El Pardo (Brown)

El Pardo literally translates to English as brown and is a way to describe earthy colors. El Pardo is a small town just outside of Madrid that is home to something very special. 

Here's a brief history of it: 

Francisco Franco lived in the palace after the Spanish Civil War, and it served as his own personal hunting grounds. El Pardo sits on a mountain, and the view from any open space at sunset is beautiful. After Franco's death, it has been used as a residence for visiting heads of state. So let's say if President Obama drops by Madrid, he would stay in this lovely palace. We couldn't go inside, but we were allowed to walk around the grounds.  

 

The remnants of a moat. This palace was originally a castle!

After walking around the grounds we went to a restaurant called El Torreón for a merienda (picnic) of tapas. It was quite classy. The food was amazing! 

Quite lovely mineral water.

Place setting. El zumo de naranja (orange juice) was very good!

Desert was churrros con chocolate. Soooo amazingly delicious. It's one of the things you MUST do here in Spain. 

Before dessert though, we had several tapas. Tortillas, which are not the tortillas made of arina (flour) or maiz(corn), are made with eggs and potatoes. You can think of it as the best omelet ever! After we had a dish that had peppers and onions between some type of bread. That was followed by Croquetas -similar to a cheese stick, except short, round, and filled with mashed potatoes and chicken. Then we had chorizo. I like to call them chorizitos, because were the short, redondo (round) sausages. 

Spanish food is wonderful. It's very Mediterranean, healthy, fresh, and flavorful. Not much spice, but I'm fine with that.