Adventures & Misadventures Abroad

Our last day in Madrid will be spent sleeping late, packing for our next journey and one last foray out to take photos in our neighborhood.

The local Mercado. We tried to go to a restaurant here once - but the Mercado itself was closed.

School is out for the day and people seem to be gathering in squares letting their kids let off steam.

Maybe playing hide and seak?

At this point in our walk - Michael turned and pointed to that bridge in a distance - That is where we need to be to get back to our apartment! So another long walk today.

Michael stalking the bush.

Mexican restaurant.

We came upon this plaza with these three statues - it is across the square from the structure in the next two photos.

This is a fountain with water flowing down. My photos did not capture the moving water at all.

Santa Iglesia Catedral Metropolitana de Santa María la Real de la Almudena.

Then we were home and ready to do our final packing. We will be picked up at 9:30 am to go to the airport to pick up our rental car. From there we will drive to El Campello where we will be staying for the month of October.

Tuesday night we saved our energy for the evening and didn't leave the apartment until 7:15pm. We took an Uber to a very popular area to take photos in the dark.

One photo from the day. We had to go out to get Euros to pay for our apartment in El Campello.

Our first location. This time after the sun has almost set until it actually gets dark is called the blue time. I am not crazy about the look - but here are a few photos.

The Puerta de Alcala which is located in the Plaza de la Independencia.

We walked all around the arch and took photos.

Still in the blue hour and cars are blurred.

Back where we started.

Getting dark.

Now we are heading back to our apartment.

The Metropolis building.

We ran into several musical groups. I heard an accordion playing Halleluiah early.

Then we entered the Puerta Del Sol plaza. It seemed a small protest was going on.

We saw this group up on a higher level leading the crowd chants.

We thought that if we went around the outside of the crowd we would be able to move on.

This is a very famous sign in this square.

Then we started to realize that this was much bigger than we thought. There were so many people around - then we saw lots of tents and people really settled in.

We are try to get around the edge of the crowd. There is no edge. We are fighting to get through the crowd - other people seem to be trying to get through everyone going the other way. So it was a fight. We were in exactly the perfect situation where pick-pockets excel at what they do. All we wanted was to get out of there. At least it was not like many years ago in Chicago at the Chicago Eats festival. I remember then being in the crowd and not being able to move at all. The crowd wanting to go up verses the crowd moving down was equal - and nobody moved!

We did finally get out - and later I looked up what was going on. It is an on-going protest in the Puerta Del Sol plaza. An 87 year old pensioner was evicted from her apartment after rents were raised beyond her ability to pay. So the protest is for stronger tenant protections and action against housing costs. It is just getting larger and larger. We will avoid this plaza from now on. As I remember from the 70's most of the protesters are young people.