Sunday was the last
day of Josh’s conference and our last full day in Madrid. On Josh’s lunch
break, we went into the city to see a few more things, take some pictures and
walk around a bit.
This is 0 kilometer –
the exact center of Spain.
This is in Puerta de
Sol, another square in Madrid. This is a major metro stop and it’s always busy
with all sorts of activity. There are shops, restaurants and street performers.
This is a famous
statue in Puerta del Sol. Bears used to live in the royal hunting grounds and
the tree the bear is pawing at, the madrono tree, produces a berry used to make
a traditional liquer.
We stopped for
churros con chocolate – which is churros with hot chocolate with a pudding-like
consistency. Very good!
Josh had a churro and
sipped his coffee…
I devoured the rest of
the churros.
When Josh went back
to the conference, it was time for a siesta for me! I could really get used to
those! After I woke up, I blogged a little and I started to pack our. Once he
got back, we finished packing and hopped on the metro at Atoche Renfe to go
into the city one last time. An interesting fact about this metro station: it
was bombed on 9/11 a few years after the 9/11 attacks in the US. You can read
more about it here. It was pretty
crazy to standing in a metro station, knowing something so horrible had
happened there.
We got off at a new
stop this time since we had plans to go to an ice bar after dinner. We got off
at the closest stop to the ice bar and started looking for restaurants nearby.
I don’t recall the name of the plaza, but it was very swanky. I wasn’t in the
mood for fancy tapas, so it really wasn’t what we were looking for. We were
both pretty hungry. I was actually craving Asian food or a big plate of spaghetti.
We left the plaza and started to explore the side streets for a good place to
eat. We finally found a place to eat. We ended up getting the menu of the day
at a restaurant on one of the side streets. We each got 2 different kinds of
paella as our first course. For the 2nd course, Josh got some sort
of delicious beef and I got Dogfish (I really didn’t even know that was a real
fish). The fish wasn’t bad, but the beef was SO good! We ate dessert then left
for the Ice Bar. I was exhausted, especially after having a full belly, but I
was excited to go into an ice bar just for the experience. We had a Groupon
that was good for 3 drinks, but we agreed that really just wanted 1 each and we
would go back to our hotel since Monday morning came early. Little did we know,
the bar closed at 11:00 on Sunday night. By the time we finished dinner and got
there, it was 11:30. That seems late, but it’s pretty normal to have dinner
after 9:00 around here. I've kind of gotten used to it. I was a little
disappointed that we didn't get to go to the Ice Bar, but I was also eager to
get some sleep since we had to get up early Monday morning to catch a train.
This is me waiting
for the metro to come take us back to our hotel in Madrid for the last time. I
haven’t been in many metro stations, so I’m not sure if it’s typical or not,
but the stations sometimes stink…kind of like sewage. That was obviously not
enjoyable, but other than that, we didn’t have any negative experiences on the
Madrid Metro. It was quite easy to navigate, even for me.
We had a great time
in Madrid and there are still things we didn’t get to do. Leaving was
bittersweet. I was comfortable there and we still could have spent a couple
days there doing other things, but I was eager to see our next
destination…TOLEDO!
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