Tonight’s post brought to you by wine, good food and category confusion.

David and I started the day fully intending to go to the Reina Sofía for their free hours today at 3. We left our hotel, and headed in the direction of Atocha, and approached the museum from the front. It was right around 3:05, and we saw the line out the door and extending by the building. We couldn’t see the end of it yet, so we started walking that way. I noticed that the line wasn’t really moving very much. We continued walking down the long side of the building, hoping to see the end of the line. Then we turned the corner… And still no end. The line was barely moving and was wrapped around two sides of the building! We decided it was not worth it and continued walking.

We wound up in the old section of Madrid. The one with the crumbling Mudejar buildings and winding streets. As we went up from Lavapiés we heard some drumming and singing, and saw a full on spontaneous African drumming session with guys in colorful clothes dancing and singing. Unfortunately we weren’t able to stay and watch, since I had just been confronted by a random Moro for having glanced at him, so we were in the process of ignoring him, walking away and hoping he didn’t follow us.

Thankfully, not engaging him was the correct thing to do, so we walked up a street that had an ancient looking Mudejar church looking more like ruins than a useful building. However, it looked a lot like there was a functioning library in the old shell of the building. When we hit a juncture with Calle Toledo, we went South again to the Puerta de toledo in the La Latina neighborhood. There are a lot more boho hippy types and student types in the area, little cool shops, and totally maze-like streets, however it’s also the somewhat more scary area of the city.

We walked back up to our hotel through the Plaza Mayor, and found a little souvenir shop with decent prices and a fan that I actually liked.

After hanging out in the hotel for a while, we went to dinner at Terra Mundi again. I realized that this is probably one of the very last times we get to eat there before we leave day after tomorrow, so I was a little sad. All the sad went away with the excellent wine and wonderful food. We had stewed venison and confit duck. David lent the title to this post in his efforts to compliment the duck.

It had been raining when we went to dinner, but by the time we got out, it had stopped raining. Which was good, because we had wanted to go and see the Puerta de Alcalá in its natural habitat. We walked up in the fresh smelling air, and stopped for various photo-ops, including one of a stack of surreal croissants on a granite bench. If any of the pictures tonight are blurry, just remember, tonight’s photos brought to you by wine.

On the way back from Alcalá we saw a nifty little fountain that had marble eagles (not ducks) spitting water. We also walked by the tomb of the unnamed soldier, with its eternal flame. The eternal flame was, however, rained on and therefore out at the time.