Tuesday, 4/30. Palace, Art Gallery, Park, Pub Crawl. And Food. Lots of food.

Owing to the fact that tomorrow is a holiday, we squeezed both the Palace tour and Art Gallery visit into one day. The Tour was bi-lingual, meaning that half the time the guide was not giving half the people a tour. Not to my liking. I feel I only got half a tour. The Palace is the largest one in the world, measured by interior space. Though we saw better ornate rooms on our river tour cruise last year, there were a lot of rooms here. Impressive was that it’s still essentially a functioning Palace for special events. Obama ate here. The last king abdicated here. Very nice. Exhausting and rushed tour. I’m sure we missed a lot. The adjacent Armory Museum was incredible. If you think you’ve seen knights’ armor, you really haven’t until you’ve seen this place. Among other things, over a dozen beautiful ceremonial armor for children!

The Prado Art Gallery (“one of the three largest in the world”) was immense and confusing. Fortunately Yoriko had some Japanese guidance for which artist was the most sight worthy. We were able to focus on finding these which was vastly more rewarding (and time-saving) than just wandering from room to room.

Madrid is very clean, even though there are lots of homeless. Very few hawkers. Street sellers have their products attached to a sheet which is attached to ropes. They see the police, pull on the ropes, and their product is compressed into a bundle, allowing for a quick escape.

The main city “square” was occupied by Venezuelans, supporting regime change. Peaceful.

Had two small meals during the day with not-so-small tapas. It appears restaurants are taking liberty with the word tapas. The evening Tour (starting at 8!) was a historic walk with four restaurant/tapas stops. (Tapas literally means “lid”, to describe food which could be placed over a glass to keep dust and flies out.) Excellent guide, very fun companions. Huge selection of food. Defies a short description.