A few days ago I was recalling some facts about the p-adic numbers, for example the fact that the p-adic metric is an ultrametric implies very strongly that there is no order on $\mathbb{Q}_p$, as any number in the interior of an open ball is in fact its center.
This argument is not correct. For instance why does it not apply to $\mathbb{Q}$ with the $p$-adic metric? In fact any field which admits an ordering also admits a nontrivial non-Archimedean metric.
It is true though that $\mathbb{Q}_p$ cannot be ordered. By the Artin-Schreier theorem, this is equivalent to the fact that $-1$ is a sum of squares. Using Hensel's Lemma and a little quadratic form theory it is not hard to show that $-1$ is a sum of four squares in $\mathbb{Q}_p$.
I know that if you take the completion of the algebraic close of the p-adic completion you get something which is isomorphic to $\mathbb{C}$ (this result was very surprising until I studied model theory, then it became obvious).
I don't mean to pick, but I am familiar with basic model theory and I don't see how it helps to establish this result. Rather it is basic field theory: any two algebraically closed fields of equal characteristic and absolute transcendence degree are isomorphic. (From this the completeness of the theory of algebraically closed fields of any given characteristic follows easily, by Vaught's test.)
So I was thinking, is there a $p$-adic number whose square equals 2? 3? 2011? For which prime numbers $p$?
All of these answers depend on $p$. The general situation is as follows: for any odd $p$, the group of square classes $\mathbb{Q}_p^{\times}/\mathbb{Q}_p^{\times 2}$ -- which parameterizes quadratic extensions -- has order $4$, meaning there are exactly three quadratic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ inside any algebraic closure. If $u$ is any integer which is not a square modulo $p$, then these three extensions are given by adjoinging $\sqrt{p}$, $\sqrt{u}$ and $\sqrt{up}$. When $p = 2$ the group of square classes has cardinality $8$, meaning there are $7$ quadratic extensions.
How far down the rabbit hole of algebraic numbers can you go inside the p-adic numbers? Are there general results connecting the choice (or rather properties) of $p$ to the "amount" of algebraic closure it gives?
I don't know exactly what you are looking for as an answer here. The absolute Galois group of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ is in some sense rather well understood: it is an infinite profinite group but it is "small" in the technical sense that there are only finitely many open subgroups of any given index. Also every finite extension of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ is solvable. All in all it is vague -- but fair -- to say that the fields $\mathbb{Q}_p$ are "much closer to being algebraically closed" than the field $\mathbb{Q}$ but "not as close to being algebraically closed" as the finite field $\mathbb{F}_p$. This can be made precise in various ways.
If you are interested in the $p$-adic numbers you should read intermediate level number theory texts on local fields. For instance this page collects notes from a course on (in part) local fields that I taught last spring. I also highly recommend books called Local Fields: one by Cassels and one by Serre.
Added: see in particular Sections 5.4 and 5.5 of this set of notes for information about the number of $n$th power classes and the number of field extensions of a given degree.
Note that every such isomorphism of $\Bbb C_p\to\Bbb C$ is actually a $\Bbb Q$-automorphism of $\Bbb C$.
It is consistent that without the axiom of choice there are only two automorphisms of $\Bbb C$, the identity and conjugation. Obviously if $\Bbb C_p$ is a $p$-adic field, such automorphism is neither of the two. Therefore its existence relies on the axiom of choice, and cannot be written explicitly.
Of course if such an embedding of $\Bbb C_p$ does not exist without using the axiom of choice to begin with, then we cannot embed $\Bbb Q_p$ into $\Bbb C$. Otherwise we could have taken the intersection of all algebraically closed subfields of $\Bbb C$ which contain the embedded $\Bbb Q_p$.
Best Answer
I don't know anything about the Leopoldt conjecture, but regarding embeddings into $\mathbb{C}_p$.... Note that $K$ is a finite extension of $\mathbb{Q}$, and $\mathbb{C}_p$ is an algebraically closed field containing $\mathbb{Q}$, so there have to be embeddings of $K$ into $\mathbb{C}_p$. Abstractly this is the same way you get embeddings of $K$ into $\mathbb{C}$. To be more explicit, you can use the primitive element theorem to pick a primitive element $\theta$, so that $K = \mathbb{Q}(\theta)$, and then the minimal polynomial $p(x)$ of $\theta$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ must split over $\mathbb{C}_p$ since $\mathbb{C}_p$ is algebraically closed. If $\theta_1, \dotsc, \theta_n$ are the roots of $p(x)$ in $\mathbb{C}_p$, then $\theta \mapsto \theta_i$ define the $n$ possible embeddings of $K$ into $\mathbb{C}_p$.