Iter Facere

Thursday July 19- Alquezar to Madrid

This morning my credit card is rejected again as we check out. An expensive phone call reveals that someone is using my card back home, at Best Buy and Target. I recall the multiple images of the damned that we have seen on multiple churches and cathedrals and wish every one of those torments on this person as I cancel my card number.
Off to Madrid. We think it might take about six hours to drive there and we’re about right. We stop in Medinacelli again for lunch, since its cute and convenient to the freeway and we’re in Madrid by 4:00 PM.
We head off on a walk to see the Plaza Mayor, get oriented and kill time before dinner at 9:00. Madrid is a good looking city. The area we’re in is the medieval center so the roads are ridiculous, narrow and chaotic, but most of the buildings are 19th century hispano-victorian-neoclassical. The roads are interspersed with plazas with monuments in the middle of them. Eventually we end up at the Retiro Park which is Madrid’s Central Park I guess. It’s more formal looking (I think it was originally a royal park), with symmetrical plantings and water features. Like the rest of Madrid its filled with people walking around and there are several cafes where you can sit and enjoy the view. We do so for a while and find dinner at a restaurant that was recommended to us. My Spanish fails completely while ordering, but we succeed eventually. We start eating at 9:30 and no one else is eating dinner. It’s still light out at 10:00, and when we finish around 11:00 people are sitting down to start. Wow. On the way back to the hotel, you can’t tell its 11:30 at night since there are so many people walking around.

posted by Jim @ 8:56 AM