Madrid

Beginning to have difficulty choosing one photo to upload because we saw so much on Saturday! Started off wandering through Plaza Mayor to el Mercado de San Miguel to pick up lunch. Plaza Mayor is pretty impressive, kind of reminds me of Venice's Piazza San Marco. From there we went on to the Royal Palace and its adjacent cathedral, again both incredible buildings. The inside of the cathedral has the most amazingly brightly coloured ceiling and stained glass windows, makes a nice change to the usual sombre tones of religious buildings in general. On the way back we passed the fountain which overlooks the Royal Palace and has its own Trafalgar Square-esque lions. The difference being that its Spain and they don't seem to care if you climb all over their monuments, so of course we had to sit on them. After this there was still just enough time to do a quick whip around the Retiro park before the obligatory viewing of the Real Madrid-Barcelona match. The original plan was to watch it in the Real Madrid supporter bar but unsurprisingly it was packed. And not just inside, apparently there was already nearing thirty fans outside trying to watch it through the windows. In fact this seemed to be a running theme, with not only bars but restaurants equally packed with people trying to watch the game. We managed to catch some of it over lunch before giving up to watch at home, not quite so much atmosphere but then with Barcelona's victory there wouldn't have been much of a party anywhere...

In the evening we actually did the Granadan (?) thing and went for tapas. Many of the bars in one of the barrios were taking part in an event where you could get a tapa and a beer for about 2 euros, all inspired by different cuisines from around the world from Indian inspired tapas to sushi (which is weirdly big in Madrid). So we did a bit of a tapas crawl before heading back to the flat for a couple of drinks with Ben's flatmates. Then ended up at a bar/club/pub (genuinely not sure which is the most accurate description) and finished at a restuarant/bar/club (sounds ridiculous but it looked most like a restaurant and yet at night they were pumping music and there was beer all over the floor...). What with these two confused bars and the indoor jungles elsewhere, it seems as if Madrid has quite an eclectic taste in venue design!