At our lunch stop, we came upon a place where the lady and young man serving knew only limited English. This is where I came in handy and helped half the group order while Simona helped the other half. I don't think the people at the restaurant had ever seen so many folks all at the same time before!
When we arrived at the hotel, stopped in front of a very fancy hotel called Hotel Husa Princesa thinking this was our hotel. It was and it wasn't. We started to walk in then were corrected by Simona saying that our hotel was the one next door called the Husa Moncloa - same hotel just a different entrance and section (lower class and higher class we thought). Then we found out that our hotel had over booked and we had been transferred to the newer, classier section. We were very happy travellers.
Then we had one hour before some of us left for dinner. We had a local bus driver for the evening, as Giordano needed his rest after the very long drive.
On the way to the restaurant we took a small tour of the city streets leading us to Plaza Major - it's a huge square similar but not as spectaular as Grand Place in Brussels. The most spectacular building was the old bakery with its artistically painted walls.
Then, it was time to eat at the Kitchen Stories restaurant which has a sign saying "Hemmingway Never Ate Here", poking fun at all the Spanish restaurants that state that So-and-So Ate Here.
As a surprise, Simona had arranged for a quartet of University students to come in in costume and play some music for us. They were absolutely brilliant - definitely the best we've had play for us so far. We all ended up buying their CD they were so good.
Another night with great food - Chocolate Brownie with hot chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream for dessert topped of a great meal.
Time to go back to the hotel and sleep.
Tomorrow, a more indepth tour of Madrid. Hopefully it won't be as windy or as cool as today (although it was sunny today) - we've been used to having glorious warm days. A bit spoilt I guess.
