I had never been in such a chaotic yet organized restaurant. Everyone just orders food and stands at the
bar to eat it. The chaos is going on
around the bar because people are in every square inch of the place yelling
back and forth at each other, but the people behind the counter were so
organized and knew exactly who wanted what…. I would have never been able to
keep up. They also had a counter in the
back where they sold all of their hams—I cannot even tell you how many ham
stores there were in Madrid, it was unbelievable. The first thing they did when we walked up to
the bar was serve us a plate of paella, we were surprised and didn’t know what
to do with it until the guy just stared at us and said ITS FREE…that’s all we
needed to hear for us to start digging in, it was so good and we were both
starving. Then we ordered a peculiar
combination of fries, eggs, bread, steak, lettuce, and tomato. I made a sandwich out of it and the Spanish
man working the counter thought this was quite funny…. He just looked at me
laughing and said “interesting.” I guess
not too many Americans come into that restaurant because he seemed to love us,
he kept asking if we were okay and just smiling at us…I think he could tell we
were a little puzzled by everything going on around us. He was really nice though, I’m glad we went
there for lunch because it seemed pretty local and really was a different
experience than either of us had ever had.
After that we just walked around the town for a couple of
hours. We went to the main square, Puerta
del Sol, where there were a lot of characters, human statues, and people just
dressed up in the most random of costumes looking for some extra money… I’m not
sure why there were so many of them but I wonder how successful they are in
doing this everyday.
We didn’t really have a plan for the day when we arrived so
when we got tired of walking around we just went back to the hostel to take a
nap, get ready, and figure out what we wanted to do for the rest of the night.
When we were deciding on where to go for
dinner I found a tapas place really close by to our hostel that happened to be
ranked really high on trip advisor so we thought we’d give it a try—Café Olmo. When we walked in it was a really small place with one little counter and maybe
5 tables. The people behind the counter
didn’t even acknowledge that we had walked in…. we didn’t know whether to seat
ourselves or what…. And didn’t see a menu anywhere so after standing awkwardly
for about two minutes we decided to leave and find something else. I’m glad that happened because we ended up
going to Taberna Gastromaquia. The owner, Caesar, translated the entire menu for us then
gave us his recommendations, it was extremely welcoming.
He was so nice to us throughout our entire dinner, checking on everything and making polite conversation. It turned out he had lived in DC for a little while before coming back to Spain! We started our meal with homemade guacamole with plantain chips, then a warm goat cheese salad, followed by octopus in a potato foam, and finished with mojito sorbet for dessert. We had the best red wine I've ever had with it-- I wish I had gotten the name. It was all absolutely phenomenal. The cheese on the salad was a little bit heavy but overall the entire meal was definitely a memorable one-- can't believe I've now eaten Octopus!
After dessert he brought us two popular Madrid shots as a thank you (told you they love this here!)-- one red and one yellow. They weren't my favorite and I cannot for the life of me remember what he had to say about them but it was a nice gesture! After dinner we were both pretty tired so we took the metro
back to our hostel and went to bed. The
next morning we woke up in time to make the free tour of Madrid at 11:00 with our guide, O.D.
The tour began in Plaza Mayor, one of the major plazas in
Madrid. It began at the statue of King Phillip III in the center of the plaza with a lot of Spanish history, as the always do.
Then we moved out of the plaza and he told us the
significance of all of the ham shops… he said when the Spanish Inquisition was
going on, the Jews were afraid and the best way to convince someone you weren’t
a jew was to open up a ham shop, that would make everything believe that you
weren’t because jews couldn’t eat ham.
He showed us one ham shop that had been open for over 100 years. There were many shops around Madrid that had
been open for that long and they denote all of them with a plaque type thing
in the sidewalk right outside of the door of the business so that everyone
knows.
Then we went into Puerta del Sol where he showed us the
famous El Oso y el Madroño-- the symbol of Madrid.
He told us that the tree represents all the minerals and
everything on earth trying to make their way up to the sky and the bear
represents the heavens and the Big Dipper. The plaza’s name, Puerta del Sol, means
“gates of the rising sun”. This plaza is the centre of the radial network of Spanish roads marking the 0 km spot.
After the main
square he showed us some of the popular pastry and sweet shops…. Don’t worry we
revisited them, they looked too good not to!
There was one chocolate shop that is open 24 hours a
day. We said that we would go back to
that one but we never ended up going…. We weren’t hungry enough during the day
and it was too cold at night that we didn’t want to walk all the way there. Next time I guess!
Then he took us to see the food market of Madrid, Mercado de
San Miguel, and the Restaurante Sobrino de Botin which holds the Guiness World
Record for Oldest Restaurant in the World and the Forbes 3rd most
popular classic restaurant in the world.
Unfortunately for Eric and I… it was a little bit out of our price
range.
After that he took us to a monastery where apparently the
nuns sell cookies. You ring a bell to be
let in then walk down this hallway, press another button and say over an
intercom how many cookies you want, they tell you how much it is… you put the
money in a tray and they turn it around with the cookies. You never physically see the nuns during the
entire transaction. It didn’t sound
like a way I would ever like to buy cookies but he promised it wasn’t sketchy….
Even with the promise we decided that was a place we wouldn’t need to come back
and check out after the tour.
We literally toured the entire city in these few hours. He took us to a few more plazas, gave us the
history behind various statues and such and then pointed out a restaurant with
over 85 different brands of beer available from over 12 countries on the way to
the Cathedral.
The Cathedral of Madrid took over 300 years to build… it
wasn’t finished until 1993. The cool
thing about it was that because it took so long there were 3 major architects
involved in the project…. All with extremely different styles. Therefore, the cathedral is kind of like a
hodge-podge of architectural design from the three architects. You would never think that these two pictures were part of the same cathedral.
After the cathedral we saw the palace- Palacio Real. He claimed it is the biggest palace in
Western Europe…. but only if you don’t count the gardens at the Palace of
Versailles. It certainly was magnificent
and HUGE. The cool thing about this
palace was that you could walk around the entire outside of it and pay to go
inside. At Buckingham Palace in London you could only see the front, so it was kind of neat to see the
palace in its entirety and be able to walk around the exterior to take in its
massiveness.
He ended the tour outside of the palace in the gardens in
front of the King Phillip IV fountain.
The interesting thing about this fountain was that the statue was a
product of Galileo himself. He told them
how to make the horse stand up on its hind legs by putting a lot of weight in
the rear of the horse and making the rest of the statue hollow.
Then we went to a tapas bar with the tour group for lunch. Eric and I got boqadillos (sandwiches) with
pork and cheese that were fabulous. I
had sangria and Eric had red wine, both of which were very delicious as
well. Then we left the group to go back
to the square for dessert in one of the bakeries. We chose one of the 100+ year old shops and
got these little pastries filled with chocolate called Napolitanas….mmhhhm
mhhhm good. We were pretty happy we made
the decision to go back there.
After our dessert we headed back to the market so we could
go inside and see what it was all about.
We didn’t get anything, but I always love walking around the food
markets in every city because there isn’t anything like it in the United
States.
After that we went back to the hostel to figure out a plan
for the rest of the day. We decided on
the Prado museum because we got free entry with our student ID’s. The museum has art by Velasquez, Goya, El Greco, and a lot of other really famous artists.
After that we headed to the Sofia museum to see Picasso’s
famous Guernica. We finally found it
after a bit of confusion (this art museum has the absolute worst set up
ever). We looked at it for a couple of
minutes and then left. At this point we
were kind of museumed out so we didn’t feel like staying there long at
all. After that we went back to the
hostel to get ready for the night. For
dinner we went out to a tapas bar called El Tigre. It was extremely crowded and another one of
those places where you don’t sit down but rather eat standing at the counter. Here the counters went throughout the whole
building instea of just at the bar so you didn’t have to stay at the front to
find a spot to eat. All you have to do
is order a drink and then they give you a huge plate full of tapas to go with
it. We started out with a couple of
mojitos. I was excited to finally have
the traditional tapas that come with a drink, all of the other places we had
been to didn’t still do it that way.
It was mostly a paella mixture then some meat and cheese
bread combos and a delicious fried cheesy thing (I wish I knew what it was
called). After we finished we both got
Sangria…. But that also came with two heaping plates of food. At this point we didn’t know what to do with
all the food, we were too full to eat it!
If you looked around the bar there were just stacks on stacks of plates
with untouched food…. They should probably start asking if people actually want
the food after they move onto a second drink.
I had read a lot about the famous Flamenco shows in Madrid
so after dinner we went to a place called Las Carboneras for a show.
It was ranked as the top flamenco show in Madrid on trip
advisor so we thought we couldn’t go wrong with this place. Well…. Flamenco shows aren’t quite what I
thought. The music was great! But the
dancing and some of the solo acts were just a bit weird. I was expecting bright colored flashy long
skirts and younger performers and it was kind of the opposite. It was a good experience and I’m glad we went
but I don’t think I’ll ever go see one again.
By the end I was almost falling asleep…. Eric had to keep nudging me to
keep me awake. After that we were both
pretty exhausted and walked home to sleep before our train to Valencia in the
morning!
^^ These were where things got a little weird. The expressions on the dancers and singers faces were pretty funny, you could tell they loved what they were doing.
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