Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, June 5,6,7 - Madrid and home

We slept in and took our time leaving beautiful Cuenca. We got lost when we entered the section of new town and I grabbed a cop who directed us to the road to Madrid.

Freeway all the way to Madrid in various condition from brand new to wishful thinking. Madrid has a spider web freeway system of several concentric rings and many radial branches, the outer rings of which are in farmland as they’re wisely (?) expanding the system before growth catches up to it. The roads were all very well labeled and, as we arrived during the early afternoon siesta, weren’t as choked as they are in the morning. We approached the airport wondering what “rental car return” is in Spanish, and conveniently the signs said “Rental Car Return” so we easily maneuvered into the huge garage and left our wonderful red VW Golf and grabbed a taxi to our hotel.

We had made a reservation at the Santo Domingo Best Western as it was recommended as a great small city hotel and it was just that. We got a corner room on the top floor with a wrap-around balcony and views of cafés and shops below. I was feeling peckish, so we went out and stopped by one of the cafés and I was thrilled to see chicken salad on the menu as both chicken and mixed greens are almost impossible to get in restaurants in Spain. Turned out to be mixed greens with small pieces of grilled chicken with a frothy fruity dressing; a little strange but filled the bill. We walked across downtown and reached the Prado which, in Madrid’s strange time sense, remains open until 8; as it was six-ish by then we went in and had a wonderful time looking at all the El Grecos, Velázquez, and Goya that we’d ever heard of and more. Staggered back to our hotel for a Cuba and collapsed in our room for a while. At 10:30 PM I was feeling hungry again and we decided we might as well be real madrileños and went out for a light dinner of delicious pizza with great slices of fresh mozzarella and basil on top and carpaccio of pineapple (paper thin slices of pineapple drizzled with syrup and pistachios) with pistachio ice cream on top for dessert.

Wednesday we started out at another café for fresh OJ (everyday, everywhere in Spain) and the #3 breakfast for RRZ: 2 HB patties, fried egg and French fries! Walked over to the huge, lovely Royal Palace (2800 rooms) on the edge of an enormous and wild city park, and decided to hop onto a double-decker Madrid Vision bus that takes one to all the sights and lets one hop on and off at will. We got off at the Reina Sofia Museum that houses 20^th century art and had another amazing art experience seeing lots of Picassos, Mirós and Dalís. A whole room is dedicated to Guernica and it was quite a moving sight to see the whole huge piece. Connecting rooms contain the many studies Picasso did for Guernica and also a series of photographs of the work in progress showing the interesting changes Picasso made as he painted. Many groups of well-behaved school children were being lectured to, although I wondered what they were being told about some of the more graphic Dalís!

We got back on the Vision bus and continued around Madrid, both historic sections and modern commercial ones. We finally got off just before three and walked over to where we had seen a closed Peruvian restaurant on our walk Tuesday in hopes that it would be open for lunch. Both our Peruvian restaurants have closed in Santa Barbara and we were in need of a fix. We were ushered in and handed Pisco Sours and had two kinds of ceviche, tamales and potatoes with peanut sauce. With beers and a complementary liqueur of some kind, we reeled out of there and returned for a siesta, venturing out only for some late ice cream before we packed and went to bed.

Thursday: fast taxi ride to the beautiful modern airport, reached Miami by 2 PM and LAX by 7. Home to a yowling Jane Cat by 11!