Yesterday I went on three different tours:
The first was a free walking tour of Madrid, at 10:00 am, which was quite interesting. I learned that just like Portugal, Spain was a dictatorship as well until the mid-70's. I also learned that all of the pigs hanging by their feet in stores/resturants, etc was a custom started by the Jews and Muslims during the Spanish inquisition, to keep the police from their door, who would have expelled/killed them. By showing a a pig, this convinced the officers that they converted to Christianity. During the tour, we had a stop where we we're convinced to purchase other tours, which I did, and will get to shortly.
The middle of the afternoon was spent in siesta-I had a big buffet lunch at some all-you-can-eat place ($10 euro all you can eat including drink), and then went to a park and read, took a nap on the grass, etc.
Then came the next tour at 7:00 pm-a tapas tour-I went to three different resturants which showed the various tapas styles of different regions of Spain. The tour also included drinks that are indiginous to each of these regions-One was some time of tonic water combined with rum, I think. The second was wine out of a strange container, The third was cider. I learned to pour cider, where there is a specific method. This ran right into another pub crawl, where a whole bunch from the tapas tour went. I really wimped out on the pub crawl, I couldn't make it after the second pub-and returned to the hostel at 1:00 am or so.
