Madrid - City of churros, sunshine and beautiful people

I just returned from a few days visiting my good friend Susie, we've been friends since we've been alive so it was great to catch up with her. She showed me a few highlights of Madrid including Sol and where to find the best churros y chocolate.

The temperature reached 35 degrees which was lovely and I made the most of the cities culinary delights. I even improved my Spanish!

The churros place. First thing I ate in Madrid was these long fried strips of dough dipped in hot thick chocolate!

As shown here. I don't know how I stayed still long enough with a churro in my hand for this photo to be taken, they were so good.

These guys dress up as giant cartoon characters including mickey mouse, bart and even chucky (terrifying).  They shout guappa at the ladies and try and tempt people to pose for a photo for a price or buy a balloon. One day when I was exploring alone alone, a mickey mouse kissed my hand then turned us around presumably looking for my companion to take a picture of us. He was just stood there posing with his arm round me until he realised there was no one there, was pretty funny. Half of the time they walk around with their characters head off, talking to one another. Must be pretty weird for kids to see that.

A nice restaurant where I had these red wine baked clams with oyster mushrooms.  It was incredibly salty . In the middle is octopus, easily the best I've had and we also ordered some queso - local cheese selection.

The salty restaurant. The waitress was pretty mardy. Also me and my friend couldn't stop laughing (happened regularly on my visit) and we were just sat there with tears running down our faces. 

After the restaurant we stopped at this place which was open at 11pm and got a nutella crepe to share

tasty nutella crepe

Back at sol there was a pastry and sweet shop selling a wide variety of tasty food. I ordered some almond tuille type biscuits and an espresso, both were great!

An indoor market that sold horchata, mojitos, fresh fruit and veg, lots of fish and traditional Spanish dishes. You can buy a cocktail stick with quails eggs, anchovy, olive etc on for a euro and they are  good for nibbling on as you are looking round

enjoying an ice cold horchata from the market

A peruvian restaurant. This meal of garlic chicken was ok but the lemon meringue pie was amazing!!

The amazing lemon meringue pie

The thick hot chocolate that I became addicted to and will make any hot chocolate I ever have inferior by comparison...except cocoa on ecclesall road, there's is very good and similar to this. I'm gonna have to go there to get my fix soon

Inside a cafe, trying to escape the heat of the afternoon sun. The chocolate was good, the matcha  yoghurt smoothie and the rude staff not so good.

Went into starbucks and this was the view from the floor to ceiling windows

A nice looking building, there were many of these and I have no idea what actually goes on inside them

I do love this drink, jut sat in the starbucks patio

Quick snap as I enjoyed my ice tea 

Me and Susie

More architecture. 

One of the streets of Sol, filled with ice cream stores, clothing shops and tapas restarants

A rather blurry shot of some alcohol that graced the walls of a tapas restaurant 

Patatas bravas, ridiculously cheap wine and fried green peppers

Delicious!

A lovely spread

Me doing what I enjoy

And again..this time cooling off with some mint chocolate chip ice cream at a parlour

The early evening sky

Some tapas. The tortilla was different to how I've had it in barcelona in that the potato was diced and very soft as opposed to sliced waxy type. I also had calamari which was good and chicken in red wine tomato sauce,

The tapas restarant. I swear I was so spaced out most of the time from lack of sleep and excitement that I mistook these  scary mannequins for real people twice!

A very wide building. This square had lots of restaurants that try to entice you to eat there.

My friend was terrified of this sparkly dancing goat type thing that repeatedly opened and closed his wooden mouth.

Mojitos! They also sold caprinhas, weirdly enough I only drank one glass of wine the whole holiday!  Wasn't feeling the booze really.

So there it is, very photo heavy and words light but hope you enjoy it none the less.
Have any of you been to Madrid, or Spain? If so, what did you do?