Another Day, More Food

We started our eating day at a tapas festival around noon. We went intending for it to be our lunch. It turned out to be mostly like appetizers. We each got two tapas. It was fun to try different ones. That really whet our appetites for ..... a real lunch!



Lunch is the big meal of the day (or so they say - the eating around here never seems to stop .....) and is served somewhere around 2:00-3:00 p.m. After our "tapas appetizers" at the festival we opted to go to a grocery store and buy ourselves a picnic. And that's exactly what we did. We ate in the Jardines del Buen Retiro, which is an amazingly lovely and very large public park which is informally called the Retiro. This was our picnic. It was delicious!



We enjoyed a walk through the Retiro after lunch. It's a beautiful and well- manicured park. Behind us in this picture is the Crystal Palace.



This is a little lake in the park and there were lots of people in rented boats enjoying the gorgeous day on the water.



On the way home we passed a place that says it's the Museum of Ham, but it's really a store (and a chain at that) but we loved the name so much I made Mary pose for a photo. Spanish ham is a local delicacy and we've enjoyed it at many meals already in just two days. It's nothing like American ham. It's closer to proscuitto.



We had dinner with Mary and her two Spanish mothers. On the right is Pilar, whom Mary lives with. On the left is Marisol, a good friend of Pilar's. We had a wonderful dinner with them, eating outdoors at an Italian restaurant. They are both absolutely lovely people.