Day 1: Madrid; breakfast & the Parque del Retiro

For several weeks, Maria has been excited about Spain's desayuno tradicional (traditional breakfast), which consists of churros served with a mug of thick chocolate for dipping.  Traditional though it may be, David feared this insufficient to sustain him until lunch (which is served between 1 and 3), and so, at 8 am, we set out to find one desayuno tradicional for Maria and one desayuno Ingles (English breakfast) for David.  Completely empty so early on a Sunday morning, we found a small cafe down a side-street near our hotel which satisfied both of our first-morning breakfast requirements.

Desayuno Tradicional

View from outside our breakfast cafe

The area of Madrid we're staying in feels like the Miraflores district of Lima, or a bit like a Spanish version of San Francisco's financial district.  Sort of.  Everything is very clean and modern and has an up-scale, business-like feel.  A Spanish flavor of modern cosmopolitan city.

Across a large street from our hotel is the Parque del Retiro, a gigantic park where we spent the next few hours walking.  By this time, everyone seemed to be out enjoying their Sunday.  We saw joggers (both the everday sort and groups wearing team spandex), dog walkers, families rollerblading, and several public exercise classes with a mix of participants squatting and waving their arms in what would have looked like a dance if it had been a bit faster.

In the center of the park is a large body of water on which we saw people rowing boats and a club crew team practicing sculling.  Somewhere on the far side we could hear a saxaphone haphazardly improvising around what was unmistakably the chicken dance.  Further into the park, we saw the early preparations for a huge outdoor book faire with at least 30 stalls lining both sides of a broad walkway.

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David's belief is that, short of putting yourself in danger or the danger of becoming irrevocably lost, navigation should be done by instinct, and that there's nothing like a good ramble about a city to catch the general feel.  So in that spirit, we set out in what we were pretty sure was the direction of the Museo Reina Sofia, a modern art museum we wanted to visit.  After no more than 30 minutes of catching the general feel, we appealed to a map, set out back toward the park again, and, upon reaching it, reembarked in the correct direction.

On our ramble we did encounter a Museo, however.