Day two, I slept in past 8am. I guess the jet lag and ambien combined to knock me out. That threw us off schedule. We had hoped to get to the Temple of Debod by 9:45, but we got there just after it opened at 10am. There wasn't a long line to get in, but the authorities only allow ten people in at a time, so the line moves very slowly.
Rather than doing something logical like giving people ten minutes to explore the temple, move them out, and bring ten more in, there is no process to move things along. Once we moved out of the shade and into the sun (as people ahead of us gave up waiting), Carol left me standing in line while she sat in the shade. After five more minutes with no discernible progress in the line from people finishing up in the temple, I bagged it too,
From there we went back to Plaza de Espana and enjoyed roaming around the area, taking in the Cervantes monument, the fountain, and the church next to the fountain. The fountain is called "The Birth of Water." The church was of minor interest, but the fountain is very affecting to me. Big or small, the Spanish do fountains right (to be fair, the US has its share of fabulous fountains as well).
We then headed off to the lower part of Madrid, down the steep hill to the Chapel of San Antonio de la Florida, the site of both Goya's body and imposing Goya frescos. Yet another place in Madrid I was not allowed to take photos (in Toledo, where we've been the last two days, I was able to take pictures in every building. I guess Madrid is just "special.")
Besides being named for both a city in Texas and a state in the Southeast of the US, the church is quite small, but the frescos pack a powerful punch. We had the church to ourselves. . .for about two minutes, until a large group came flooding in.
(Editor's note: Fact check, false! The state was named 280 years prior to the Chapel being built. And the city was named 100 years prior. Writer's note: Yeah, nobody's going to look that up, so why confuse them with the facts!)
Not wanting to retrace our steps up the steep hill back to "main Madrid," we hightailed it to a Metro for a one stop ride that didn't result in copious amounts of sweat as the hike back up would have. Besides, we ended up walking nine miles that day, so that's not a bad day's walk.
From there we retraced our steps through the Royal Gardens, and headed over to the Mercado de San Miguel. It's a very cool market with any number of counter restaurants. Unfortunately, that "any number" is not big enough. We arrived by noon, but there wasn't an open seat to be found after making several rounds. Mercado de San Miguel is pretty cool, but compared to La Boqueria in Barcelona, it is tiny. It would have been full if it were twice the footprint size that it has.
Between Monday's experience walking past many unopen restaurants, and then coming up with zilch at the market, I didn't expect lunch in Madrid to be so hard. If it reads like I'm whining, you are reading correctly. We gave up fighting our way through the narrow, crowded aisles of people similarly striking out.
So we popped outside to a small place that had an available outdoor table and lunched there. As someone who can't day drink when at home/work, those lunch cervesas sure taste good in Spain. I paired the beer with some empanadas and jamon/cheese sandwiches. It wasn't as tasty as if we had eaten at a market restaurant, but it worked.
2 comments:
A very entertaining read enjoyed while drinking my morning coffee. A couple of rudimentary questios. Did you fly into Toledo or
questions. Any guidance on using the train as transportation? I've been researching train travel and have found ninja.com a useful intelligent site.
We flew to Madrid, spent a couple days there, then trained to Toledo -- sorry I had missed this comment earlier. For some towns the train is great, but for others it takes too long.
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