As noted previously, our ninth day was spent resting, getting ready for our final day in Spain and our next hop to Athens.

Our last full day in Spain we spent in two parts: first, we went to the Sunday Market at Cava Baja, south of Plaza Mayor, and then for dinner and later we went to Aunt Berta’s for her famous Paella.

The trip to Mayor and the market was straightforward. Every Sunday, there is a huge market in the old part of town. You go to Opera Station, the one close to the Opera House in front of the palace. You can walk down a shopping street with just a fair amount of activity, and eventually take a right turn to Plaza Mayor. From Mayor, you exit the south gate and walk for a few blocks, and you’ll find the northernmost end of the market. From there, it stretches for a long ways to the south, on and on and on, with side streets branching out shortly here and there. There is no food, just items for sale, mostly clothing. It’s quite a sight to see, all of that activity, all of those people.

After we got through it all, we headed back up to Mayor and continued my chorizo shopping, and stopped at a cafe for a drink and a snack. At first it was just for a drink, but we felt a bit hungry and asked if they had any chicken fingers or fried chicken. The waited said no to the fingers, but claimed they had chicken. What he brought us was a plated of chicken full of bones in a strange curry-like sauce–not at all what we wanted, and they charged us €15 for it (we should have asked more). But it was nice to sit and relax in the plaza, in any case.

There were some sparrows hopping around underneath, and though perhaps we should not have, we fed them some bread.

Some people were in costume around the square, including this guy in a Spiderman outfit. I think it’s Jack Black.

At a shop in the square where I picked up some chorizo, I noticed this game–something that most restaurants in Spain seem to have, but just one. I have no idea what it is or does, nor was I interested, beyond the fact that they seem ubiquitous.

Eventually, we made it back to Opera Station and to the hotel, where we rested for a while before dinner.

My father, who is also in Spain, picked Sachi and I up before six o’clock and took us to Aunt Berta’s apartment, where she had been working most of the day to cook a paella. I feel bad, because I mentioned it casually and was not aware of the heavy work involved, but since I did mention it, Bert probably felt obliged to deliver. And deliver she did. Her paella is the stuff of minor legends, and she is called on to cook it at parties and get-togethers now and then. She certainly did not disappoint for us.

After the wonderful dinner, Vicente happily obliged us also, providing some more music that I will hopefully use as a soundtrack for a video I’ll be making of our trip, mostly from photographs but with what video I took stitched in. We’ll see when I can get around to that and what form it will take.

We also got to see some of Berta’s photos, including her wedding photos.

Then there was the famous (in my family) drawing of my grandmother, a beautiful woman in her day:

After we said our goodbyes, my dad drove us back and we spent the last few hours of the night packing and getting ready for the trip to Greece the next day.