I arrived in Madrid late late last night so I slightly slept in to recuperate from a weekend of not much sleep. When I got up I headed out for a run which ended up being totally AMAZING. I headed right down O’Donnell and was getting wicked annoyed dodging people and getting caught at lights. After about four minutes of thinking to myself, this sucks I spotted a park, but not just any ordinary park, Jardines del Buen Retiro is the largest park I have seen in all my travels of Europe. I was so stoked. Most parks here are so friggin tiny that provide me with about a five minutes loop and that’s it. This park took me about 20 minutes to do the outer loop but then there was so much more thrilling of paths through the center that I then went back to explore.
Later Adrienne and I went downtown and did a walk that her guide book recommended. We started at the Plaza Mayor, this big open square that is surrounded by buildings, one that was painted wit colorful murals and looked like a gingerbread house. There were so many people and the whole perimeter was lined with restaurants that had patio seating and it was the perfect day to sit outside and soak in the sun. I kept seeing people sucking on lollipop and thought it quite odd; I was thinking, wow the Spanish really are into lollipops but a few minutes later Adrienne and I were right there with them because people were handing out them for free for some promotional advertising so it guess it wasn’t some Spanish lollipop had.
From the plaza we made our way to the Cathedral Nuestra Senora de la Almudena and the Palacio Real. We weren’t planning on going in but then we saw Meredith and her mom and they talked us into it. I’ve been in lots of castle and palace so at first I was not feeling too impressed but then we made it to the dressing room. This room was AMAZING; probably my favorite room ever in any palace or castle! All the rooms have dome ceiling with painting in them but this one had these ornate stucco detailing of vines and flowers. It made for such a striking look with the designs all embossed and coming out at you. It is crazy too that this room was just used to get dressed in although they tried to make it cooler and said the ceremony of getting dressed takes place here. There was another room really different and cool room that was totally covered in porcelain! It was like standing inside a tea pot! The wall and ceiling were all covered in sculpted porcelain flower design. It was really over the top but like nothing I had ever seen before.
After gawking at lavish rooms we walked back to the Plaza Manor and ate some food outside on the patio. I saw Tortilla Espanoala on one of the menu so we had to go there. I was very excited because Leslie had been raving about this dish and said I would like it. It turns out I had it last week when we got tapas and hadn’t even realized! This time it was way better thought because it was warm. And I do really like this dish!!
It was so nice just sitting in the sun and the man playing the guitar was still going strong! There were so many birds everywhere. I had some bread left over so I started throwing little crumbs on the ground and the bird were all flocking over fighting for them. There was one that wasn’t getting any and I felt really bad for him. It was amusing me thoroughly feeding the birds and watching them. Then one really ballsy one came up on the table and started eating crumbs! The sun was starting to sneak behind the building so we knew it was time to leave. I had been very ambitious I wore just a long sleeve which I regretted at this moment.
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