MADRID

Who would have thought that there would be so much shopping to be done in Madrid???? Not me. The shopping here was amazing. Spent all day just wondering round the shops, everything is so cheap. In Europe there is this chain store called H n M - OMG it is amazing. Think of the popularity of dare I say Supre but with the class of more like Bardot maybe. It has your casual wear but it also has every other look you are after, some of these stores are 4-5 stories high and carry everything from underwear to shoes to make-up to accessories. They are amazing and sooo cheap. Anyway enough of that on to the real Madrid. Did the walking tour of Madrid the morning after we arrived. It is always a good idea to do one of these as it gives you your bearings on a city and also lets you know a little bit about the history of that city. As always we saw lots of beautiful monuments, cathedrals, fountains and we were shown little things that you wouldn't come across if the guide hadn't been there to tell you. For instance in the sidewalk in the middle of a normal city street there was a picture of a bear trying to get berries off a tree. The story behind this is that there is a tree in Madrid that has berries a little bit like cherries but after about 5-6 of these straight off the tree you will be as drunk as if you had been on vodka, the bears loved these berries so were always trying to get them. So whenever you were in Madrid (years ago of course)the chances of you seeing a bear in this very same stance were pretty likely, hence now that being the national symbol of Madrid. Its really interesting finding out those little facts about the places I'm visiting, may seem mundane to some but pretty cool to me. You get to a point when cathedrals, statues and museums all just start blending. Never have enough of fountains tho, they are always amazing. Anyway Madrid is beautiful, Soccer is the be all and end all of everything here, I guess that's cool because they do have the best soccer team in the world. They also have some of the most amazing food I have tasted in all of Europe. We went to a restaurant called Ginger the first night, I had Iberian Secrecy - it was pork on a bed of mashed potato unlike anything mash I have had and it came with this devine satay type gravy but 100 times better. It was beautiful and cost under 10 euros. The sangria here is good to. Other than shopping the other thing we did here was try lots of different food, the Pintoxs here was amazing, I had peppers stuffed with fresh crabmeat, eggplant parmigiana, baby eel, every cheese in every way, mussels the list goes on. It was so fresh and so well presented, you just couldnt get enough. Lucky each portion was no more than 1 or 2 mouthfuls and lucky im only in Madrid for 3 nights lol. The 2nd night I was here we went to a Flamenco Show with Tash and Ashlea, jeez this was good, they sure know how to move, you come away wanting to be a Flamenco dancer when you leave. It was really cool. Well I must say that I was indeed very impresseed with Madrid, now in the morning it is off to San Sebastien. Really looking forward to this as I have heard so many rave reviews about it. One more taste of Spainsh to go on my European Adventure 2012.