I woke up way before my alarm. Which can be good and bad. Thankfully it just gave me ample time to prepare equipment for the day. Our only scheduled event was attending breakfast at Villa Magna and a small tour.
Casually the best eggs Benedict I've ever had. It was a special Ham from here in Spain. Delicious. I filmed for a bit. Got a tour of a room that we couldn't even film for security reasons.
We left the hotel to drop off a lot of the equipment back at my flat. It's a lot of work to tote a bunch of equipment around Spain. We randomly passed this cute restaraunt that Rebecca had to go in because it was vegetarian. The first menu I got was completely in Spanish, thankfully they had a menu for dummies (English). My food was very basic but I can say I can taste a different in their produce. Something is definitely better about it. It's got more flavor, at the very least.
As you see. Very basic things that all tasted wonderful. I can't recall everything I had. Also it was way to much food. We eventually made it to the Plaza Major. A giant open plaza with a wonderful atmosphere.
After a bit of relaxing we walked to Mercado de San Miguel which is right next to the Plaza. A local market like you'd see in the movies. Everything looked delicious but we had more to do so we left shortly after.
After a decent walk we made it to Almudena Cathedral. I don't think I've seen a building that grand in my entire life. This is my first time to Europe and most of the places I've visited thus far haven't been that old because they were all in America. Granted this place was started only 130ish years ago, it's the architecture, size, and layout that is nothing like anything I've seen. It's breathtakingly large, almost overwhelming. We didn't arrive soon enough to walk in, but I believe we plan to return. We eventually made it to the gardens that are on the opposite end of the palace, it's incredible that it's located right in the city.
We headed to Parque de la Montana, I think that's what it is called. A gorgeous park filled with tourist of course. The sunset was wonderful. I spent most of the time filming video but I did get a couple photos in. Theres a great vantage point of the Palace as well.
After the sun set we walked right into down town. A semi "Time Square," although I can't compare, it was interesting. There was a film set going on but looked to just be C300's, so I'm guessing a Spanish TV show - still very cool. After 6 hours of walking we finally made it on to the bus to head home. Experienced my first European super market and everything is so cheap! I was actually really surprised.
After getting back around 9pm, I started offloading everything and then backing all of that up to a second drive. A nightly process while I catch up on social media. That's when magic happened and Rosa, the sweetest Dutch women I'm staying with offered me homemade apple pie; a special Dutch recipe. Now, I'm not big on fruit pies of any kind but I couldn't say no! I'm glad I didn't, it was delicious.
That's it for today. I'm going to post a couple shots that I took with my actual camera, those just take time and editing which I am light on right now.