After arriving in Madrid, we took a taxi to our hotel a few miles away.  Hotel Europa was right off Plaza Puerta del Sol and was a great spot for walking to most of the places we wanted to see.  We slept in, got some food and wandered the plazas before getting a hop on- hop off bus tour of the city.  Sadly, we didn’t take any photos today!  The bus was nice in that we could sit for a while but the audio is always off pace from the bus and it was very difficult to find the landmarks being described.

There were two loops for the bus and we rode them both.  It was a day of riding around and just soaking in the feel of Madrid.  It was a nice day for it and we saw a lot, even if it wasn’t too memorable.

Later, we took a guided tour of the Prado museum.  The guide for Prado was very fast but we zoomed through the museum and saw all the highlights.  That included Francisco de Goya’s Black Paintings which I found particularly poignant.  After the tour, we explored the parts of the museum we missed.  While viewing El Lavatorio I was asked to be in a promotional video for the Prado, because I was tall (I’m not that tall).  

The Goya paintings are from wikipedia and are listed as public domain.

That night, we took a walking tapas tour around Madrid with Andres.  We met with a small group, about 8 of us, and walked to 4 or 5 different bars.  At each location we had several large plates of tapas in which that particular bar excelled.  We had a few kinds of chorizo, iberico ham, serrano ham, manchego cheese, and several other items.  It was really good food and we were quite full when the night was over.  Andres had left several bottles of wine at each bar in advance- I think the group drank ten bottles!  That’s probably my blurry hand trying to get more chorizo.