A Trip to Madrid (Day 2)

Our bright and shiny faces were woken up at a generous 9:30 on Sunday morning. We showered and got ready to go and headed out for desayuno (breakfast). We ate outside at a little cafe and had churros which we dipped into our Cola Cao (hot chocolate). I discovered that its even better to dip your churro in your drink then sugar. Just a helpful little hint if you ever find yourself in Spain and don't know how to eat your churro! Oh! Helpful hint number two! Don't order water with your breakfast! People WILL think you are crazy!

Next we did some walking through the street venders of Madrid. There were many, many different stands consisting of authentic WWI /WWII gear (fun fact: most of this authentic gear was German), jewelry, denim (jackets, vests, shirts, and Levi cutoffs all VERY popular here), bags, underwear and other typical street vender stuff. We wandered into these little side plazas behind the stands as well, and found them to be very pretty and quaint. These plazas were usually made up of antique shops, Ana Maria's favorite! I will admit I am not one for antique shops but there were some pretty cool things in  those shops, such as colorful dining room tables and elaborate chandeliers. We also happened upon a two real fur rugs one made of cow skin and the other zebra skin.

Once we finally reached the end of these street venders we went to lunch. We had snails, which we actually had to PULL the snail out of the shell, yuck! I only had one, and it wasn't that bad but the texture, again, really got me.

(Fun fact: I had actually eaten snail before in Aruba and hated it, so if your not a snail person you should know that not all snails are cooked equal!). We also ate some potatoes in some sauce that is apparently typical of Spain, but Emma said this particular sauce sucked, which I was a bit relieved to discover, because it wasn't very good. I also tried tuna, served practically rare, in the form that looks like freaking eels, soaked in olive juice. Did NOT like that at all. At all.



We did some more roaming, stopping at a little pub place were we had some paella. I like the rice part of paella, but I think I got too adventurous with the food to fast because I took a big piece of something that I wasn't sure what it was. It ended up being fish, which wasn't bad, but this fish was pretty bony and I ended up swallowing a mouth full of fish and bone.





















Then we headed back to the apartment, stopping for ice cream (ice cream is ten thousand times better here! I got mint chocolate chip), for a little siesta. Once siesta hour was complete we went off to Retiro Park, a park with a man made pond with boats that you can rent and row. Since the maximum was four people per boat Ana Maria and Roman took one boat and us kids took another. We weren't half bad! I should also mention that you are not permitted to swim in this particular pond, but when we were there, there was a bit of a protest. This big group of teens /early twenties chanted some chant that I didn't understand, jumped into the pond, got out, sang happy birthday, chanted and danced a bit and then left, in that order. It was a pretty interesting site to see!



Once our arms were tired and time was up in the boats we headed to land to walk around this park a little more. There was a very impressive, empty glass house there and some pretty cool street acts including piano playing puppets, and break dancers. Then we headed off to dinner at that really popular restaurant we were too impatient to wait for the day before.

It was pretty good! We had croquetas which are very popular here. They are basically mozzarella sticks but inside their can be a assortment of foods including cheese, chicken, ham, you name it! I am pretty sure these ones were just chicken, but I am not positive. We also had fried fish, not sure what kind of fish, that was very good, but very salty. I seriously thought the entire ocean was in my mouth! It was intense.

After dinner we headed to a ham shop. Yup, lots of ham everywhere! We had some very good ham. I don't know what else to tell ya about that place. There was a lot of ham.

On our way home we got some more ice cream! This time I had strawberry cheesecake! Writing this makes me realize how many times a day we eat here. It sounds like a lot, but at the end of the day we only end up eating as much as the typical American, just less at each time.

Finally we reached home, exhausted! We watched the end of The Proposal which was playing on TV, then slept.