Wednesday in Madrid...

Today was a long, long day! It began with Darrin and I waking up late ( darn the travel alarm )...but we made it to breakfast in time to meet the Webers and talk with Domingo, our fabulous waiter in the hotel cafe. He has been very funny and animated, helping us with our Spanish and telling us jokes and the like. We headed out to find the Madrid Vision Tour bus which Domingo said we could catch at the Calle Seville. So we walked around Puerta Del Sol (or Sol as they simply say around here) and up Calle Arenal, but we had trouble getting the bus, so we walked down Calle Atocha to get on the bus near the Prado Museum. Few things about the bus....numero uno....no a/c as advertised...hot...hot...hot. And the handicapped ramp ( rampa) is broke...but the buses are low enough that Darrin could easily "hop" on. We rode the bus back to Plaza Mayor and found a little place to eat Paella...yum! There are soooo many little cafes in the area...it is unbelievable. They are side by side one after another. Then we wandered into the Plaza Mayor to the tourism office to ask about getting AVE (high speed train) tickets. (Call for them or go to the Atocha Train Station) So back on the bus to the Train Station we went! Where we thought we would be smart and go to the automated ticket machine and bypass the long, long wait in line...ha.ha...jokes on us. We got our tickets for the Saturday day trip to Toledo and our Sunday tickets for our 4 day stay in Cordoba...only to find out that only one car on each train is handicapped accessible and only one seat is designated as for a wheelchair....DIOS MIO!!! So we took a number (A223) and waited (A189)...and waited (A194)...and waited (A203) for about an hour to get to the ticket counter. In our broken Spanish we asked to change (cambiar) our tickets (billetes) because (porque) of the wheelchair (silla de ruedas). It was no problem, the agent fixed us right up! So we left feeling we had accomplished a great task!!! So we went down a couple more streets from Atocha to find another restaurante vegetariano, which we found but it was closed so we put it down for Friday since we would be back in that area then. THEN....I told you this day was long! We walked back up Calle Atocha...and walked (andando Y andando Y andando...dios mio!) Until we stumbled upon a nice plaza called Plaza Santa Cruz where we parked ourselves at the Corner Cafe for pizza & beer (yes, not very Spanish I know) 3 rounds of cerveza later we headed back to our hotel and stopped for dessert at a choclateria along the way. Talk about yum!! You get this little coffee cup full of thick, dark chocolate served with churros, fried dough sticks to dip into the chocolate....very, very good! See the pictures to follow!