Extraordinary Adventure 2018 Day 12: The Cultured Madrid
I'll be completely honest, we probably had a little too much to drink last night. We woke up at 7 AM and decided we needed a little bit more sleep. Four hours later we woke up with the sun shining in our room and our bodies still recovering from a fun food tour last night. When we finally did recover enough to go outside we missed our free breakfast (probably not the last time) and instead went across the street to Starbucks. Jenn got her normal hot chocolate and I had a cappuccino. After we scarfed those down we were on our way.
We didn't have anything planned for the day time (which is why we could afford to sleep in) so we just leisurely walked around our nearby surroundings and did some more shopping. Jenn did some serious damage at Massimo Dutti before we had to stop shopping and grab some lunch. We landed on Tierra Del Queiles where we ate on their patio and had some light tapas. We split three different tapas, a Spanish version of bruschetta, a dish with fries and fried egg (like last night) and fried chicken. All were really good (not great) and the light lunch helped as we continued to recover from last night.
We left our late lunch to go back to our room to rest up for an hour before grabbing an Uber and going to one of our brief stops on the bike tour yesterday the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte - Reina Sofia. It's the largest museum in Madrid and from all the reviews we read it was quite the experience. We spent almost two hours browsing two of the three floors of the museum. It's claim to fame is that it has several Picasso's including a giant wall-sized one that's guarded by two staff members, called Pity and Terror. We've really become big fans of going to art museums (especially modern ones) and really enjoyed this one. About halfway through we took a break in their beautiful courtyard where they had some outdoor artwork displays as well.
A little before 6 PM we left the art museum and went to our one excursion for the night Cardamomo Flamenco Madrid. There we watched an hour Flamenco performance. We walked in, were given a welcome drink of white wine for Jenn and Rose for me. We somehow managed to get front row seats at the small venue and watched was a very intense, at times awkward but for the most part incredibly entertaining flamenco show. The amount of energy that the male and female dancers put into their craft was impressive.
The show only lasts an hour so it got done right at 7 PM and we were off to dinner. If you've been to Spain or know anything about the country you know that the earliest the locals eat is 8:30-9PM. So most restaurants don't even open for dinner until 8PM. And then you might also know that most are closed on Mondays. So we were so fortunate to find a great restaurant to have dinner at a little after 7PM. We landed at Inclan Brutal Bar a tapas bar that we found after a ton of searching.
We went the tapas route selecting a bunch of different dishes at the start. We went with fries with their brutal sauce, hummus and chips, ham croquettes and duck foie gras. The first three were phenomenal but the foie gras was disgusting, one of the worst things we've eaten all trip. We then split a really nice seafood paella that we really enjoyed. The rice was well cooked and the seafood tasted quite fresh. For dessert, we ended with a nice tiramisu.
We finished dinner, but before we left our waiter gave us two shots of Bailey's in test tubes. Talk about Jenn's dream conclusion to any meal. We walked the twenty-five minutes back to our hotel and called it quits early with a big tour day coming tomorrow. Although today was relatively mild we still have a lot of this trip to look forward to, so I'm glad we were able to rest up and eat well.
