Last night in Madrid. I'm

Last night in Madrid.

I’m writing this from my sick bed as I innocently ate a small cake last night and woke up this morning very unwell. So, I’ve spent all of our last day in the hotel room. Andy has been very good going out for medicine then food. I slept for most of the time, watched BBC World and stuff like Murder She Wrote in Spanish. Didn’t understand why David Soul was stabbed or why a very young Cynthia Nixion (Miranda from Sex & the City) was a suspect. Ah well.

Yesterday was a good day though. Went to Plaza Mayor again and took photos of The Black Cat, visited Pontejos Street and did indeed find another store finding yarn and beads as Carmen suggests on my Madrid Shopping Guide page (go to scifiville.com and click on Shopping Guides).

I think the store was called Canna or something like that. It sold Regia sock yarn and some Gedfria yarns. They also had some very nice beads including crystals, pearls, semi-precious gem stones and findings. I was interested in some colourful resin type beads but not enough to attempt asking for them in my practically non-existant Spanish.

Pontejos also has stores selling fabric and around the corner from it I found another store with yarn in the window. It had some Katia and Sholler Esinger yarns.

After that we went to the Botanical Gardens. Because of the season there wasn’t a great deal to see in the Garden itself, although I did photograph some very colourful ornamental cabbages. The great treat though for us was to see the many cats who use the gardens as an enormous playground. I don’t mind dogs, some of my friends own the cutest dogs, but Andy and I are really cat people. Andy took some blurry pictures of the cats, they’re not ones to stand still and pose!, which I may post next week. There was a tabby who really reminded me of Pushkin.

The gardens also have heated glass houses where you can see various cacti and tropical plants growing. There’s even a staircase you can walk up to reach a balcony where you can look down at the plants and see things you didn’t notice like lemons on a lemon tree and how one cactus is almost as tall as the ceiling.

After that we went to Inke again where I bought more yarn. We met the woman who’s a relative of our friend back in Cardiff.

After that we went back to the hotel and then out for dinner. I then ate the not so innocent cake.

We leave tomorrow morning and I’m looking forward to getting home and seeing my cats again!