Day 94, 6 October 2012, Madrid - In three days or less! - We ventured along the Paseo de Prado and were overwhelmed with the lushness of the public buildings and sculptures everywhere, for example Plaza de Cibeles. Eventually we took a left and meandered down to Plaza Mayor (remember, that´s Pla-tha with a "th"). Our goal today was to check out a free tour provided by a company called Sandemans. It is the first of hopefully many tours as they operate in most of the places we're heading to including Dublin, Prague and Berlin.
(www.neweuropetours.eu)
Brilliant concept - tour is free which is pretty good for 2 and half hours which might cost €30 through a tour company. The guides work for tips. We headed out with an Irish girl which was great - incredibly easy to understand and huge fun. The tour included lots of juicy execution stories alongside assassinations and cool stuff like stopping at the oldest restaurant in the world. One of the stories that has stuck is why people from Madrid refer to themselves as los gatos - the cats. Back when the Christians were taking on the Moors to get hold of the city they were having massive problems conquering the city's walls of fire. The walls were made of flint stone and their arrows would show flames whenever they hit a wall. A young boy came to them and said he could climb anything and he would take a rope up the walls and they could get in that way. They didn't believe him, but he used knifes to get a hold in between the cracks in the stones and up he went, just like a cat. Thus anyone who did a daring or heroic feat was a cat... but then everyone managed to get labelled a cat one way or another, so it became anyone who was from Madrid was a cat. Now, since many many people who live in Madrid have come from elsewhere for study or work or whatever, only someone with two generations of Madrilenos behind them can be Los Gatos! So there. Had a great time on the walking tour and covered huge amounts of ground with very little effort. So much fun we did in fact cough up some cash and signed up for the Tapas Experience later in the afternoon.... Sangria, Tapas, stories and laughs with a bunch of folks from Chicago and Canada. Even had the hams decoded. As I've mentioned, ham is everywhere, legs and legs of it sitting on bars, hanging from ceilings and poking out of butchers shops and cafes alike. They initially had it to check the bona fides of people claiming to be Christian... that is, if they were secretly still muslim or jewish they they wouldn't bring themselves to eat it. Now I think it's just habit - in any event, the ham hoofs to look out for are the black ones - it signifies top notch piggy that was fed on nothing but acorns. Our guide insisted that meant the fat was like vegetable oil, but I´m not buying that one! Utterly exhausted and pretty happy after 3 sangrias we tootled via the back streets to get back home to Hostal Cordoba and got suckered into Madrid´s number 2 Art museum - The Reina Sofia. Usually €6 each to get in but from 7 pm til 9 pm it's free. Excellent. Hadn't planned to visit, but since it was a)on the way, and b) free, we couldn't resist. We gorged ourselves on Picassos and Dalis. Have never seen so many in one place. Even discovered a new favourite artist - Oscar Dominguez, particularly The Cat and the Canary, which finished off a great day focused on Madrid and Los Gatos!