After driving 2,000 kilometres in the crappy Dacia cars we leased, we drove the last leg of our journey from Toledo into Madrid. No more yelling at the car when it constantly reminded me that I was 1 kph over the speed limit or randomly beeping at me telling me to “Keep control of the vehicle” when I was driving in a straight line with both hands on the steering wheel!
We dropped the cars near the airport and Lidia and I took an Uber to our hotel. It turned out that the Pope had arrived in Madrid the day before we did and Rob was concerned about getting to our hotels. He’d seen footage of the madness in Madrid surrounding the visit, with massive hordes of people crowding the city centre trying to catch sight of the pontiff. We had to make a couple of detours through huge crowds, but the disruption wasn’t too bad.
We arrived at our hotel at about 12:30 and asked the concierge to recommend a good paella restaurant for lunch. He recommended Marina Ventura, which opened at 1:00 and was able to get a reservation for then. As we walked over there, we came across different crowds of people walking the streets, singing and waving flags around in celebration of the Pope’s visit. We arrived at the restaurant and smashed a very tasty paella with an equally tasty bottle of riserva tempranillo.
That evening we had booked everyone into the oldest continuous restaurant in the world, Botin. This place has been serving food for 301 years. On the walk there we came across a massive crowd lining the street. The police had cordoned off the area. I asked a local what was going on and he said “Papa”, which is Pope in Spanish. Suddenly a cavalcade turned a corner near us and people started running in a crushing wave towards the street, like there was some kind of rock star driving past.
The next day we explored Madrid, marvelling at how big and grand the place is. We walked through giant piazzas like Plaza del Sol and Plaza Mayor. We had booked a food walking tour for all of us and Joanna took us all over the old town, treating us to delicious Spanish dishes, such as their famous Iberian ham (Spanish prosciutto), mushrooms stuffed with chorizo, grilled piquillo peppers, calamari rolls, and many more. We stopped at a tiny little restaurant called Casa del Abuelo (Spanish for Grandpa’s House), where a lady cooked up prawns in butter in a tiny little kitchen exposed in the corner of the restaurant, cooked and served up in little clay dishes. The owner walked around serenading the ladies with Spanish love songs. There was only standing room in the restaurant and we all stood around the high tables gobbling up the prawns and then soaking up the hot butter and garlic sauce with fresh bread. Delicioso (Spanish for delicious).
That evening we had booked a flamenco show, but I was a bit stressed because when I went to check the tickets, I had booked Mark in on May 8th instead of June 8th. May 8th was long gone, so Mark had missed the show on the date I booked him in for. I went back to the hotel after the food walking tour and asked the concierge to please help me out. She called the flamenco people who secured him a new seat and told me to cancel the old one. Obviously, I couldn’t cancel a ticket for a past date, so was unable to cancel the old ticket.
At around 5:00, Lidia and I went to a quirky, tiny little tapas bar called Matador opposite the flamenco place, ordered a pint of beer and some tapas and waited for them to open. Matador was a very cool place. Tiny, grungy with amazing food and a waiter who walked around clapping to the flamenco music playing in the background while another man expertly shaved slices of Iberian Ham off the bone using a long, sharp knife. While waiting for the flamenco place to open, I ordered another pint. They opened and I went over the sort out the ticket mess. Unfortunately, I had to buy a second ticket, but I was happy that I could get Mark a seat. Then I returned to Matador and ordered a third pint of beer and more tapas.
When the doors opened to the flamenco bar, we wandered over there to meet the rest of the gang. The show included a free drink, so I sat down and ordered a sangria, which came in a fish bowl. Suddenly they made an announcement that we had to move downstairs immediately because the show was about to commence. I hadn’t had a chance to go to the loo when they rushed us down the stairs, and after three pints and a fishbowl of sangria, my bladder was bursting at the seams before the show even started.
We sat down in the tiny little venue in the cellar. The stage was directly in front of the first row and there were only three rows of seats. I was so grateful that there was a spare seat for Mark since the venue must have sat 50 people at the most.
The show started with an incredible performance by a guitarist. Then the dancers and singers came out. It was a fantastic show in such a small, intimate venue. The only distraction was my overfull bladder, which must have been the size of a beachball. Through each performance, the situation became more and more desperate. I crossed my legs one way. I crossed them the other. I mentally tied a knot in my urethra (for future reference, this doesn’t work). Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to squeeze past everyone in my row and run for the bathroom. It felt like I was peeing for three quarters of an hour. When I returned to my seat, the dancers did one more number and the show finished.
After the show, we all went back to Matador for more beer and tapas. The place was pumping and they managed to squeeze all seven of us into a corner. The tapas was amazing and we all had our fill and rolled out of there.
The next morning we had a flamenco dance lesson. We went to a studio above a market where professional flamenco dancers and musicians were having their lessons. We walked down the hallway to our room amidst the clatter of flamenco shoes thundering behind each door. In our room, we met our teacher, Sara. She was a cute little, four foot nothing girl with the typical long, black Spanish hair and bright, blue eyes. She spent the next hour trying her best to teach a bunch of stomping Aussies how to do some simple flamenco steps. Rob got off on the wrong foot (figuratively and literally), by asking at the start whether there was an advanced class. Then he proceeded to stomp around like Peter Garrett. At one stage, sweet little Sara turned to him and said “I’m a little bit disappointed in you”. This had us laying about the place laughing. Sara finished the lesson with a private performance. She was amazing.
That night Lidia and I went back to one of the tapas bars we had visited on the food walking tour to have another plate of the delicious mushrooms. When we arrived, there was an old guy playing a synthesizer, wearing a “50 years of Korg” tee shirt. He was a real character and played a recorded applause track after he played each song. He started playing Sweet Caroline and Lidia and I were singing at the top of our voices when a tour group came in. The tour “group” actually only consisted of a tour guide and one customer and that customer started immediately singing along with us. Turns out she was the only one to turn up for her tour. She was a lovely lady who was from Croatia but now lives in the U.S. We smashed some mushrooms and beer, sang a few more songs, then left.
On our final day in Madrid, Lidia and I went to see the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple that was donated to the Spanish government as a thank you gift after they helped Egypt to relocate monuments and temples that were to be flooded by the building of the Aswan dam in the 1960s. It was moved to Madrid in numbered blocks and reconstructed on a hill overlooking the royal palace.
We met the gang for another paella lunch, then wandered around Madrid some more during the afternoon. That evening we met at a funky tapas bar for our final goodbyes. We then went to Plaza Mayor to meet up with Spanish friends of Dennis and Linda that they met on holiday in Montenegro. Augustin and Barbara met us with their daughter, Beatrice and shouted us all to a massive Spanish feast in Plaza Mayor. It was lovely catching up with some locals. Augustin was a fascinating man, having been an envoy to the Spanish government and a TV news anchor, amongst other prestigious jobs during his lengthy career. Beatrice was following in her father’s footsteps, working with him in journalism.
After dinner it was time for goodbyes. We sadly said our farewells to our travel buddies. We’d had a fantastic time together and it never once looked like we would kill each other!
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