Day two of our Spanish adventure we were still in Madrid and decided to hit the Prado Museum. We were so excited to see the art, especially by Picasso, Goya, Valazquez, El Greco and Rembrandt (although the latter was not Spanish, there were signs and banners for the Prado advertising his art). Boy were we disappointed after we finished our tour. The Goyas, Valazquezes and El Grecos were phenomenal, but there was literally one Picasso and one Rembrandt. We were happy to mark the Prado off our to-do list and went on to meander aimlessly for hours (which was more our style than a stuffy museum anyway). We stumbled upon the flagship Adolfo Dominguez (AD) store and found ourselves in heaven! Katy and Stephen were thrilled with the clothes and accessories, and while those things I hearted too, it was the whimsical and textured interior design that tooted my horn.
After spending over an hour in the AD store we headed back out onto the street famished. We had lunch at a restaurant around the corner and it was delicious! It was a prix fixe meal for only 12 Euro each! Only took photos of the entree but the soup, salad and desserts were delicious too! When we walked into the restaurant we felt slightly strange as we were surrounded with what felt like a restaurant by day/disco night-club by night but shrugged off our concerns because of the idiotic tendencies that were taking over our dropping blood sugar levels.
Me and Stephen had delicious meetballs and rice (and yummy sangria beyond)
Katy ate the pork and the flavor was great but slightly over cooked:(
After our meal we continued to walk but decided a nap would be splendid so we made our way back to the hotel through a the Jardines de Cecilio Rodriguez (a lovely park in the heart of Madrid). The weather was simply perfect, not a cloud in the sky and air was nice and crisp!
Stephen on a mini bench!
There were a number of birds/pigeons (aka: rats with wings) in the park which Katy and Stephen now know my deep seeded despise for. Many “would you rathers” were created with pigeons involved after our walk through the park. We stopped in the park to sit and write some post cards knowing we would pass a post office on our way back to the b&b but boy was it difficult to find the actual post office! It could be our own fault due to lack of blood in our brains after such a large meal (with Sangria at lunch, while still jet lagged), but after about 30 minutes we found it! They had a funny/inappropriate pen at the post, which I must include here…
My sweet-toothed companions wanted a fix before our nap so we stopped in the pastry shop near our b&b once again and they found some treasures.
This is the exterior of our corner sweet shop!
We napped for an hour and woke up refreshed and ready to go! We were pleasantly surprised to see our little neighborhood stores open and lively in the afternoon and did some shopping. We found a really cute store that sold a number of things, including jewelry, plants, home decorations, and clothes where Katy scored a plant in a can (literally, it’s a plant in a can that you pop open and water…then watch it grow) and I (the cat lady) bought a sweet brooch (which I do not have a photo of but will take and post if any of you are interested) of a cat face (imagine a cameo but only replace the female figure with a fluffy cat silhouette). The interiors of the shop were so cute I had to snap a few photos! It’s amazing how someone with a good eye and creative spirit can make something as utilitarian as a desk lamp look amazing!
Although we were still far from hungry after our lunch gorging, we were a bit parched and stopped about 10 feet from the above store and had a sit at the bar of a really cool restaurant. The bartender was not our biggest fans (mostly because we couldn’t speak Spanish, or at least enough to communicate other than asking for the banyo) but he warmed up to us after a bit. The first round of drinks were awful but the ambiance was lively and warm and the company the best! Stephen went to the bathroom before we left and informed us that me and Katy HAD to have a look because they were so cool, and while these photos do not do the space justice, here they are:
This is a photo of the basement level where the bathrooms are located (interesting how countries outside of the US don’t have as stringent rules about accessibility! But boy are they intent on saving electricity…there are automatic lights everywhere!)
Hand washing station outside of the bathroom.
That’s me and Katy happy to be on vacation and happy to have learned about a drink called Tinto Lemon, or Tinto del Verano (which is basically a carbonated lemonade with red wine). We had also eaten some of the most delicious green olives EVER at the bar.
A local (who was also crashing at our bar tender’s apartment) who spoke excellent English chatted us up and was able to give us good directions to the Chueca District (aka: the Gay District) where we were on a mission to get to in order to absorb the culture! Sure enough the directions (and may I say, my sense of direction) got us to the Chueca district where well put together men and fabulous bars were in abundance. We stopped in a high-end grocery store in the district and were wowed by AMAZING looking meats, cheeses, and veggies. It was like a charcuterie heaven!
After we exited the grocery store we were bamboozled by a guy that spoke poor English that said he was born in Georgia in the US (although I’m pretty sure he meant Georgia the country) and ended up getting a drink at a quiet bar he was rep’ing where Stephen thought the bartender (named Blas) looked like the Crypt Keeper (I thought he was cute, and was excited for Stephen since the poor guy was telling us about how he was looking for love and had recently moved to Madrid from Seville) but the black under eye circles that I was remiss to notice was a deal breaker for my friend. The Dirty Dancing sound track playing in the background was enough to have me at ‘hello’ but my friends were having none of it! We tried to have Blas educate us about charcuterie and how to properly ask what the ingredients were in the items we were interested in and how to request a label to be made indicating ingredients, but despite his excellent English, and our sad attempts at Spanish, we could not break the barrier…he could only tell us about the chorizo and sausages famous in Spain. Alas, our drinks were dry and the food options at the bar looked bleak (the bar tender/chef was heating up something suspicious in the microwave in his prep area behind the bar) so we paid and left looking for greener pastures.
We walked a couple of blocks and found another tapas bar where we dined with a pretty sweet life-size image of all things gay…Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga, Madonna…there were others but unfortunately I failed on being an Asian stereotype and did not photo document the image of the celebs that looked on as we dined.
So we walked home after feeling a bit underwhelmed by Chueca but were not disappointed to see Audrey Hepburn…maybe it was a bad version of her but it made us smile:
So after day two of our adventure we learned a precious lesson: speaking slower and louder does not make people understand you any better (God bless Blas! We tried and tried to communicate via writing, role play, charades, etc. but we could not explain to him that all we wanted was to be able to ask a butcher/grocery employee, “please write down the ingredients in this encased meat”.)
Day three is soon to come…xx
