Madrid!

The final stop on our trip was Spain's wonderful capital city, Madrid!

Our drive from Molino was the shortest of the legs so far at under two hours and we arrived at the Urso hotel where we dropped our bags off around 2PM before dropping the car off some ways away and then walking the half-hour back to our hotel.

After a quick bite and glass of wine, it was off for a 5 hour stroll / wander through Madrid on a lovely Friday evening!

We snacked at various places along the way including a Spanish omelette restaurant where we sampled the nameplate victual for the first time and found we quite enjoyed it! Some shopping was also undertaken with old time Spanish military uniform postcards as well as a (vinyl) record of Calypso from a cool local shop called "Chopper Monster" that Christos keeps calling "Chopper Whopper".

Christos also managed to whack his knee on one of the short bollard like dividers used to separate the narrow roads from the narrow sidewalks in downtown Madrid.

The next day was our final full day in Spain and our only full day in Madrid so it was a serious ground pound! The main goal was the famous Prado Museum.

We covered over 30km meandering to, through and around the Prado over a six hour period with many stops at quaint squares and tapas bars (and some shopping) on the way.

Lisa bought a pair of espadrilles and a t-shirt while Christos bought more odd old Spanish postcards and some tea towels.

For sustenance, we found ourselves popping into every second tapas bar we came upon and we popped into quite a few to sustain our trek.

The Prado took up a total of 5km of the 30km walk and while we did not see every nook and cranny, we did visit most of the museum and saw all the highlights.

It had been a decade since Lisa had been to the Prado (and about five years for Christos) so it was a very welcome refresher and we made sure to allow enough viewing time to soak up what you can only see when gazing upon an actual painting and not just its digital likeness.

After a couple of hours in the Prado (we were now at km20 of 30km for the day) it was back to more wandering, albeit a little more slowly, and more noshing as we made our way back to the hotel where we paused for a couple hours of rest before heading out into Masdrid's Saturday night scene.

The evening was filled with wandering the packed streets and much tinto de verano at various bars. Our final stop (around 11PM) was a hole in the wall restaurant we stumbled upon called El Cisne Azul which specialized in mushrooms! The well heeled madrilenos beside us ordered something seasonal and all the sudden the cook had a goose egg on the grill and shortly thereafter the egg was on a plate covered with mushrooms and truffle shavings! It fed four so we opted for the smaller hen egg with fewer mushrooms and it was delicious! We finally left around midnight and made our way back to the hotel Urso for a good night's rest before the flight home the next day.