Knowmark Travelblog: Madrid 2003: Sunday, October 19

Palacio Real, et al

Please note that we are having connectivity problems and that photos will not be posted as usual. We hope to have that service available soon :-}

It rained overnight, but currently (about 3pm) the weather is beautiful (a comfortable 1.5 today on the Knowmark Weather Scale). Since it is Sunday, very little is open, so we spent midday touring the Palacio Real, which was definitely worth the €7 entrance fee. Very interesting place. We used the Madrid Metro for the first time to travel west to the Palacio Real. The Metro system here is excellent and very reasonably priced (10 trips for €5,20).

Earlier this morning we had another Madrid first: chocolate y churros for breakfast. ¡Delicioso!

Currently we are sitting in EnjoyExpress, which is an internet point near the old center of Madrid. It´s a very nice setup - fast connection and a good pricing structure. They have dozens of terminals and very good service.

After finishing up at Enjoy Express this afternoon, we started our stroll home - we did end up walking all the way back, approximately 5 km. On the way, we investigated other Internet point options and found one we had read about at www.madridman.com. It's called CyberFutur@ and we can hook up our laptop directly there. In fact, we will be uploading this entry from there tomorrow!

Our basic walk was along Gran Vía which truly is just that. It is a major thoroughfare with many gracious buildings along the way. There were sun showers off and on, so we decided to duck into someplace for lunch. We're not sure where we ended up, but we enjoyed their menú del día nonetheless; Susan had sopa de pescada followed by trucha a la navarra and Steve had paella mixta followed by pechuga de pollo relleno. Cafés solos followed and feeling quite stuffed, we were glad we had a longish walk home!

After our siesta, we wandered around our own neighbourhood for a while and finally settled on Taberna Ultreya for our evening snack - el vino de la semana (a fairly young Rioja) accompanied by pan y pimientos de piquillo. I'm delighted (this is Susan speaking!) that Suzanne recommended these because they were incredibly delicious and I will be looking for them again! Finally, back at home after yet another stroll around the neighbourhood (did we mention we really like it around here?) we had a light snack - un bocadillo con jamón serrano y queso semicurado.

While we weren't sure that we would be eating as late as los madrileños (part of the rhythm of life here), some of you will be delighted to hear that we didn't finish eating lunch until well after 4:00pm and that our little snack at home happened around 10:00pm!