Monday morning recap

On Wednesday, a friend from high school who's studying in London came to visit Madrid for the weekend. Since she's been in the UK since last year and loves interesting foods as much as I do, a lot of what we did over the weekend involved eating and drinking coffee, broken up by a few touristy things and some shopping.

Since I'm too lazy to do anything else, here are a few pictures.



This is the outside of what I think is officially my favorite European church ever, the Iglesia Santa María (I know, how original).



The art is absolutely amazing.



It's very different from other, more traditional European churches. It's south of Plaza del Oriente and right nearby one of my favorite tapas/wine bars, El Tempranillo, as well as a hole-in-the-wall taco bar that serves legitimate Mexican food.



There are many statues in Plaza del Oriente, and many are covered with pigeons.



They recently opened an exhibit in the Botanical Gardens, right next to Retiro, with a bunch of really interesting sculptures.





I don't have pictures of everything we did because at some point I forgot to charge my camera battery. Heh. Not pictured: Retiro, Plaza Santa Ana, the Reina Sofía (sadly lacking Robert Downey Jr., alas), Plaza Mayor, Pastelería Menorquina (much coffee was consumed), Paseo del Prado, much shopping, the Opera House, all of the food we ate, and some things I have forgotten.

So we were touristy, and we ate so much food. It was quite fun. Finally, here is one picture of the Mercado de San Miguel, where we ate one day. It was so amazing that it warrants its own post, but have a picture.



(Note to our families: never fear, we also took pictures with ourselves in them, I just would rather not put them out into the internet without her permission. I promise I'll send them on in an email.)