A walking tour of Madrid

On the last day of our trip, we have tickets for the Prado Museum. We've spent more vacation time appreciating food than art, so the Prado is a great place to wind things up. The museum houses the royal collection, mostly funded by new world gold. Some say it's the greatest painting museum in the world. Virtually everything we will be seeing came from Spain or one of its colonies.

 After about an hour and a half of wandering and taking in just the  second floor exhibit, we realized that it was time to prioritize. Otherwise we'd be there well into the evening.

We decided to skip the travelling Picasso exhibit, since we had seen the wonderful exhibit at SAM, and the day before we saw Picasso's  'Guernica' at the Reina Sophia Museum

 The Prado could have enthralled us all day, but our tired feet won out. It was time to leave.

For the walk  back to the hotel, we decided to do the walking tour  in Rick Steves guide book. This would take us from the museum through the Puerta del Sol, the center of the Old  City, back to Plaza Mayor.

Just  need to mention that this guide book became a constant companion and introduced us to most of the hotels and restaurants  we enjoyed during our stay. With Rick and the internet, you can't go wrong.   :)

Our first stop was Taberna de Delores for their $2.50 sandwiches. Yum! This tapas bar has been popular with both locals and tourists since it opened in 1908.

Next, we dropped into LHardy, another Madrid destination since 1839. A restaurant/sweet shop, this place was packed, so we picked up some sweet gifts and continued on to the Puerta del Sol.

This massive city square was the eastern gate to the old city. Now 10 streets converge here along with throngs of people out enjoying the vibe of this lively city!

But that was just too many people for me , so we chose an alternate route to get back to the hotel.




That evening, after a good rest, we headed for dinner at Posada de la Villa, where we had enjoyed tapas the previous evening. I had to go back for the crispy fried bits of lamb!



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 Dinner was excellent. The setting was lovely and we ended up chatting for a while with Diego, a young Spaniard who owns  a small software company north of Madrid. He was enjoying dinner with his family and very  graciously treated us to a special liquer of the region.

What a sweet way to end our  visit.