Spanish tortilla and ham

Finally it's time to post about Spanish food!

One of the things we must try at least once is the Spanish tortilla. They also say that Madrid is famous for their calamari sandwiches. We didn’t have proper timing to try a recommended place for these, but we saw both on the menu in a small eatery, and ordered them.

tortilla, served with some bread

calamari sandwich

Both were rather meh. Not sure whether it's the shop, or that we might not like either of these foods in general.

There is a Museo del Jamón (literally "museum of ham") near our hotel. It is actually not a museum, but a place selling lots of different kinds of ham, together with wine. There is a small bar where we can sit and enjoy their ham with drinks. They have multiple branches. We visited but didn't eat there; we bought a croissant to take away.

ham croissants; we liked this!

One night we visited Matador, a tapas bar not far from our hotel. (Our hotel is very central, remember?) We tried their ham platter, with a glass of vermouth (vermut in Spanish).

served with bread

The drink came with a bowl of olives, which every table had. But we had already tried olives elsewhere and didn't want any. Those pickled olives are too sour!

Charsiu dishes aplenty

Almost a year ago, we tried Ren Wafu and was very pleased with it.

We went there again for lunch today. This time I tried a different ramen, a spicy one. My mother stuck with her ramen with sesame seeds. And we saw a fried rice dish that looked really good on the plaque outside, so we decided to order it (although from the menu, we wouldn't have ordered it because the photo didn't look as good).

We were the first customers, arriving at just after 12pm (the shop opens at 12pm), so we didn't wait so long for our food this time.

Remember the bunny chopstick holders? This time they brought us three kinds: a bunny, a naruto (which I didn't take a photo of because it looked too simple), and a gyoza! 

gyoza with a gyoza chopstick holder

my bunny chopstick holder

my spicy tonkotsu ramen, RM23.90, plus RM3 to make it a set

spicy fried rice, RM25.80

We asked to make the fried rice less spicy. (they said it was only slightly spicy, but my father was still worried so we asked for less spicy) It was very fragrant...with two slices of charsiu and two huge tempura prawns.

Again, it was a very satisfying meal. Shall we make this a yearly visit? :P 

An adrenaline-packed day

Yesterday we attended an Intercompany Pickleball Tournament organized by Boston Scientific for their 10th-year anniversary. They have three pickleball courts on the rooftop of their multi-storey car park.

It seems that the place is used for futsal as well, though I am not sure how they use a full futsal court, since half of the space is taken by the pickleball courts.

A stage is set up at one end for the opening ceremony and prize-giving.

The pickleball courts are opposite the stage. 

(The photo above was taken in the early morning when we arrived, and this photo was taken in the afternoon after the sun had shifted.)

Here's a video one of my teammates took early in the morning; it gives a good view of the whole area!

Before the opening ceremony, I spotted a tiger wandering around. 

It turns out that Boston Scientific’s mascot is a tiger! (a doctor too; see its clothes :P )

Well, you know what? I brought my own mascot too! 

Let's go, Pikachu!

Here's our team:

behind us is our table; they prepared a table for each of the six teams, to place our food on (they provided meal packs for breakfast, lunch, and tea-time)

sitting down for the opening (I like this pic because everyone looks happy and natural)

taking a photo on the centre court after the opening ceremony

The lady beside me is our HR representative. She helped us receive the appreciation plaque for our company. (It was presented during the opening ceremony.)

pretty!

After that the games started…and frankly we were off to a rocky start. The six teams were playing round robin, with the top four teams going into semi-finals. The order of games were: mixed doubles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles.

We lost our first two matches 4-1. Luckily for me, I won both my games. The first being the last mixed doubles against Plexus (since we were already down 4-0 by the time my partner and I started playing, our win really boosted our team’s morale). The second match against Boston, I played the 4th game which was women’s doubles, and we managed to win again.

The third match against Ambu was an easier one, and our team managed to win 4-1. At this point we broke for lunch, and people started saying that I hadn’t lost any matches.

I had noticed that, and was afraid of saying anything about it for fear of jinxing it. And jinx it they did, because the first match after lunch, we lost my women’s doubles. :P And lost 3-2 to Osram in the process.

At lunchtime they had already calculated that we would be in the top four if we managed to beat Osram. If we didn’t, we had one final chance for 4th place if we beat Lam Research in our final round robin match.

And we managed to beat them, 3-2. I happily managed to win my game again, giving me a nice record of 4 out of 5 games won.

In the semi-finals, we were pitted against the top team, Plexus, and lost again. I was lined up for the 4th game of women’s doubles, but we didn’t play it because we already lost the first three games…

From all the results, Plexus was clearly the strongest and was winning easily against the other teams. They emerged champion of the competition after beating Osram in the finals, a result that was announced while we were still battling Boston Scientific for third place…

We had lost against Boston 4-1 in the group stage, but it is worth mentioning that three of the games we lost were at 15-14 (they were playing sudden-death). So we actually had quite a good chance of beating them.

I was scheduled for women’s doubles again. Our team won the first game, and I was saying to my partner that we needed to hope they would win the first three and spare us from playing. (Did I jinx them?) We then lost the second game, so we knew we were going to play…

Anyway, long story short, we lost the third game as well, and luckily my partner and I won our game, and our final pair brought us the bronze!

So we basically scraped through to make the semis, and fought hard enough to crawl one more place up to third. A lucky day indeed!

And extra-lucky for me personally, because if you have been counting, you would notice that I only lost one game out of the six that I played. A very good result, seeing as I would have been happy with winning half my games. It was also the best win rate in my team, the same as my mixed doubles partner who won the same number of games, and also did not play in the semis (we only played one game together; after that we won/lost separately). I did not play against any extra-strong players; even in the game that I lost, I think that there might have been a chance of winning if luck was on our side (less mistakes, etc). Anyway, I’m not complaining about one lost game…

Did Pikachu help? Who knows… in my previous tournament I did not bring it along and didn’t win any games. Maybe I should have? :P  

(Psst...it is worth mentioning that this tournament is limited to players who are either unrated or have a DUPR of under 2.8, so really strong players are not allowed to join.) 

This is our team on stage after getting our prize!

In the afternoon, the sun was starting to hit the courts, and also half of the stage, as you can see in the photo above.

our medal

the back

team trophy (it looks almost golden under the light here, but it's actually bronze)

Each player also received a goody bag from Boston Scientific.

100-plus, energy bar, and a towel

It is so unexpected that just two months ago, I was casually playing every week, and then I suddenly had two tournaments just seven weeks apart. Let’s see what the future brings next…

The lesser-known bear and strawberry tree

After leaving Madrid Rio Park, we made our way back towards the center of Madrid, to see a few more places.

This is Plaza de la Villa.

statue of Don Álvaro de Bazán

one of the flower bushes that you can see in the first pic

As we were leaving the square, we suddenly spotted El Oso y el Madroño on the ground!

My mother had read about this somewhere. She said it was on the street leading from the palace to Sol (the square where the actual bear statue is, remember?)

looking down at the bear

this bear is a lot less popular; passersby seemed curious about what we were taking photos of :P

after I did the squatting-down selfie, my mother wanted the same pose :P

I looked up this street so that I can check back where to find it again in future. It is on Calle Mayor, right next to Plaza de la Villa.

Iglesia Catedral de las Fuerzas Armadas (Cathedral Church of the Armed Forces)

This is just a small church that we stumbled upon, so I just snapped a pic.

Then we reached Catedral de Santa María la Real de la Almudena. It is beside the Royal Palace of Madrid, which we saw on our first day. But we missed this cathedral because it was at the far end of the road. (and we were looking for dinner...)

cathedral on the left, palace on the right (neither of which you can see in this photo :P )

Besides the bear in the photo above, Stitch was on the square too!

the front of the cathedral

overall view of the cathedral

Opposite the cathedral, there were steel bars around the palace grounds. I snapped a few photos through the bars.

zoomed in (or maybe the photo earlier was zoomed out)

Then we went to the end of the square, where there was a nice view.

The photos above capture the vista from left to right. I actually took a panoramic photo as well, but I feel that it doesn't look as nice, because these individual pictures zoom in to capture better angles.

After that, we had lunch and then went back to our hotel to collect our things and leave for the airport. So that's all the sightseeing in Madrid! In upcoming posts, I shall share the food that we ate there (which I have mostly skipped in these sightseeing posts).

A stroll through Madrid Rio Park

Tuesday was our last day in Madrid. Our flight was later in the evening, so we had the whole morning and part of the afternoon to explore a few more places.

We visited Madrid Rio Park in the south of Madrid. The Toledo bridge (Puente de Toledo) leads into the park (and is also over some parts of the park).

the bridge over the park

the plaque on the other side of the bridge

a lot of gardening going on

Maintaining these flowers, I guess.

hairy flowers (remember, you can click on the pics to see them in full size!)

The park is along a river, so there were lots of bridges, big and small.

one of the more special bridges, Puente Monumental de Arganzuela (Arganzuela Bridge) 

the other side

I'm not sure why it's not just one cylindrical structure, but two with shifted axes. We crossed this bridge after taking these photos.

view from the bridge, to the bridges we passed on the way...

view of the bridge after crossing it (the colours of the plants here are nice!)

Then we came across these amazing slides. On the map, this area is marked as Toboganes de Madrid Río. The slides are so tall, and some of them are so steep! Looks really scary to me.

photo from another angle, to show more slides

a monument

my mother likes the autumn leaves!

another play area (here an older guy is climbing around)

a fountain, I guess

I don't think we walked the whole park...we just strolled around. There wasn't really much to see. There was a big group of mostly Asians, who seemed to have come here to meet some friends (counterparts?) here for an event.

walking out on the Toledo Bridge

to better see the two columns on either side of the entrance (we can see them in one of the earlier pics too, the one with the gardeners)