Day 133: Exploring Madrid — Retiro — Getting Back to a “Normal” Routine
So nice to wake up in an apartment and have nothing to do!
We were all very hungry so the first order of business was finding someplace to eat — not necessarily an easy feat in Madrid at 7:30 am on a Saturday. But a chain of breakfast/coffee shops called La Rollerie was open so we headed to a nearby location.
The streets were very quiet, calm and clean on the walk. We got to pass through the Plaza Mayor, a gorgeous car-free cobblestoned plaza, totally empty in the morning light. Ah, Europe!
After breakfast the next item on our agenda was stocking our kitchen, so we visited a covered market in La Latina, our neighborhood.
So fun to visit the different stalls and check everything off our list. The kids got a lot of little freebies from vendors, like cherries, tangerines and cookies.
Back at home we did school! We hadn’t done much school at all besides reading when we were in Egypt and Jordan, so it felt good to get back on schedule and spend some time on math, writing, etc.
In the afternoon we Uber’d to Retiro Park to check it out.
Wow, what a place. On a beautiful and sunny Saturday afternoon the place was full (but not too full). Weekend strollers out enjoying the weather.
The park is immaculate and elegant — in some ways even more beautiful than Paris’s park. Definitely less crowded.
We found a playground and let the kids play for a good hour at least. They of course made friends and had fun trying out some new equipment we hadn’t seen before — like a skateboard chair thingy attached to a ramp that you can roll up and down.
Meanwhile, we had fun people watching from a bench.
Around 6:30 we made our way back to our neighborhood, stopping for a drink at a nearby cafe. Teddy and I had beers, James had a Sprite and Willa had…a virgin mojito. The old-school cafe waiter was a good sport about it, playfully teasing our little diva for ordering such a high-maintenance drink at such a casual spot!
We came home and made dinner in our apartment — including steamed artichokes, which Willa had been so excited about all day. She and James helped prepped them at the kitchen table after their shower.
We got about 15 minutes into Episode 1 of Game of Thrones season 8 before I fell asleep…
