We had dinner at La Broche, probably Madrid's top restaurant, which is at the forefront of the foam revolution. The interior is dramatic, all white, with even the windows covered with white fabric so the only color in the whole room comes from the food. The chef, Sergi Arola, used to work at El Bulli outside Barcelona, usually voted the best restaurant in the world. Service is very competent, friendly but definitely maintaining a reverential attitude toward the food. Every aspect of the meal service has been rethought, like the bread service pictured here, really thin strips of crisp bread with various sauce options. We had the tasting menu, which was full of interesting twists and turns. He takes foams to the logical extreme, pictured here, since foams usually accompany the main food but he serves plates of foam alone. And the green soup dish is sure to be a stoli favorite, a hunk of sea urchin surrounded by algae with a dollop of green pea ice cream to finish it off. Somchai was universally wowed by the food, while I loved the inventiveness, but a couple of the dishes didn't quite work for me. This of course is to be expected at this kind of avant garde restaurant, so overall a very strong recommendation. (Food-19, Decor-16, Service-17).

The reason for the empty highway leading to the town became obvious as we wandered around the completely empty town. It's a much prettier, more historic town than Arenas de San Pedro, and much, much quieter. Since the town is built on a hill we thought it would be a great place to grab a beer and enjoy the now sun-filled view, but the town didn't cooperate. We finally found one bar that was open, but it was indoors and very scruffy. So we enjoyed our beer watching Spanish game shows with the town drunk until our driver showed up and took us back to Madrid.

117. Mombeltran

Our hike ended in the decidedly nicer town of Mombeltran, which announces its presence from miles away with a picture perfect castle. The castle, which lords over the surrounding valley, was built by the Duke of Albequerque in the fifteenth century. It was quite palatial in its day, but is now abandoned, which is obvious when you get up close. But after a long slog in the rain, it's a stunning sight.

The rain stopped during lunch, so the second half of the walk was much nicer. In a burst of creativity, Somchai decided to take advantage of the sun and start a new artistic photo series of the flowers of Spain. As you can see, the series got off to a great start, with about thirty photos of the wildflowers lining our walk. As you no doubt guessed, the series ended with the walk, so it's now a photo series of the flowers lining a highway outside of Arenas de San Pedro.

We stopped midway for lunch, where we got to get off the highway for a bit and surround ourselves with nature. We came across a handy (though wet) picnic table and had our lunch. Doesn't Somchai look like a happy camper?

When Spain first joined the European Union it was much poorer than the rest of the neighborhood, which meant it was entitled to heaps of development cash to help it catch up with the rest of Europe. A large portion of this bonanza went into building roads, and Spain now has probably the best maintained and underutlized road network in the world. A couple of kilometers outside of town the houses and what little traffic there was petered out, and we had the road all to ourselves.

Armed with lunch, we started on our ten kilometer walk, which we thought would be on a trail but ended up being just an underused road. The town was too small to have proper suburbs, but there was still enough modern civilization along the road to rob the hike of any charm. It also started to rain, which certainly didn't add to the ambiance.

116. Arenas de San Pedro

Monday started out very badly. We planned on going hiking in the mountains around Avila. We woke up to the usual overcast skies but decided to go anyway, so took a 2 hour drive with Manuel to our starting point, Arenas de San Pedro. This was a busy, not very attractive town, but seemed mainly to serve as a base for hikers. There were a few old buildings on the busy main street, and we decided to explore the castle ruins. Unfortunately the castle was under heavy renovation, and I got stuck talking to the construction foreman for about an hour, but eventually we pulled away, and ducked into a nearby shop to get a bunch of jamon serrano and other picnic provisions.

Had dinner at the Bauza Hotel's restaurant. We got a quick look at the hotel on the way in, which is supposed to be Madrid's version of the Ian Shrager hotels, but at least at first glance it didn't seem to measure up. The restaurant was attractively minimalist, although Somchai thought it looked like a school canteen. I guess the schools in Thailand had much better cafeterias than we had in Monroe. Dinner started off great, I had the usual jamon seranno on an innovative olive oil bread,and Somchai loved his foie gras salad. My main course of cod with a peppery cheese sauce was a very strange combination that I thought was one of the best fish dishes I've had in a long while. I also had a very good chocolate dessert while Somchai had a wonderful Greek yogurt ice cream. We must have hit the kitchen on a very good night, because it was one of the best meals of the trip for me, but the place is pretty low profile. It was also almost empty while we were there, although at 8 pm most Spaniards were probably just finishing breakfast. (Food-19, Decor-15, Service-16).

The park's highlight was definitely a couple of old Victorian era greenhouses, much like Kew Gardens in London, which are quite an architectural spectacle. But the action revolves around the large lake and the overwrought memorial to somebody lording over the lake. The shores are teeming with teenagers, the lake full of couples rowing, and there was a big concert going on behind the memorial. It was probably the most crowded place we've been in all of Madrid.

We went back to the hotel for a grand brunch. Much of Madrileno society comes here for the Sunday brunch, and it's a most elegant affair, but you can still pig out just like any Vegas buffet, just with panache. We then spent the rest of the day at the nearby Buen Retiro park. The park is huge, along the lines of New York's Central Park, which is a good thing because all of Madrid comes here on the weekend. It's a very pretty park, although very manicured and filled with lots of monuments and grand buildings, so you don't really feel like you're escaping from the city.

We went next to the Thyssen-Bornezisza Museum, the last of Madrid's three great art museums (the Prado and Reina Sofia being the other two in case you forgot over the Christmas holiday). This museum houses the private collection of the Thyssen family, who control one of Germany's largest companies and, more controversially, were Hitler's main financial backers. When the family wasn't supporting Nazis it was collecting art, and their eclectic collection ended up in Madrid due to the Baron Thyssen's wife, Tito Cervera. I think she started out as a flight attendant, and definitely won Miss Spain one year, but is now the Baroness Thyssen. She persuaded her husband to build their museum in Madrid, which was a great coup for the city, although she's a bit of a pain in the ass so the city may now regret this. She chained herself to a tree in front of the museum to stop the city from cutting the tree down, and she's now in a big fight with the city about the expansion of the Prado Museum. I think she's miffed that the Prado is overshadowing her baby, so she's now threatening to move the museum, although I'm not sure she's allowed to do that now that she's given it to the city. Anyway, it's a very nicely laid out museum, and very comprehensive, with the collection having a little bit of pretty much every art movement in history. In addition, they go more in-depth in a couple of areas, in particular nineteenth century American landscapes. Skip that if you visit.

Sunday was pretty much a wasted day. We planned on spending the morning at the Rastro, an enormous weekend market that fills most of the streets of Madrid. It's supposed to be a fantastic market and local event, about the biggest of its kind. There's no denying that it's big, but that's just one of many negatives about the experience. It's basically mile after mile of people selling a can of tuna, a carburetor, a fork, cement, etc. One guy was selling his old prescription glasses, which were broken, so the buyer would have to have his exact eyesight, and not mind wearing broken glasses. He's probably still there selling them. Anyway, because it sprawls all over the place we kept walking expecting that the real Rastro, the one written up in all the guidebooks as a must-do event, was around the next corner, but instead we'd run into a pile of buttons or something. We tried to pretend this was interesting for about a half hour, then gave up and had some tourist breakfast at the Plaza Mayor.

We had dinner at Zalacain, a sort of stuffy traditional Basque restaurant that was the top fine dining spot in Madrid for many years until all the new wave foamy restaurants sprouted up. It's still very popular with the old society types and the Michelin reviewers. Service was flawless and very formal, the decor was odd as you can see, luxe but with some homey touches, plus it sprawled over several rooms so it had something of a country/rustic feel to it. Food was quite good. Somchai had a starter he loved, caviar and smoked salmon in aspic, aspic being de rigeur for any proper 1950's dinner party. We both chose fairly unadventorous main course, but everything was very well prepared. (Food-16, Decor-15, Service-17).

We hung out in Chueca Plaza, pictured here, which was packed with gays, and becomes an open air mosh pit in the evening, way past our bedtime. Then we did even more shopping on Calle Fuencarral, also pictured here. It's a long, fun road of trendy/gay/teen shops and Somchai scooped up lots more stuff so he could accumulate enough shopping bags to hide the stuffy ones he had accumulated during the morning Salamanca shopping. The best shop on the street was Pleasure and Punishment, which, contrary to what you'd expect from the name, had a great selection of up and coming designer names.

We headed over to Chueca, Madrid's gay district, in the afternoon. First we had a late lunch at 26 Liberty, a gay restaurant that got good reviews. It wasn't very good, apart from the fact that it was gay, and I don't have any photos because I couldn't find it on the web, so I think it's not around anymore. Again since we were camera-less I snagged these pics from the web, which should give you the idea that Chueca is very, very, very gay.

We spent most of the day shopping (surprise!). Lots of swanky shops, although we avoided the usual Gucci/Prada/Louis Vuitton because they're everywhere. Somchai went to town at Carolina Herrera and Miro, two local brands that have managed to make an impression internationally. But it was easier to find web photos of the great food market on a small side street in the area. As I've noted previously we love wandering around the markets, and this one was on the small side but very high end. Usually Somchai makes a beeline for the vegetables, but since he's addicted to Spanish ham (jamon serrano) this was really heaven for him. I included the jovial woman playing with the octopii(sp?) just to elicit a nasty comment from Stoli.

We spent most of Saturday in the Salamanca district, Madrid's toniest shopping and residential area. Madrid used to be a walled city, but when the walls were pulled down in the nineteenth century, the wealthy immediately moved to this area, which was just outside the former walls. There's some derogatory term for the people who live here, something like the English "yuppie" but I can't remember it. It generally resembles a cross between Manhattan's Upper East Side and Rodeo Drive. Somchai didn't take his camera around because we were trying to blend in with the yuppy-equivalents, but I found a few pics on the web, mostly of the business district here. Weirdly, the incredibly ornate building you see in the one photo is the post office.