Madrid - Night 2

We had an amazing last night in Madrid. When we first left, we were greeted with the sound of bagpipes from our hotel - among the best of many, many street performers in the Madrid area.



We then headed down to Plaza Santa Ana - a plaza to which we had not previously ventured - to meet up with Barbara and Leann at 9 pm for dinner. The plaza was quite busy and we picked one of the restaurants where an outdoor table was still available. We shared plates of artichokes, asparagus, Chilean sea bass and salmon and a bottle of Albarino wine.



After dinner we went across the plaza to a rooftop bar called The Penthouse, which was quite trendy, but we were still on the early side of the Spanish night life, so we were able to quickly get in and split a bottle of Spanish Savignon Blanc while overlooking the square and the surrounding sites of nighttime Madrid.



After the rooftop bar, we decided to find these "cave bars" that Barbara had heard about, but prior to embarking on that leg of our night, we saw "Bar Haiwaiiano," which looked like quite a dive, but which I had recognized from my prior perusal of google maps. It was a gem. A gem. Parakeets were freely flying around the entire inside and the four of us split some tropical drink housed in a volcano with dry ice atop. Jen, Barbara and Leann all got carnations and leis - I felt left out.







After an amazing stop at Bar Hawaiiano, we reignited our search for the cave bars, which Barbara had heard about from her friend as a connection of underground, cave-like bars with karaoke and sangria. Although we were unsuccessful, we did have a fun stop at a small, hole in the wall that seemed popular with the local crowd, where we had a final round for the night.



We then headed back to Plaza Mayor, where we split off from our new friends. Not quite full from dinner, we decided to make a quick stop at McDonald's on the way back to the hotel - which was amazing. Jen insisted that we order beer because "how often do you get to order beer at McDonald's?" In this case, one time too often. But the food was a great end to the night and it was funny to see the differences in the menu between Spain and the U.S.



Now we are back at the hotel and going to catch 3-4 hours of sleep before heading out early to the airport for our flight to Bordeaux. We're not sure of the Internet status at Joe and Raeph's, but hopefully we'll be posting soon. In any event, I'll have e-mail access via my Blackberry and gmail account if anyone needs to get in touch with us.