Saturday, January 29, 2022 - Madrid

Today was my last full day in Madrid.  I leave tomorrow for Cordoba.  I really didn’t have much planned for the day.  I knew I needed to begin making specific plans and reservations for my next few legs of the trip so spent the morning doing that.  Now I’ve got accommodations and transportation tickets for Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, Ronda, and Sevilla - whew!  Something had to go, so I opted to skip Cadiz and I’m only in Ronda overnight, but managed to squeeze in nearly two full days there based on the transportation tickets in and out.  Due to the short stay in Ronda, I opted to stay at a hotel and splurge a little.  My one night stay there is equivalent to most of the multi-night stays I’ve booked and had so far in AirBnBs.  My AirBnB stays have been wonderful and I highly recommend them.  The hosts have gone out of their way to make me feel at home in a completely private part of their residence, or in an apartment, or having the entire home to myself.  And they are normally a quarter the cost or more of a traditional hotel.

For example here are pictures of my current stay at $32 a night!  It has a living room/dining room/kitchen combo in the center, a bedroom on one side, and the bathroom on the other.

I know that much of my Sabbatical is shaped around food, but surprisingly I haven’t really had that much to eat.  I’ve posted nearly everything I’ve eaten on this blog since I arrived with few exceptions.  However, today was definitely an eating day!

Here’s lunch:

I don’t normally make a habit of eating at the same place twice when I’m vacationing.  But today I made an exception.  My morning coffee and carrot cake was so good at La Panera Rosa I really wanted to go back and taste their “real” menu.  I ordered from the menu del dia.  The first course was a salad!  Finally!  Although it was simple, it was delicious.  My second course was calamari over more lettuce mix.  And bread, lots of bread.  Spaniards like their bread.  The calamari was good, not chewy at all.  It reminded me of the calamari I used to get at Mallorca, in Pittsburgh.  Sadly, they closed.  I used to dream about eating their calamari.  Now, I’ll have to dream about eating La Panera Rosa’s calamari and carrot cake.

At dinner time I walked along with many pedestrians out shopping.

I love their tiny little boutique stores.  There are hundreds of them.  Here is one for socks and another for getting your nails done.

There is a popular square in Chueca that has four restaurants that dominate the square and their tables are outside filling up the square.  As the weather warmed up, I was hoping to grab one of these tables.  But circling three times to find no empty table anywhere, I chose not to do it a fourth - feeling hawkish.  So I went somewhere else and was able to find an inside dining spot.

I had anchovies and tomato toasts as a tapas, a bottle of water and I tried another Vermouth (still not my favorite), and Salmon for my main course.  The salmon was covered in caramelized onions, a mango syrup, and walnuts.  An unusual combination, but it was delicious.  I did not get dessert.

Oh, my ham class got cancelled.  So, here’s a bonus architecture shot I took while circling and waiting for an outside table to open up.

I doubt I’ll have anything to report tomorrow as it will be mostly a travel day to Cordoba, but stay tuned, you never know.