Day 3, Madrid

Our Madrid hotel's buffet Breakfast. Churros dipped into hot chocolate, very tasty.

Our hotel's buffet breakfast, cold-cut station.

Smoked salmon and other items. 

The fruit station. 
The melon (just beyond the cut oranges) were very sweet and juicy.

On the city tour, our first stop was Plaza Espana. These are monuments to Cervantes.

Temple of Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple rebuilt in a beautiful park in Madrid in 1970's.
The temple was originally located at 15 km south of Aswan, Egypt.
As a sign of gratitude for Spain's sending engineers to participate in the UNESCO effort to save
the temples of Abu Simbel, Egyptian government donated the temple of Debod to Spain in 1968.

Our Madrid local guide, the red haired lady in the center. 

Philip V's Royal Palace. Europe's 3rd largest, after Versailles and Vienna's Schonbrunn.
Today it is used only for formal state receptions and royal weddings,
the King and Queue of Spain live in a more modest residence elsewhere.

Many grand squares dotted the modern part of the city. 

Our welcome lunch. For starters we had a choice of seafood soup or salad.   

Vincent chose salad. 
 

Vincent chose fish for main course.

Mei-Ching chose duck breast. 
Have you ever seen duck skin so fat? (The duck was delicious, minus the fatty skin of course.)

Goya's statue outside the Prado Museum.

In the evening we walked to Plaza Santa Ana area for tapas. 
This is a building bordering the northern side a plaza we passed by.

La Casa del Abuelo (The House of the Grandfather).
A tapas bar recommended by Rick Steves' guide book, and also shown in his Madrid video.

Inside La Casa del Abuelo. 
There were no chairs inside the bar, customers must eat/drink while standing.
So we almost left without eating, but then changed mind to give it a try.

This bar serves only sizzling shrimps prepared in two ways, and this man was its one-man cooking staff.   

We ordered two of each, shrimp sautéed with garlic and grilled shrimp. 

A "Museum of Ham" store near our hotel. 
There are several "Museum of Ham" stores in Madrid. It is a franchise.

Another disappointment for Mei-Ching was the "Jamón Jamón" - potato chips that taste like ham. 
She read so much about it that she brought an extra duffle bag to buy these home.
But it tasted just like salty chips with a bit of ham flavor, so she did not buy any home.