| After I got cleaned up I found great food in the restaurant
attached to my hotel. I could not beleive the price. I was getting
used to the high prices in London and Paris, so the much cheaper
prices here are a welcome change.
I spent the rest of the day exploring the heart of Madrid, walking
the area from the Royal Palace in the west to the Retiro Park in the
east. Along the way I checked out places like the Almudena Cathedral,
the former City Hall, Plaza Mayor, Kilo Zero, Puerto del Sol (center of
Madrid), and Paseo del Prado.
What kind of surprises me is how easy it is to get around here
with just english. Most folks I needed to talk with understood enough
english to get the message across.
In the evening I had dinner in an outdoor cafe in the Plaza Mayor,
a large square surrounded by buildings just a couple blocks from
Puerto del Sol and my hotel. The outer area of the square was packed
with outdoor restaurants and in the center a stage and seats where
set up for a concert. I hung around the square after dinner to
see what the cencert was like. The opening show, a play
of some sort, was interesting but it was completely in spanish making
it really hard for me to understand. So I decided to move on.
By this time it was around 10:30pm and the streets were all packed
with people of all ages. There were also plenty of street vendors,
and some street performers. One band blew me away. Their music was just
awesome. It was a spanish style insturmental version of songs
I was familiar with like "the sounds of silence" (I think that's what's
it's called). I wandered the area for a while taking in an atmosphere
which was quite different than anything I seen before.
Here a few pictures of the day.
View from my hotel room.
Royal Palace
Old city hall.
Kilo Zero, starting point for the numbering of all roads in Spain.
Various photos of cental Madrid.
I came across this parade before dinner. I'm not totally sure what it was
all about, but it was interesting to watch.
Mayor Plaza at the start of dinner. By the time I was done with dinner it was
dark and hard to take pictures. By that time all the outdoor restaurants where
packed and so was the square.
An attempt to photograph the crowd in the square just before the concert started.
This sign on the east end of Puerto del Sol was the first billboard in Madrid.
Statue of King Charles III, affectionately called the "best mayor of Madrid".
The awesome street performers, or at least a sub set of the group as it was too dark to
get a good picture of them all.
Almundena Cathedral
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