So, our brilliant plan to fight jet-lag failed royally. We went to sleep early around 10:30 because by that time we had been up for about 2 days. We both were wide awake by 1am. Larry fell back asleep shortly after but I was wide awake until 3:30. Then we switched and Larry was wide awake until 7. Apparently we both finally fell asleep...ignoring our alarms. When we woke up I turned over, happy to be awake in Spain, and asked Larry what time it was...He looked at his phone and replied, "10:57 and that PISSES me off"...great start to our first full day in Spain that was now almost half way over:)
We had originally planned to take a bus to Toledo, but decided that would be a few too many travel days. We headed down to the restaurant for breakfast- Toast with butter and coffee. This is pretty much what everyone eats for breakfast in Spain so we went with it. I ordered a cafe con leche (coffee with milk); which in Spain translates to expresso with milk. We never found a place (even Starbucks) that had drip coffee. I learned to love my cappuccinos.
There were two specific walks that we wanted to do in Madrid. The first we did on day one and the second we saved for this day. It took us by/ through the following beauty...
I wish gated entrances were this beautiful in San Francisco
El Belén (which means Bethlehem) is what the Spanish call a nativity scene. They were everywhere.
La Puerta de Alcalá
El Parque del Retiro- Royal Gardens until 1868 when Queen Isabella was overthrown and the gardens passed into public ownership. It is the equivalent of Golden Gate Park. 
Monument to Alfonso XII
Palacio de Cristal (The Glass Palace)
After Retiro Park we found a place to have lunch. This was the first place where we noticed that wine was cheaper than water :). After lunch we headed to the Reina Sofia where we saw the works of Dali, Picasso, Goya, and Velazquez. We took a Spanish class last year and studied the Guernica by Picasso. It was pretty cool to see it in person. We couldn't take a picture of it, but I found one online.
The Guernica- it depicts the suffering of the Spanish people during the Spanish Civil War (it is enormous!)
Not exactly our taste in art, but fun to see
Once we had seen our fill of art we walked on... We saw a HUGE V of geese. There had to be hundreds. Click on the picture to enlarge it
We walked by the public library. Beautiful!
It only stayed light for about 7 hours! I loved the Christmas lights.
After our day long walk we found a bar that served tapas (small appetizer like dishes that you order a few and share) and decided to have dinner. We ordered cured ham on a baguette (served literally everywhere) and patatas bravas (chunk fried potatoes with a tomato based sauce; which this time was just hot sauce), a vino tinto (small red wine), and a caña (small beer). The ham came and was fine. Neither of us really loved cured ham, but it is there main dish in Spain so we ate a lot of it. The potatoes came and I was starving and tend to be impatient so I popped a big one into my mouth...wow was I sorry. Let me start by saying that napkins in spain are made from the same material that we make those disposable toilet seat covers out of and they are tiny. Let me also say that this bar was packed and we were surrounded by people. Now, the potato I had just put in my mouth was the relative temperature of molten lava. I grabbed a tiny napkin and started doing that thing were you breathe out of your mouth to try and cool the food down. It didn't work. So I tried juggling it around in my mouth hoping it would cool off. By this time Larry was of course staring as were the people in front of us. I started laughing (because that is what I do when I am in pain) and laughing and laughing so hard that I started crying. These weren't normal tears, they were what my aunt would call "projectile tears". Now people were really staring and Larry was still trying to figure out what was happening. I didn't want to spit it out because that would mean touching it with my tongue or moving it so I just sat there laughing, and crying while my mouth was frying...I couldn't taste a thing for about 24 hours. It may have been because we were so tired but we found the situation quite humorous.
We left the bar still quite hungry and decided to try out a local food attraction where you get churros and chocolate. The place was packed! We squeezed ourselves in, ordered, found a counter on which to perch, ate our churros (I tasted nothing), and left within about 5 minutes. It was madness, but fun.
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