We spent a glorious day exploring beautiful Madrid. Madrileños don’t do early mornings, maybe because of Labour Day. It took Ursi the best part of 20 minutes around 8.30am to find an open bakery with hardly anyone on the streets.
We got going around 10am, with streets still deserted as we made our way towards the Cathedral and the Royal Palace. As we got closer to the city, a few people, mostly tourists started appearing on the avenues with cafes that were open, serving breakfasts to patrons. I got a bit excited to see an open Indian restaurant in anticipation of getting a chai, but alas, they were not ready to serve patrons as I discovered. Onwards we zigzagged our way across streets, loving every minute of a fresh late morning. We entered Plaza Mayor, a spectacular square full of tourists, some with selfie sticks (where would some people be without their selfie sticks) and hawkers flogging their wares.
We finally arrived at the Cathedral and the adjacent Royal Palace,
As far as Cathedrals go, this one is just ok relative to some others seen on the tour. After climbing the Cathedral tower we got a beautiful ariel perspective of Madrid.
We then made our way towards the Madrid’s equivalent of Broadway and Time Square where there was quite a buzz on the streets boosted by the vast number of Germans who had come to Madrid to support their team Bayern Munich play Real Madrid that night. By this time Ursi and I were ready for our daily lubricants; stepped into a McDonalds hoping that they would server a chai as they do in Australia, but no such luck. The young man directed me to a nearby Indian restaurant, sure enough I got my chai; not necessarily the best but better than what the alternatives were on offer. Fully energised, we made our way towards the hostel, where our daughter Jessie used to work during her gap year. On the way there, we came across an amazing street food hall, SAN ILDEFONSO where they served the most amazing variety of foods.
Every little stall had a tasting platter for people to sample their food. We duly proceeded to taste every one of them and they were all delicious; by that time we were full. Finally got to Jessie’s place of work, the hostel and took a few photos of the reception and the breakfast room to send to her. By this time, we were ready to home all be it with a slight detour through Parque de el Retiro; a beautiful oasis in the middle of Madrid where we took heaps of photos.
Next up was a visit to the railway station that is directly on the way home from the Parque; to buy tickets for tomorrows visit to Toledo. After the day’s walk of 15.5km, we finally made it home and did not have any energy left to go out again so had dinner indoors, yes you guessed it, another salad that tasted as good if not better than yesterday’s. It’s funny when most of Madrid gets ready to go out, we come home to stay indoors. Then again, we don’t wake up with hangovers anymore.
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