Madrid Day 2! Shrimp made me cry

May 19, 2024

Madrid Day 2! Shrimp made me cry

Another walking tour today! Dr Hegstrom and Dr Pratt are very much go go go. We stopped to see the monument of one of our important women - Concepcion Arenal, and then did some more walking through the city.

At 2pm they set us free for lunch! Finally! They keep telling us that the Spanish people eat a late lunch and a late dinner, which is all good and well, but when we leave at 8am and have to eat at 7:30am we cannot follow the Spanish schedule. If we're going to do 2pm lunch then I need at the very earliest a 9am breakfast. Ah! Anyways, we stopped at this sandwich place for lunch which was ok but not good. My toasted club sandwich was good but the cold sandwiches I got were not. But THEN we got the best gelato of my LIFE. Gioelia Creameria you have my whole heart. I got banana split which had nutella in banana gelato and then chocolate which was very simple but done soo well.

After we finished up at gelato we walked around a little more, and then headed to the Prado Museum to meet up with the group. I actually really really enjoyed this museum but there were no pictures allowed! I tried to take a picture and then got yelled at, but I swear there were no signs anywhere, I looked in every room we went into. So that was disappointing, but I did get to see Las Meninas, an El Greco painting, a Rembrandt, and then some other assorted ones that I really liked that I wrote down because I couldn't take pics:

The dream of Saint Joseph - Francisco de Herrera El Moz

The Adoration of the Shepherds - Ciro Ferri (this one was painted on aventurine which is some kind of sparkly material, it was so cool, and so pretty!)

The Finding of Moses - Claudio de Lorena

The Birth of the Milky Way - Rubens (this one is beautiful but also quite funny, look it up)

Group dinner tonight was at a paella restaurant! For appetizers there was a fish dish and then some fried potato balls that were kind of like funeral potatoes. They were really yum, and the fish was pretty good. Paella is a very typical Spanish dish. It is rice cooked with seasonings and other things and there's different types like veggie or chicken, but we got... seafood. However, it's not just seafood mixed into the paella. The paella was topped with shelled shrimp and maybe prawn. So when they served us our plates, there was the paella on one side and then the shellfish on the other, fully clothed, STARING at me with their beady little eyes. A few tears were shed and I couldn't even eat my rice until Rob was kind enough to take them off my plate so he could eat them up instead. The paella itself was pretty good until I put an entire shrimp leg into my mouth and I couldn't eat any more. I did try a mussel though! And I didn't like it very much, but at least I tried it. Overall an interesting experience. that I would rather not repeat but I'm glad I had. There was lots of soda to be had! Of course I had to drink some more Fanta.