Spain: Day 7 Part 2

Playing: Boys Don't Cry-The Cure
Reading: Elle September 2012

Since Madrid was exceptionally hot, almost as hot as Southern California in August, I found myself sharing lots of gelato with my brother, Ted. At Heladerias Italiano, which was practically right next door to the Hotel Atlantico that I stayed at, we shared two scoops of Frambuesa y Mora (Raspberry and Blackberry). The blackberry was definitely better than the raspberry. For me, the raspberry was a tad too sweet after the first few bites. The service wasn't very friendly at all, so I would suggest going to another place instead.

We pretty much just sat in our hotel room for awhile, since it was so hot outside and we saw practically everything the tour books and hotel recommended. I sat inside and worked on my summer assignments, but for dinner, we decided to go to the world famous, Sobrino de Botin, which is the oldest restaurant in the world and Hemingway even wrote about. Once again, my brother and I shared some food, but this time it was the Garlic Soup with Egg. Overall, it wasn't all that great. It had the texture of soggy bread and tasted mostly like bacon with no discernible garlic taste to it. I would definitely skip on this.

Of course, if you visit, you have to try what they're famous for, right? So it was pretty obvious that I had to try the Roast Suckling Pig. For me, I found it pretty bland and disappointing, but my dad and brother loved it, so who knows. I found the skin to be chewy to the point of being inedible, while the meat was dry and the potatoes had no flavor. Even though this is a world famous restaurant, I wouldn't recommend it to you, since the prices are unbelievably high for pork and the all the food I ordered was very average, if not below average.

After dinner, we just walked around and came across the Mercado de San Miguel, which was absolutely lovely. I loved how it housed tons of placed to get hors d'oeuvres and main entrees too. It looked very trendy and it seemed like everyone was getting small bites from all the places. Prince Charles and Camilla were there, according to a yogurt place that claimed they had eaten there. I definitely wish I had eaten here at least once, since everything looked so good.

Both Barcelona and Madrid seemed to have had a large gay population. In Barcelona, I stumbled across a Gay Pride Festival on my first day and in Madrid, they had tons of rainbow themed food. It was fun to see all of this, since I don't see a lot of this, where I live. Plus, all the rainbow colors were fun to look at. I was tempted to buy one of these to see if each color was a different flavor...

In Spain, my family and I walked around a lot, looking at things with no real plans. It was nice though at night to see all these college age kids running around because most of the other places I've visited catered to families and not the party scene. At night, I liked to go up to the top floor of my hotel, the Hotel Atlantico, just to look around. Everything just looked so pretty from up above.