Flan and Chocolate

We went out Sunday night in search of dinner.

We started off from Gran Via, the main street on which we are staying. You can see our hotel, the Emperador, in the background behind Sky. This part of Madrid is very vertical and feels like New York in the 1940s or 1950s.

Everyone was tired. We didn't have much of a plan. We ended up at Plaza Mayor, the big square in old Madrid ringed with outdoor tourist restaurants. It was a pleasant but not unfamiliar scene. The boys ate salmon. Anna and I picked at some fried squid. Walking back toward the hotel, though, we came across a famous old hot chocolate shop behind the San Gines church.


The San Gines Chocolateria has been serving cups of hot chocolate and mounds of churros, a kind of fritter, since the early 1800s. The chocolate is very thick but not very sweet. The churros aren't very sweet, either. I imagine that this is closer to what hot chocolate was like during the 17th century when it became a fashionable drink throughout Europe.

You dip the churros in the chocolate. At 11:30 p.m., the place was packed.

True mugged for the camera, but the truth is, he didn't care for the chocolate. I had two cups and ate most of the churros.

Ahhh.

On Monday, we went to the Reina Sofia museum. The boys enjoyed it. They have a higher tolerance for some of the art than I do.


Picasso's Guernica, which once hung in New York, is now at this museum.

Afterward, we went to a very local restaurant nearby. Neither Anna nor I could read the menu. Anna had paella to start, but her main dish was some sort of steamed, tubular fish, which looked suspiciously like eel. I had bacalao, but it was rather too strong for my taste. In short, we didn't eat much.


The boys didn't eat at all.


But the flan we had for dessert was terrific. In fact, we kept ordering more. The coffee was good, too, but the photos of the coffee came out blurry.


After the coffee, they served a small glass of sweet apple liqueur.