Two days in Madrid, and I feel like I have only been able to see the smallest slices of it. We are fortunate to be right right RIGHT in the centre of the oldest part of the city. Half way bewteen the Prado museum and the royal palace.
yesterday W and I did a little self guided walking tour of the area around the palace and the cathedral. As we didn´t plan on spending any time in Madrid originally, we don´t have a book or guide. So while I enjoy walking around and looking at the architecure, I do feel that it was a bit of a waste, as I wish I knew more about what I was looking at. The cathedral was my favorite- while baroque in style on the outside (to keep it in harmony with the palace) it was actually buildt in the early 1990´s, so it has this wonderful modern stained glass and painted wood panelling.
the highlight of yesterday for me was W and I going out for a tour of the tapas bars of our nieghbourhood- which are astoundingly thick on the ground. There are 3-6 on every block. So with one drink and one tapa in each, you can happily bar hop all night and never get farther than a few blocks from the appartment. Last night we had calamaris, a great fresh salad (veggies were seriously lacking in Morocco), THE BEST HAM EVER (janelle, if I could mail you some I would) and these massive head-on shrip just sauteed up. Yum.
Today we had a really nice tour that we booked for only a couple of bucks via the madrid tourism office. We were the only people who had signed up, so it was great to be able to stroll and chat with this woman around some of the sights of the old city. we talked about the roll of the church in Spain, and about how inbreeding made the spanish (austrian) kings crazy, and how madrid went from a morrish signal post to the capital in only a hundred years or so.
Then we headed off to the Prado and spent all afternoon looking at art. Great glorious famous paintings to be exact. While I liked the Goya very much (and they have a lot of it) and the El Greco, my favorite was seeing this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/GardenED.jpg
And now my feet are very tired and it is time for my daily afternoon siesta. :-)
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