POST 23 (11/25/25) TUESDAY, A FULL DAY IN MADRID

Ramón and I awakened a little late and took our time getting ready, which put us at the breakfast buffet fairly close to closing time. The breakfast at the Barceló Torre Madrid was ample and appetizing. We both ate well but not excessively. I focused on fruit, cheese, and olives, then enjoyed a very American style, perfectly prepared pancake with maple syrup. I convinced him to eat this unfamiliar food to him, so he grabbed a pancake, which he enjoyed very much.

After a bit of clean-up, teeth brushing, etc. he needed to go by his home for his medications. I chose this hotel due to its location just a few minutes walk from his place. So we bundled up a bit (it was less than 50 degrees), and headed over there. I realized it would be worth taking a couple pictures out his living room window just to capture the incredible view of the historic Templo Debod that is literally across the street from his building. If you saw the blog post with all of my music videos, you'll recognize the site from the Look Alive video. I remember so well visiting this site during my 2007 school trip to Spain. I also have some pictures from that trip, especially at the edge of the cliff on the far side with a sweeping view. For this current blog, I'll focus on pics from Tuesday at Ramón's home (click to open and zoom in for full effect).

And one with the man himself:

He has some framed photos on bookshelves in the living room. I couldn't resist snapping this pic of a picture from a trip he took to Israel some years ago, just to capture what he looked like when just a bit younger than his current 84 years.

After the visit to his home, he proposed we go for a walk, or paseo, which sounded great to me. He told me on that walk that he takes two long walks every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We headed across the street seen in the window pics, and directly into the park that is adjacent to the Templo Debod. We walked down a long staircase to a lower level, which was the bottom of the rose garden. The plan was to walk through a parking lot to the other side, and continue from there. However, some work was being done and the entire area was blocked off. So we had to walk all the way up the hill that we had just descended via stairs. Ramón was a trooper and did fine without being fazed at all. The university was on the other side, and we passed the school of ceramics, at which he pointed out the chimney of the kiln. We walked by a monument to Goya, crossed the railroad tracks on the Goya Footbridge, and meandered down to the river Manzaneras at which I took this strolling video:

We emerged back to civilization and had lunch at a very traditional OG Madrid restaurant called Restaurante Ferreiro, which served Asturian food from a region in the north of Spain. This time, Ramón ordered, and we had fried calamari, fried croquettes of bacalao (which is cod fish), octopus with potatoes in a pool of olive oil, and a dish of two flavors of ice cream to share for dessert. I felt ok in the moment, although regretted a bit eating what I did. Later I felt pretty punk in the stomach, which put a slight damper on things for a little while in the later afternoon/early evening. After lunch, we walked across the street to the Principe Pio Metro station to get the subway back to our hotel. I couldn't resist taking this short video of a vending machine in the subway station:

We had a relaxing evening in the hotel, never leaving the suite. We enjoyed the huge fruit basket that had been given to us by the hotel, and it was satisfying as our dinner that night. We turned in at a reasonable hour, given my impending departure in the morning. 🛌💤