our last day in madrid

day three started much later than day two...but incidentally, we ended up in the same place for breakfast. however, in waking up still full from the night before, it was a super duper light breakfast for us this morning. on this day, i opted for a croissant and spanish hot chocolate. have you ever had spanish hot chocolate? it truly is like drinking chocolate...that's hot. very thick, very creamy, very chocolatey...how is this a breakfast drink?

today was a day for meandering. we had checked out of our hotel and kept our luggage there (my fave part of checkout was when they charged me the 90 cents it cost to mail my postcard to the US...thing is, i mailed a postcard to a friend in the UK). i wonder where my postcard actually went...perhaps on an adventure of its own! but i digress...

we walked through sol - a major shopping district in Madrid, but it was a little quiet. november 1 is all saints day for the catholic community...and with my family it also is the day of the dead so it was a great day to visit some of madrid's beautiful cathedrals and offer up prayers for my dad (among others that i have lost in my time who meant a lot to me).

before we reached our first cathedral however, we stopped for a visit in the plaza mayor...somewhat reminiscent of the piazza san marco in venice, minus the huge church and about half the size. you can access the plaza from many entry points, and throughout the plaza, there were hundreds of vendors trading coins, stamps and cards. it was an amazing site. i haven't seen anything like this since pin trading in the 88 olympics, and as a kid, i really could care less about it. there were also disney characters in the plaza for some reason (clearly, not sponsered by disney as they kept taking their masks off....a career ending move in any disney theme park). it was here too that caroline bought a beautiful landscape original from one of the vendors (think piazza navonna).

from the market we hit our first church...just a tiny one, but beautiful none the less. we also realized that we had accidentally chucked our map and at this point, knew we wanted to make it to the palacio real...and since we had no map, we of course took the scenic route. about 3 kms scenic but it was great scenery!

first we stumbled across what i think is the biggest market (el rastro) i have ever seen in my life. it just kept going on and on and on and on...you get the point! this diversion really took us out of our way and when we popped out we were hungry...and we ate the most crappy tapas in the world (canas y tapas) ....seriously....disgusting. their patatas bravas were deep fried potatoes with tomato soup poured on top...um...isn't it roasted potatoes with salsa on top? so we hopped across the street and grabbed the spanish version of pasties and it gave us enough to prep us for our final dinner in madrid.

good thing for us is the crappy tapas were near a hotel where we got a map! yay....

we found the route we were supposed to take and in no time at all we made it to the catedral de la amlodena with its gorgeous statue of john paul ii...ah JP2...best thing to hit the catholic church in ages.

the catedral was quite incredible with its ultra chic stained glass windows (so modern!) and gigantic pipe organ...get a load of those pipes!


next to the catedral is the palacio real, the official residence of the king of spain. nice digs.

after a long stare at the palace and a rest in the jardines de oriente, we head back down the calle arenal and did a bit of shopping, ate a little gellato (close...but the banana wasn't right) and decided it was time to hit the last restaurant on our list - jose luis. and can i say...we finally got our song on the way to the restaurant! on comes 'please forgive my' by bryan adams...and we were singing so loudly...our poor cab driver. he was laughing, but honestly...it was painful.


but back to the restaurant...

oh.my.god. what amazing tapas...thank god we ended with our last meal at a kick ass restaurant. we had the mini chorizos, salmon with cream cheese, croquette, hake with mayo, grilled pork, tortilla espanol, grilled brie, and crab coctail. mmmmmmmmmmmmm


and then we hop in the cab to get to the airport...in half the time and with half the cost than the ride in...at least this time we had a decent cab driver...the other guy totally pissed me off. then we get to the airport and...the flight is delayed...by 2.5 hours. needless to say i got home and in bed by 2 am...monday was a looooooooooooong day, but it was so worth it.