N: In the morning we wandered down to the Royal Palace—Palacio Real, Europe’s third largest, and unlike Versailles, it has never been ransacked. The rooms were magnificently decorated and furnished. On the way there, we notice ice had skinned over the fountains, so it was a bit colder in Madrid than the other cities we visited.

In addition to the palace itself, we saw the armory of medieval armor, including those for children, and the royal pharmacy, full of apothecary jars of all shapes and sizes.

On the way back to the hotel at lunchtime the streets had filled with Sunday strollers, almost shoulder to shoulder. We found a café, Café del Principe, on a plaza towards the Prado, serving locals, that served us a nice lunch.

At the hotel, we packed and got organized for the trip home.

That evening we finally got to go out with Ibrahim, at a Italian/Spanish restaurant nearby. Ibrahim is a college professor, so even though he and Barbara were at opposite ends of the education age group, we had much to talk about.

B: Ibrahim is fascinating and brilliant! We so enjoyed having dinner with him. He grew up in California and is fluent in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, English, and Spanish. He met a relative, while he was teaching in Istanbul, and became a good friend of the entire family. On a previous visit, he and I spoke of the Arabic influence in Sicily. My surname, Nucatola, comes from the Arabic word naqar, meaning dried fruit.

As this was an Italian/Spanish restaurant, I ordered ravioli filled with ham in a cream sauce. Delicious. The portions are not "supersized." They are fairly small, and with all the walking we did every day, weight gain was not a concern. We knew we'd be back to our salads before long.