Eager for a sleep-in this morning and needed to do some laundry before we head of to Morocco (yay) we decided to make good use of our morning and do just that. We found a delicious little Spanish breakfast spot (no idea what it was called) near the laundromat and we took turns having breaky and watching the washing. After that we had to treat ourselves with a churro!! Max didn’t fancy the lack of icing sugar, but otherwise they were scrumptious!!

Once the errands were out of the way, our main itinerary item for today was exploring and relaxing in the Buen Retiro Park.

Literally translating to “Park of the Pleasant Retreat”, Burn Retiro Park is one of the largest parks of the city of Madrid. The park belonged to the Spanish Monarchy until the late 19th century, when it became a public park. It truly is a magnificent park, we spent a few hours exploring, finding some of the beautiful sculpture and monuments, galleries and lakes is has to offer. Choosing a green patch of grass near the large artificial lake, the Retiro Pond, we sat and enjoyed the sounds of children playing, music from a busker (even playing “when the saints go marching in”) and watched people row boats across the lake. It was relaxation to a T. We even witnessed a lady set up her own oasis by stinging up her portable hammock between two trees, jumping up into it and using her backpack as a pillow. It was a unanimous decision to look into portable hammocks for ourselves…

Once we found some motivation to leave our beautiful spot, we headed towards Mercado de San Fernando. We had been told this was a terrific market, where all the locals go for great food and wine and that you could almost do your own winery tour here. Now true to our usual form we may have become more than a little bit lost along the way, however when an elderly man stopped to help us (we must have looked very confused startling at our map trying to escape the heat) we discovered we were standing right in front of it! We walked inside the building and were a little disappointed as pretty much all of it was shut up. Must not have been a very active hour of the day for the market stalls, and there were certainly next to no patrons. Feeling a little dejected (we could not come back later as we had a tour to attend) we found a cozy little place that had sprinklers to cool you down (thank goodness!!) right near where our tour started. We sat and enjoyed our tapas and sangria and a reprieve from the sun for the next hour (can you tell that we may have adapted to the Spanish lifestyle? There’s no going back now!). 
I think we may be slowly becoming Sandeman’s tour groupies. We love them! Our tour this evening was run by Enrique and was all about the Spanish Inquisition. Prior to going on the tour we had learnt on our own that it was different to the Spanish Armada (good call to find this out so we didn’t look so silly once on the tour…), but otherwise we didn’t really know that many details and were interested to add more history notches to our belt. Let me summarise some of what we saw and talked about on our tour. The Spanish Inquisition: one of the most mysterious and bloody institutions of Spanish, is not European, history. In the name of religious orthodoxy (but also potentially for money, to absolve the dept owed to the Jewish at the time), the ruthless founders of the Inquisition oversaw the torture, repression and banishment of hundreds of innocent and terrified people. It left a dark shadow on the landscape of Spain’s history. We explored the mysteries, true stories and legacies including the gruesome and cruel torture methods they employed, and the people who became their victims. Crimes included blasphemy, blasphemy while drunk, practicing a religion other than Catholicism (which could have been something as small as lighting a candle in your house) or homosexuality. You had the ability to defend yourself, but that involved being able to name anyone who may have accused you. We visited key areas of the city which were the setting for the Inquisition including the old, now haunting jail of the Inquisition, and the site of one particularly dramatic mass trial (only one building involved in the Inquisition still stands today – and it is a huge space left empty). It ended with one certainty, the Spanish Inquisition is much-referenced but little understood.

Feeling somber post tour we grabbed an ice cream and discussed what we had heard while heading back to our hostel. 

How to summarise Madrid – proud, dramatic, stylish, noisy and exciting (and hot!)! We think we got a pretty good idea of what makes Madrid tick in our short time 🙂 

Spain – we have loved you, we have missed you and we will be back for more exploring! Thank you for a splendid start to the adventure.

Next stop – Africa!!