Just, first things first, the Lighthouse Family reference in the title does have some relevance, and yes, I did have to use Wikipedia to find it. Just so no-one thinks I've started liking Lighthouse Family. Good. OK, no treading water today. You know what this is. Here it comes...
Today it was Maddy and Emily's turn to work, so after breakfast Vanessa and I stayed with Mrs Kelman to pay the bill. With this done, and our hydration levels sufficiently topped up, we headed down the Gran Via to the palace nearby. The walk was quite relaxing, and definitely a wise choice over the frantic Metro. As always, the people-watching was fascinating, especially watching all the tourists making fools of themselves!
The palace itself, whilst not quite as spectacular as the Hermitage, was nevertheless an incredible building, and its gardens were also quite interesting. Strangely, all the shaped hedges had bits sticking out of them - if I was the King, that would annoy me no end! Also, there was a lack of any real colour - it was all greenery and no flowers. However, despite this, it was quite peaceful, and we felt relaxed as we waited for Miss Tingle.
A short whil later she appeared out of the blue, and together we got some ice-cream from the royal heladeria! (That's ice-cream shop, for all you english-speakers). I got 'chocolate truffle' flavour which, to be honest, was just chocolate by any other name. Vanessa's, white chocolate, sounded much tastier, as she described it as "like melthed Milkybar buttons". She'll be a food critic yet! Anyway, as we worked our way through the ice-creams, we walked down past the palace and its neighbouring cathedral, both looking suitably elaborate, but we couldn't tell whether the King was in or not.
So after this, we headed back in the general direction of the shops. Vanessa was in the mood for fashion shopping again, and I didn't have anything better to do, having already hit the Fnac, so I tagged along, and actually (
Eventually we met up with the teachers and went to collect Maddy and Emily from the shop. On the way I managed to bore Vanessa to death trying unsuccessfully to find some cheap sunglasses in El Corte Ingles. In the end, we all assembled and went for lunch in the usual place. We managed to eat up most of our provisions, but then got attacked by a pair of wasps who had decided to steal our yoghurts!
With (most of) lunch safely on its way to our tummies, we headed to the bernabeu stadium, home of Real Madrid FC, officially the best football team of the 20th century. And you can see why - rows upon rows upon rows of trophies, of every shape and form! They even had a Real Madrid bible! Half the pitch was being relaid when we were there, so no-one was doing any warm-up exercises. You'll probably know by now that I'm not the biggest football fan in the world, but even I was amazed by the scale of the building and its contents. I couldn't really tell you what was significant and what wasn't, as I wasn't quite sure what to look for, but there was an exhibition about Mr Bernabeu, who designed the stadium. That was quite interesting.
Anyway, it was then back to Gran Via for some retail therapy for the girls. Unfortunately, after some kind of kerfuffle in which I managed to lose Emily along with all faith in my until-now invincible mobile, I ended up at the Hostal and the others ended up in some nice cafe somewhere. Woah, what happened there?? Luckily, after a short wait, we all managed to meet up and my phone started working again, reluctantly (must be going through the grumpy teenager phase). Buildings in the way, that must have been it. So for the rest of the day I was randomly recieving backlogged texts from Vanessa. That was confusing, to say the least!
So, whith the group back together, we left for another local tapas place. This seemed much more traditional than the last one, despite Lighthouse Family murmuring away in the background - cripes, that was a blast from the past! We ordered five or six dishes between us, as well as a jug (or a carafe, whatever) of sangria, which was actually quite enjoyable, considering it was alcohol! I should add it to the list of alcoholic drinks that I like.
It didn't take us long to dismantle the selection. My favourite was the three cheese salad, because it had an curious mix of flavours, but to be honest I could quite happily have eaten more of any of them. Unfortunately, however, it was soon time to pay the bill, and we were moving on. Our next stop was a restaurant specialising in churros! (Pay attention, Mum!) It was relatively quiet when we entered, but apparently it gets busier very late at night. The waiter brough over a plate of churros and a couple of cups of what looked like molten chocolate. This made me grin, as (you may have read!) we saw this sort of "churros chocolate" being made last time I was in Spain. What surprised me was that the churros themselves were straight, whereas I expected them to be more knot-shaped, like a pretzel, I guess. Four things were for sure: They were very rich, very sweet, very fattening - and very tasty!
It took us even less time to devour the pastries, and before we knew it we were retracing our steps to the hostel. As tomorrow was Sunday, we were allowed a lie in, and I adjusted my alarm clock accordingly, before turning out the lights once more.
Wahey, that was quite a fun (and food) filled day, but I'm sure it'll be even better TOMORROW, when we hit the Rastro, Zaraphobia sets in, and (shock horror!) some actual Spaish revision gets done! Don't believe me? Tune in tomorrow!
Jack
P.S. Live, Massa! LIVE!!
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