After a couple hours of sleep, we flew to Madrid - our second stop.
After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, we crossed the street and went to Mercado de San Miguel.
This fabulous market was located directly across the street from our hotel - how amazing is that? I've been to Madrid back in 2012 and did not recall this market although I remember being in the area. I'm so happy I got to visit this place during my visit here because it was such a scene!
There was a lot of different types of foods, including cheese, seafood, cured meats, tapas, desserts, and more. There was a lot of people bustling about but they have these large tables in the middle where you can sit down and enjoy your food.
For brunch, we settled with three tapas and coffee.
This shrimp avocado tapa was my ultimate favorite. The avocado spread was mixed with something that made it delicious and the shrimp was super fresh and juice-y.
This octopus tapa was also very good. Although S did not enjoy how 'fishy' it tasted, since it was raw, I really liked it because of the spices that was on top of the octopus. However, I wasn't really a big fan of how it was on a thin toast as opposed to a baguette.
And the third tapa we chose was a cured meat one. They are super well known for their cured meat here, and this was so good!!
After eating, we crossed another street (literally a 50 second walk) to Plaza Mayor.
It was awesome being back here and actually recognizing some of the restaurants and buildings.
After frolicking around a bit, we head over to the Royal Palace of Madrid. We didn't end up going in but spent a solid hour just taking pictures outside (normal ones and selfies hehe).
It was such a nice sunny day!!
We decided to go shopping afterwards on Gran Via. Believe it or not, we probably walked around for about 3 hours and did not buy anything except a pair of sunglasses. Crazy!!! It's not that I couldn't afford the things I liked but it was because I couldn't find anything that I liked in any of the shops. We were super tired so we just went back to our hotel and chilled until night time (that was our view from the room in the pic!). After resting, we headed out to Plaza Mayor for wine and to people watch.
And then we purchased a 2.5€ bottle of wine, did some ab workouts, and called it a night.
We were really happy that the wine did its purpose - giving us some good laughs and then putting us to bed. Our next day was about to start again with a 5am wake up call. Onto Sevilla!!
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