SEurope – Days 21-23 – Madrid, Spain

Day 21 – to Madrid

Jun 17 – New City Day

After checkout, we went back to VIPs for brunch (since not many places are open that early) and then we hung out at the mall until time to board our train.
Our 4-hour train ride had no fuckin’ wifi because it can’t text numbers outside of Spain. What a garbage system.
We are usually wary of taxis, but that made the most sense with the setup at the Madrid station. It was just like any Uber except we paid at the end. Oh, and the radio was on KISS FM and playing 80s tunes and advertising Avenue Q.
Moments later, at the hotel, the display of rack cards had advertisements for Book of Mormon, Lion King, and Mama Mia. I guess the Spainards love their Broadway, maybe.
All in all, it was a long-ish travel day, but we made it, settled in, found a restaurant, and ordered dinner/wine at Ciudad de Tui. I had a lovely medium rare, super thin, melt-in-my-mouth steak and he had a lovely roasted chicken.
We then walked the very active area outside hotel and settled at Canas y Tapas for drinks and people watching.
Next, we missed the deadline to buy wine at the store by three minutes. We didn’t know we needed to be in a hurry. So, I bought a bottle to-go from C&T. Some laws are dumb. Don’t Texas my Madrid!

atop the mall was a “little America” (KFC, BK, McD, TacoB) and a 3 storey slide and spash pad

this was going to be my setup….until the WiFi didn’t work

lunch wasn’t bad - wine was great

LIARS

the wind farms were all “off"

my steak was one of the best I’ve ever had - and half bottles of wine are just perfect for one

this massive fish were all over this building

Day 22 – Madrid

Jun 18 – city center

We slept in a bit. And just as we were headed out to lunch, we found a bag hanging on our door with croissants, chocolate-covered donut holes, and water.
We had lunch in the main “square”/circle at a cute and busy sandwich shop called Rodilla.
We saw a police-escorted marching protest of about 25 people in bright yellow safety vests. We couldn’t make out any of their chanting, but they weren’t squirting people with water. We read about the protests; they are from a very small group that is just a very loud one. They want to be on social media and they have succeeded. They are ultra short-sighted though. Cities can (and do) make laws to limit short-term rentals where they create housing shortages. (Austin had some limits on them; Denver mostly disallows them altogether.) Tourists spend a lot of money on meals at restaurants, shows/entertainment, tours, keepsakes, and more…and that’s in addition to their accommodations. Pushing them away means a lot less resources for the city and a lot less income for every business.
We then wandered through the city center. We found a vintage glove store, a comic book shop, a game shop, a new shirt for him, and a very cute accessories shop. There were also a bunch of Flamenco shows with barkers. They didn’t seem to be popular at all.
When we took a break to sit down, we people watched while enjoying gelato and Cokes.
And then, with more walking, there were noticeably fewer people out. It was time to siesta (and do some editing/blogging/gaming)
When it was time for an early dinner (i.e. before 8pm), we chose our hotel rooftop—Doña Luz.
Before it was too late (10pm!), we got wine for our room.
We were still quite warm, so we had a second mini siesta to wait out the rest of the heat. Remember when you were like 21-young and had to wait until it was late enough to go out? Madrid is like that…but you are waiting for the heat to dissipate.
We wandered a bit more through the night time activities.

part of the town center

pride

are they tiles? or paint? or sculpted plaster?

so many games

why? why do this to Sylvester?

um, what kind of wings?

Day 23 – Madrid

Jun 19 –

The heat must have taken our energy because we slept until almost noon. We then headed to lunch at Serafina Cocina. He had delicious crunchy chicken strips and I had a beautiful ensalada verde with avocado, broccoli, asparagus, spinach, red onion, pomegranate seeds, pepitas, and a yummy vinaigrette.
We then went back to the room for my forgotten phone and to have Cokes. We also used the siesta from “el caliente de 37ºC/98ªF” to plan future legs of our travel.
Early dinner at the Spanish version of Chipotle/Freebirds, Tierra. The place was so Amercanized that they even had make your own fountain Coke with free refills.
From 7pm-9pm, entrance was free (instead of €12-16) to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Very little was our style, but it was still nice to support their numbers. After, we stopped for drinks at a Hookah bar, Maktub. It was a pretty posh place with fancy decor, the Miami vs Porto fútbol match, music videos at a reasonable volume, and even a couple of nice semi-private rooms.
We then Ubered back to the room to pack and edit/blog and get ready for our departure.