The second leg of our Spanish trip was based in Madrid. I chose an aparhotel to offset the cost of our Barcelona accommodation but I still chose a central location. The first day was just Almudena Cathedral plus Royal Palace of Madrid since the train trip from Barcelona was almost 3 hours. We had lunch at Plaza Mayor and the plan was to have dinner here for a couple times but Mum didn’t like the setup much- basically a plaza with outdoor sitting that she considers very stall-like and we weren’t that impressed after ‘shopping around’ looking at menus. For dinner, I booked a place that only had the 8:30pm slot open a month prior and I was only on the waiting list for it initially (but it was confirmed the day after). I only booked it because I was interested in learning how Europeans cooked tripe so we had cow tripes which was okay (basically the same as how Chinese cook them except cut up finer and with the addition of chistora). So we ordered that, asparagus with mayonnaise (I wanted to order wild asparagus but it wasn’t available on the day), the cow tripe and cod fish (I wanted to order the scorpionfish pie but again it wasn’t available on the day, the menu had changed). The asparagus was horrendous due to the fact that I don’t eat vinegar but this asparagus is actually soaked in vinegar and is completely soggy, nothing like the normal green asparagus I usually eat. Mum said it tastes fine alongside mayonnaise and with bread. The codfish wasn’t to our taste either- we preferred softer fishmeat than codfish but I know it was a local fish and the waiter recommended it when I told him I was thinking about a 3rd dish, some form of fish dish, but did not quite know what to order. I also didn’t like it because the sauce was tomato based.
The second day was mostly spent at Parque del Retiro (Retiro Park) but in the morning we went past Palacio de Cibeles and Puerta de Alcala because they were on the way. We don’t tend to visit the inside of buildings because we are not interested in history and audio guide tours so it was just some photo snapping of the palace and the gate. We did have a second go at photo snapping the gate in the afternoon after we are done at the park. Mum was initially grumbling a lot about how the park was a lot of walking and not much to see/snap for photos and at multiple times we wanted to quit the park except that we found new markers to a different section. So basically we managed to cover a lot of ground at the park including the artificial lake (which is just at the entrance and basically that’s the unskippable part of the park), the Alfonso X11 monument and Velazquez Palace (Palacio de Cristal right next to it was closed for renovations so we gave it a miss). I originally also put the Rose Garden on the agenda but Mum decided we are really done so we went back towards our aparhotel. I didn’t book for the night but still ended up having it at the place that I saw online at Plaza Mayor. I think I ordered an octopus dish but overall it wasn’t a memorable dinner.
The last day at Madrid was spent on a day trip to Segovia and I think we had covered the city really thoroughly (*Segovia Aqueduct, Plaza Azoguejo, Segovia Cathedral and a few other churches, Jewish quarter, Segovia Alcazar) except for climbing up stairs to see the old city wall. We also climbed a set of very short stairs to a “mirador”, the only one we visited for the entire trip since we are both not enthused about stair climbing in general and Mum’s basically all into photos where you can insert a person into it. For lunch, we also foie gras on bread and the roasted suckling pig which the waitress said was the restaurant special (I did read that suckling pig was a speciality at Segovia). The suckling pig, in particular, was delicious- skin cooked as crispy as how it would be when prepared in Hong Kong and the whole section of the meat (it was a standard serving, not a whole suckling pig as would be if you order them in Hong Kong) was somehow flattened so that the whole dish tasted less oily and more crisp. I would say it’s a must-try at Segovia. I pre-booked the bus tickets from Madrid and back but actually it was probably better to not book the return time since we are done with Segovia at around 3pm but I booked the 5:15pm slot back and bus tickets don’t really sell out that crazily (but I still think it’s good that I booked the bus ticket to Segovia). But anyway, the bus slot I booked was still early enough since we spent a major block of time getting ourselves lost finding the restaurant I booked for dinner (actually, the 3 days we were in Madrid, we got lost every single when we went out to dinner both in trying to find a specific restaurant or finding our way back to the aparhotel. The only landmark we knew was the Puerta de Sol which was a big plaza with that signature statue of the Lion with a Ball that’s a symbol of Madrid). But back to dinner, we had oysters, house salad (tuna, mango, egg and mixed veggies) and grilled razor clams. I didn’t actually know what razor clams were but figured out we couldn’t always be having clams and I actually knew it when I saw it- I just didn’t know the English name for it basically. So in general, we found Spanish oysters substantially salty compared to AU or NZ varieties but just found them tasty. The razor clams were excellent, just as good as being stirred fried (the problem with grilled stuff is often that they are overcooked and become very tough to chew).
*The photo for this post is the pic I took of the Segovia Aqueduct
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