed last time. The famous monument of the bear grabbing berries from a tree was there. There was lots of restoration and road works in the area which made it not very nice so we continued by metro to Chueca.
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- Beautiful buildings in Madrid.
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- At Retiro Park.
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- At Retiro Park.
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- Beautiful buildings in Madrid.
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- Ham.
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- Royal Palace in the afternoon.
Chueca is the area where the current Gay Pride is being currently held even though we are not here for any of the key events (we didn’t know it was on). We had a Menu del Dia for EUR7.99 at a Chinese place and it was good enough.
We went on to Decathlon to get Kim’s replacement luggage before resting in our room till the evening when we had an unsuccessful attempt to visit the Palace.
Palace visits normally cost EUR10 but after 1800 it is free. We didn’t want to visit that badly as we had been already 15 years ago and we‘ve seen many palaces in our life. At 1730, it was far too hot to queue up so we went to a nearby cafe for a cool drink where we could monitor the queue.
When we returned around 1820 hoping the queue would be gone, we realised it was still far too long. We gave up and wandered to a nearby park which had been recommended to us for sunset. It was far too early for sunset but we decided we would go anyway. There was an Egyptian temple (Templo de Debod) in the park.
We ate dinner back at Cafe Iris where the Menu del Dia was now even cheaper at EUR9.99! This stopover in Madrid has been very enjoyable because the weather was good, it’s not too expensive and the city is lovely.
I’m thinking of coming back to learn Spanish here and had picked the brains of the German girl I had talk to on last night’s walking tour. With 6 nights (2 hours each) of lessons, I’ve managed to get around Latin America OK for the last 20 or so years. Spanish people have been very encouraging saying I have a nice accent and that two weeks would do magic to my ability! I could do a couple of weeks each year in a different Spanish city or in a different country!