Our flight wasn't until 5:30pm, and our AirBnB host didn't have guests after us, so we packed our stuff up (including all the bottles of wine left) and left it for the morning.
Of course, chocolate con churros. That was a given for our last day in Madrid.
Sunday is market day, and cute old men have their stamps, coins, and bottle caps in Plaza Mayor. If you continue down the road, you start running into stalls and crowds (and pickpockets - something we managed to thoroughly avoid in Spain!) We wandered through for a few blocks, using up some of our last euros and picking up some of the final souvenirs.
The major attraction of Madrid we hadn't seen yet (beside the gardens behind the Prado - next visit) was the Palacio Real. I finally understood was "Real Madrid" stood for the other day when I realized "real" is Spanish for royal.
Ranked third (by Rick) for fancy palaces after Versailles and the Schönbrunn in Vienna, we definitely got a taste of the sumptuousness.
We asked a couple to take our photo, starting in Spanish, like we always do ("Un foto, por favor?") then lapsing into English to find that they are English-speaking tourists too.
The palace has 2,800 rooms. Crazy! We only saw 24 or so, starting was a regal, slow (because of the shallow steps) walk up the Grand Staircase. A tour group was hot on our heels (half in English, half in Spanish), but we started by sneaking past them to some rooms where important things happened, like Middle East treaties and joining the European Union.
And frescos. Giambattista Tiepolo and his two sons worked for four years on the frescoed ceilings of the palace. The wooden fort that was originally here had burnt down in the 1600s, making this ripe for the Baroque and Rococo styles of massive ornamentation and curlicues. The king at that time, Philip V, was actually born in Versailles, so he knew what he was up against. His son, Charles III, grew up in Italy and added that style.
The inside was ornate and marvelous. The king's dressing room (for the public affair that it was, back in the day) was floor-to-ceiling designed with carpets, furniture, wallpaper, curtains, and a frescoed ceiling to match.
The current king and queen (Juan Carlos and Sofia) have their throne room, and their own thrones (new royalty get new chairs). They don't live in the palace (instead in a mansion a few miles away), but still host functions there.
Also, the Spanish royal family collects clocks! Some were more accurate than others - apparently they all get wound and set once a week.
So, when the big clock in the courtyard said 12:45, we knew we had time for a early tapas lunch crawl.
We were definitely early, with all of the bars deserted when we started. First was just some cheese - great, but not quite what we needed for lunch before a long plane ride. Next was more appropriate, suggesting a hake sandwich (we finally tried it! It was a fried white fish) and a cheese and meat (probably some loin of something) sandwich. We ordered chorizo, since we hadn't explicitly had it, but it was pretty salami-like, so I'm not sure I could tell the different between that and salmonchico.
And salmonchico (salami) is exactly what we had at the next bar. It was definitely starting to get livelier, but we weren't tempted by anything except the free and deliciously warm nuts of an unidentified variety.
I didn't want to end there (and who ever really wants to end a tapas crawl), so we went to one, final, bustling place and Rosie found me some gulas (those yummy fake baby eels) on bread. Done. The perfect end to Madrid.
Of course, there was the whole adventure of actually leaving Madrid. We metroed to the Atocha train station, where there was supposedly a bus. There is also a commuter train, which ended up taking.
That train lands you in Terminal 4, the furthest flung of the terminals. We confirmed our flight wasn't out of there (I was kind of assuming) then hopped a bus, asking the driver for which terminal he thought we should be at. He said Terminal 2.
So out we get at Terminal 2, and can't find our flight on the board. We backtrack to the info desk, where they tell us Terminal 1. We finally check-in (we still had 90 minutes before the flight!) and are off to gate area A, the farthest flung of the gates.
Right before we get into the roped-off area on what is now the entirely opposite side of the airport from where we started, we get pulled aside for a random security check. It was a fun ten minutes of looking through all the pockets of our bags before getting in line to board the plane. We were efficient - didn't even have to find a place to sit before our seats on the plane!
Sadly, the sound on our entertainment systems was faulty and we got halfway through Iron Man 3 before it cut out for good. So, it was books, blogging, and chatting with our fun young seatmates to while the time away until we land in New York. Nueva York, I'm so ready for 3G and telephone and pizza and unpacking my bags at home!
I have a 3pm bus back to DC tomorrow, so really I have one more night away from home. But - America.
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