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It’s our last night in Madrid and we’ve just had a fantastic time here.  Hopefully once the Depeche tour is over we will slow our pace down a little bit but for now, we are trying to see and do the highlights of these great cities with the compressed time we have.  In our last post, we left off with the weekend so this one picks up on Monday, the 11^th.

Monday was pretty heavy on the sightseeing.  We wanted to combine our workouts with getting out and seeing the city so we had a pretty high number of steps today.  We had a little over 23,000 steps and about ten miles of walking.  Our first destination after bananas and cereal in the apartment was the Mercado de San Miguel.  We did pass Plaza de la Puerta del Sol along the way. We thought this would be one of the larger markets where you can find vendors offering prepared food along with vendors selling fresh meat, fresh fish, poultry, fruits and vegetables and basically everything you’d find at one of our farmer’s markets.  Unfortunately this market only had vendors selling the prepared food and we weren’t that interested so we moved on.

We had cochinillo (roast suckling pig that our friends Raul and Jonette introduced to us) on our list for our time in Madrid so we went to a restaurant not too far from the market hoping to get some.  This restaurant did not have it but we were starved so we stayed.  The restaurant is the Posada de la Villa.  It’s a quite old restaurant with lots of history.  We thought it was a cross between a bit of a tourist trap and a place where locals may go to celebrate special occasions.  I had stuffed peppers and Sandy had an omelette.  The food was really pretty good, maybe just a little overpriced.

After our meal, we spent a few minutes in Plaza Mayor, the city’s main plaza.  It’s surrounded by nice buildings and it is pretty large – thus the name.  Our walk then took us past the Royal Palace.  There was a moving exhibition out front for the 20^th anniversary of an awful terrorist bombing that took place in Madrid.  Next stop on our walking journey took us past Madrid’s bullfighting stadium.  It’s a beautiful building.  Bullfighting, which is controversial of course, season kicks off later this month.

We were still on the hunt for cochinillo so we checked out a couple of other restaurants that were supposed to have it. One was closed that day and the other needed us to call to reserve cochinillo in advance.  That is understandable.  Oh well, next time.  Again starved, we narrowed it down to heating up paella that we picked up at the grocery store or having KFC.  The easier path won and we enjoyed a delicious meal at KFC (with the local Mahou beer) before calling it a day.

Oh, when we got back I did some more research on setting up this blog and finally landed on the hosting service – bluehost.  I still have so much to learn.

Tuesday was really a domestic day.  We went for our workout at Anytime Fitness in the late morning.  We both did weights and I did a mix of cardio.  Sandy did a little cardio because she does more weights than I do.  The afternoon was spent working on the blog setup, enjoying our Greek salad that we often make at home, and then warming up the paella for dinner.  Tonight was a show night and I was on my own.  I watched from right in front of the mixing desk on the floor.  It was a great spot but again, very crowded and it got more and more crowded as the show went on. People were getting a little too on top of me, but eventually we made friends and I survived until the end.  Easy twenty minute walk back to the apartment after the show.

Wednesday was another fun day out and about.  We met our friends, Manuel and Tina, for porras con chocolate and churros con chocolate at Chocolateria San Gines.  They split their order between churros and porras and we had porras for our full order.  The porras are fatter and more greasy.  Still delicious but splitting between the two was the right choice. 

After a nice visit with them, we met one of our friends who works with Depeche for an afternoon of beer sampling. 

We started at Taproom Madrid and then moved across the Plaza de Isabel II and sat outside enjoying the beautiful afternoon.  Tonight is the second leg of a Champions League tie between Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid.  The Inter supporters happened to be marching through our plaza while we were there so it was very interesting to watch the police prepare for their arrival, handle the hundreds of supporters while they were in the plaza, and then watch the cleaning crew come through like clockwork as soon as they were gone.  Fascinating.  This was one of our favorite afternoons of the trip so far.

It was getting close to our planned time for dinner at an Italian restaurant just off Plaza Mayor, so we people-watched in the plaza for a little bit and then met our friends Manuel, Tina, Thomas, Michael, Ditmar, and Bea for dinner at Malatesta. They are all from Germany with the exception of Michael, who is from Switzerland. It’s fun seeing these friends like these all over the world during a tour.  The food was very good – I had pasta Bolognese and it wasn’t the same recipe as in Bologna (which now I like to make), but still very good; Sandy had gnocchi with cheese and she thought it was very good also.  The service was adequate – most people have been super friendly, this server not quite as much.  Overall a really fun night.  We were exhausted so it was the metro back to our neighborhood and off to bed.

That brings us to today, our last day in Madrid.  Today was another day of quality time with Monica.  She met us at the Prado Museum to give us a tour and then we planned to grab dinner on the way to the Depeche Mode with her.  Sadly, the Prado does not allow pictures inside so that will limit the length of this journal entry.  I can say though that it is a beautiful museum with gorgeous and diverse paintings and sculptures.  And it’s a wonderful experience to tour the museum with an artist and one who is as enthusiastic as Monica is.  She had quite a few “favorite” pieces and it was fun to hear her talk about them and why they were favorites of hers.  I’m not so educated on Spanish art but I’d have a hard time picking a favorite artist – likely it would be between Goya and Velazquez with Goya maybe coming out on top.  He had a great deal of diversity and his Black Paintings are amazing.  Another highlight for me was Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.  Look that one up. I could spend an hour looking at it and probably not see all of the detail.

For dinner, we ate at VIPS, which Monica describes as a Spanish restaurant attempting to mimic an American diner.  I’d say that is pretty close.  The food was fine – Monica and I had burgers, Sandy had a club sandwich, and we all shared an appetizer of fries with spicy sauce and pancakes with chocolate, bananas, and strawberries for dessert.

All three of us totally enjoyed the Depeche show.  It was her first time seeing Depeche – she only knew one or two songs before this week.  We sat in seats stage left, which gives a really good view of the stage and the interactions between the band members.  The crowd was very good and it was just a super time.  Monica said she wants to be able to dance like Dave dances at 61.  Me, too.  Monica lives in the western suburbs of Madrid and we wanted to make sure she was safely home afterward so we caught an Uber out to Alcorcon, dropped her off, and then had the driver take us back to our apartment on the eastern side of Madrid.