Today was a kind of wander around sort of day. After breakfast on our balcony we headed off to nearby Hola coffee for caffeinated goodness. We saw some nice views of Madrid down steep streets.

After coffee we just wandered around the streets for a bit looking at things. Saw some cute shops but didn’t buy anything.

By this stage it was lunch time and though the only sensible thing to do was to have another calamares bocadillo – we did go to another place though – we chose the place with the long line. It wasn’t really a long wait though.

Calamari roll was delicious but we think we like the one we had yesterday better – the squid was slightly more tender.

More wandering after lunch and we went to check out another nearby market. Most of the markets here are more like food halls rather than fresh produce type ones. I’ve yet to find a big fresh produce place like the market in Valencia. The hunt continues…

Have I mentioned how hot it is here? Yeh it’s hot. I do like it but it can get a bit much at points and the strangest things happen – I suddenly craved a bottle of Coke. I haven’t drunk Coke in maybe 30 years! But seeing people sitting around drinking them well I suddenly thought I needed one too.

Look, it was delicious and refreshing I can not lie, but I don’t think I need another anytime soon. It was actually less sweeter than I remember Coke to be – probably uses real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup like everywhere else in the world.

We then went to a place called Centro Centro – and old post office converted to an art space. It was free and there was hardly anyone there. We saw some art. Great old building.

Back to the hotel for an afternoon rest and cool down before heading off to the Reina Sofia museum. The museum has free entry between 7pm-9pm so we thought we would take advantage of that.

It’s a great gallery with both old and new artworks on display. Level 2 took me right back to Year 12 art class with selections of all my favourites including Dali, Miro, Magritte, Picasso, Man Ray, Ernst and more. We spent our allotted 2 hours in there before going in search of dinner.

We ended up going back to the San Miguel markets for dinner. I wasn’t feeling very hungry so just wanted a couple of things.

We got these very cute (and delicious) mini burgers, and another burrata pinxtos like the ones we had yesterday because – delicious.

We got caught in a massive rain down pour on our way to dinner. Absolutely bucketing down with rain. Then 5 minutes later, the streets were dry.

After dinner we met up with Piper and Brett at Bar as per tradition. When I say we were at the bar, we were really just standing on the street drinking our beers. Good times.