Monday, April 30, 2012

Yesterday we endeavored to recover from Friday’s and Saturday’s events. We slept in until about 10:00 and by the time we had showered and dressed it was a little before noon.  We went in search of some breakfast and ended up at a little bar/restaurant just up the street.  A little coffee and a little tortilla española were enough to energize us and so we decided to pay a visit to the Thyssen Museum, which is around the corner from the hotel.  It is one of my favorite museums because of the breadth of its collection and the fact that they are hosting an exhibition of some of Chagall’s most important works.

Museums offer a special discount to senior citizens and so our combined tickets cost us 16 Euros.  Our tickets were good for admission to the Chagall exhibit so that gave us an hour to tour the permanent collection.  We focused on the more modern artists and once again the canvases by Picasso, Dalí, Estes, Lichtenstein, Gris, Mondrian and a host of others.  At 1:15 we entered the Chagall exhibit and, to be perfectly honest, there was nothing there that grabbed my attention.  I decided to take a seat on one of the benches outside and let Susan take her time going through the exhibit.  When we left the museum we discovered that we had missed a downpour while we visited.

We decided that it was snack time and we walked into 100 Montaditos, a restaurant chain that you can find in just about every city and town in Spain.  Their greatest virtue is that they are inexpensive.  I had a beer, Susan had a glass of red wine and we shared a goodly quantity of potato chips and olives.  The bill was 5 Euros.  When we finished we returned to the hotel and decided to take life easy.  Susan read some and played on her iPad and I finished writing and posting my two blog entries.

Around 8:30 we were getting a bit hungry since we had not had lunch so we made our way to a restaurant called La Mucca located a few blocks from the hotel.  The place was packed and we did not have a reservation.  A funny thing happened while we were waiting in line.  A gentleman (?) walked in and, ignoring the fact that we were next in line, began to talk with the Maître D.  I tapped him on the shoulder and told him that we were next in line and he should wait his turn.  He excused his actions by saying that he had a reservation.  He wanted to change his reservation for two people to three people.  The Maître D told him to wait at the bar until his table was ready.  He asked us to take a seat on the nearby sofa and he would have a table for us in ten minutes.  He was true to his word.  As we sat down he said, “I thought there were three of you.” Guess whose table we ended up with?

The menu at La Mucca is very eclectic and ranges from hamburgers to exotic pizzas, Italian specialties as well as Thai specialties and everything in between.  We ordered a table of embutidos y quesos and a salad with tomatoes and tuna.  We had a brownie for dessert.  The quality of the food is good, but it is not great.  Some of the tastes are really not authentic and disappoint the palate that is expecting the real thing.  We did, however, accomplish our goal of getting something to eat.  We went back to the hotel, read for a while and went to bed around 11:30.

I found a few more wedding photos that I will include here, as well as some shots of La Mucca.