Woke up fairly early the next morning....weather looked pretty decent. After a muscle contorting shower we headed out for b'fast. The restaurant attached to the hotel looked too busy to we decided to go to the McD next door for breakfast. There was nothing recognizable on the menu. We had wrongly assumed the breakfast would be the usual hash browns, eggs etc. But the only vegetarian item was pancakes with caramel sauce and ice cream! After forcing ourselves to eat it - at least I did, R seemd to quite enjoy it - we headed to the Prado Museum across the street. Got our fill of Reuben and Velasquez and Rembrandt and then came back to the hotel by noon to change rooms. Mercifully the toilet had sort of clogged that morning so they had to give us another room, which at 10' x 10' seemd HUGE!!!!!! The bathroom was bigger and better too. yay!
Went back to the Prado to finish up and this time got our fill of Picasso and Dali! Got spooked by Goya's dark period paintings! No disrespect to the Great Masters, but there is only SO MUCH of art we can see! At least I had studied art history so it was cool to see some of the paintings up close and personal, but R's eyes were starting to glaze over! Made a decsion right then and there....no more art museums on this trip!
Walked to Plaza Mayor after that, a good half hour walk away. P Mayor is this fun festive square, surrounded by restaurants and artists and generally happy people! We sat down at a table and ordered some salad and veg paella by pointing to the pictures in the menu! The salad ended up being just chopped bell peppers and tomatos and onions....no dressing, nothing. The paella was a badly made pulao! All in all a bad meal, one of many to follow! By now the weather had turned a bit cold and it looked like rain any minute, so we quickly walked to Palacio Real! Unfortunately that was closed due to some official ceremonies taking place. By now it had started to rain but we persisted. Walked back to the hotel, saw some cool street musicians on the way and got to the hotel by 3.30pm for our afternoon siesta! All shops shut down for the pm nap, so we thought we too would do as the Spaniards do!
When we woke up at about 6pm, it was cold, rainy and miserable. But we left at 7pm back to Plaza Mayor, looking for a tavern called Mason de Las Guitarras, highlighted in our guide book, as a great place to eat tapas and listen to some guitar music. We must have walked up and down Plaza Mayor looking for it, but to no avail. It was a Sunday, so everything else was closed too. By luck we stumbled upon a gourmet veg restaurant called Yerbabuena. Had some interesting food very beautifully displayed......!
Walked back to hotel, by now it was almost 10pm and the streets were a bit deserted. As we were walking we saw a couple ahead of us, an elderly man and his wife and there were 2 guys behind them who kept sidling up to them from behind and teasing them. We thought they were friends of the couple till we realized they were pickpockets trying to steal from her purse which she had by her side. R yelled at the lady to warn her and they turned around. The pickpockets ran from there but not before we had gotten their picture although from a distance. They thanked us profusely......! Amazing thing was that we were not the only people on the street to see this happening, but yet no one said anything!!! Glad we had stopped them but shocked at the blatant pickpocketing, we returned to the hotel.
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