To be fair to Madrid, each successive trip we've been to the city has been better than the last, and this trip got much better after our first two misadventures of the art museums and the long slog to find lunch (okay, Carol enjoyed the art museums and the food was good after we had marched for seemingly miles through the city streets).
After our nap, we got ready to go to our 10:00 pm dinner. But first we walked down to Plaza de Espana, a place we had never been. It was quite nice in the late afternoon (sunset was 9:02 pm) as people were enjoying the beautiful weather, walking their dogs, taking their kids to play. The park has some interesting modern art sculptures, as well as a large monument to Cervantes with statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. There's also a Spanish colonialism theme to some of the monument, so it's likely just got another six months before it gets torn down.
From there we walked past a beautiful fountain and then to the Temple of Debod. It's an Egyptian Temple saved by Spain and UNESCO during the 1960s during the building of the Aswan Dam. Given to Spain by Egypt as both a thank you and a signal of Nasser's admiration for Franco, it is a similar concept to Egypt giving the United States the Temple of Dendur, except not as cool.
Here we are at the Temple of Debod.
However, unlike the Temple of Dendur, the Temple of Debod is outside. So that's pretty near. It's supposed to be spectacular at sunset, but the sun's azimuth angle wasn't lined up right with the Temple. Still, it's neat to see one more Egyptian temple after our wonderful trip to Egypt earlier this year. We walked over to the edge of the hill that drops off sharply so we could join several hundred of our closest friends and watch a spectacular sunset.
Sunset view from Madrid
We were partaking in a famous Madrid tradition, a paseo (an evening stroll). We walked down to the gardens at the Royal Palace, and then over through another park before heading to dinner at the famous Botin Restaurante, noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest continually open restaurant in the world, since 1725. It's also famous as Ernest Hemingway's favorite restaurant in Spain. The specialty is suckling pig and suckling lamb.
We had gone in 2001 on our first visit to Spain, and enjoyed it. Again, the travel books suggest skipping it, as it is too touristic. So what, eating at the oldest restaurant in the world, and one of Hemingway's favorites, to boot, is pretty cool. We enjoyed it again, as I got the suckling pig, Carol got the suckling lamb, and we shared a nice bottle of Ribero del Duero.
Outside Botin Restaurante
We felt better after the sights, dinner, and the fact that we walked home after dinner, boosting us to 10.8 miles total on the day. With the exception of the Metro ride from the airport, we walked everywhere that day.
On the way back, I finally achieved an awfully late life milestone -- I bought my first illegal beer. I didn't drink beer in high school, and with the drinking age at 18 back then, when I started drinking beer I was legal.
Well, apparently you can't buy beer from the little c-store in Madrid across from our hotel after 10 pm. So the clerk indicated I needed to hide the beer as I walked out onto the street. Honestly, knowing I purchased illegal hooch made the beer taste that much better.
I drank the beer in the hotel, and slept the sleep of the jet-lagged.
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