Food in Spain - day 1

It's really hard for me to remember to take a photo of a great dish before I dig into it. My first attempts at getting photos of our meals in Spain were of mostly eaten food. Zoe took a few good ones, though. These are from our first day in Madrid. After dropping our bags at the hotel, we went to Chocolateria San Gines, a little place for churros and hot chocolate. They've been selling the same thing there for over 100 years, and the place is full of character. 3 euros for fresh churros and the thickest, darkest chocolate you can imagine for dipping them in. Here we've already eaten most of the churros. Eating this too often I'm sure would kill you. We couldn't even finish it all. The churros come without any sugar, and we only sprinkled on a little of the powdered sugar on the table for the photo. They are hot and crunchy and greasy and contrast so beautifully with the dark chocolate.

After wandering around the main plazas and visiting the Palacio Real, we headed back to the Mercado de San Miguel (just off the Plaza Mayor, where they used to have bullfights and inquisition executions) for some pinxos (I think that was the word they used for these - little slices of bread with various "pinches" of toppings on them.) The market is full of gorgeous displays of foods, and in the afternoon it was packed with people buying bits and drinking. We had already eaten most of the cheeses before we started taking pictures of what we chose to eat, but there's a shot of the fish ones and the cheese shop. The fish: smoked salmon, some kind of tuna, white fish, a seasoned ricotta-type cheese spread with caviar, and I don't remember what the last one was. We got a plate of cheeses, too, with a couple of goat cheeses (fresh and aged), some really creamy brie type of cheese, and manchego (that was the only cheese name I could understand). We also got some bread, and finished with the tiniest ice-cream cones ever.