Well, we did it again: it took us quite a while to find the restaurant for dinner. Go figure.

First, though, we headed down to the Mercado again, and braved it and tried a few tapas (olive tapas were fabulous!), with a small glass of vermut. One other tapas stand and we were ready to leave.

As we left we remembered there was a place to wash our hands nearby so we headed there. A man walked by and commented on my beautiful hair. Sweet. At the fountain he was also there so he started up a conversation. Talked about how he lives in Italy, but he’s from Senegal. Said my yellow top was “like the sun”. Talked about a child but I couldn’t quite catch what that was about. Nice guy. And then … placed a small red elephant knick-knack in my hand and explained how I was to use it, and a bracelet in Dan’s. Heh. Yeah, we fell for the whole thing until then. Of course it was all about getting money from us. So never mind. We laughed, handed the stuff back to him, and walked away. You’d think we’d have caught on sooner, but I’m going to blame the olives.

From there we walked to a busy street thinking we’d find a place to eat. Nope. We aren’t interested in fast food (yes, lots of Burger King spots as well as other junk food), so we headed up, past our hotel. Took us eons to decide where to eat. We finally wound up in a little place where the server spoke no English. We could sort of work things out, but when she came back she asked us a question and we were at a loss. Thankfully the couple next to us spoke English and explained she was saying three of the pintxos were cold but two could be heated. At that point we ended up in conversation with the couple, and Dan ended up giving them his card because they said they’d like to return to our area (they visited pre-Covid). Never know … might see them in California.

Two of the pintxos (they were huge):

Then back to the hotel we went. At that point it was nearing 10:00, I think. The area was buzzing. So many people out and about late at night here, and so many places stay open until midnight if not later.

Today we are planning on another museum — the Reina Sofia, where we will get to see Picasso’s Guernica, but first the Real Jardin Botánico. It’s quite clear there is too much to see in Madrid and we can’t see it all, but isn’t that how it goes everywhere? It seems so.