Day 45: Tour and dine

Walking tour just for a change. Our guide is pretty funny. She's short and boisterous and worked at Disneyland for 6 months which may help explain her character as she had to wear a costume the whole time. So Madrid: the city has a lot of history but as I'm way behind in my writing I can't remember too much of it. The mist interesting part I found was the inquisition. During the 15th century I think when the Christians were killing off those who weren't Christian enough or who would not convert to Christianity. To show that you were a true Christian you weren't supposed to bathe more than twice a year- eww. Also during this time there weren't any toilets or a sewerage system so families would empty their buckets out of the window into the street! So all the men would wear long black coats so whenever someone yelled out that their buckets were coming down, pedestrians could throw their cloaks over to cover their entire body because if they got shit on them - well they couldn't shower could they?  Madrid became the capital of Spain only after the queen apparently requested the royal family move to a place less humid than Toledo (the old capital) because her hair was going out if control in the humidity of Toledo. What's history without it's stories...  However when everyone moved to Madrid there was not enough room or work for everyone. So the government introduced a type of tax for the madritians where they had to pay per number of rooms they had or they had to give a room for the newcomers to live in. This lead to 'malicious housing' where houses were built with windows at all different levels to obscure how many rooms and levels there actually were in the house so dwellers could avoid the tax.  After the tour Erica took us to a good local restaurant where we indulged in a bottle of wine, chorizo pasta, fish and calamari, endless amounts of crusty bread, pudding and espresso all for 9 euro. We sat chatting to Erica for hours enjoying the courses and the company of everyone on the walking tour.