Friday, like total badasses, Molly, our friend Kate, and I skipped our afternoon grammar class and hopped on a bus to the Paris-Beauvais airport for a flight to Madrid.
Getting to the hostel wasn't too hard, but we were a little worried about what we would find. It was just about the only hostel we could find with three availabilities and there were some pretty terrible reviews of it online. It being Halloween weekend and all, we kind of hoped it would at least be something like a haunted house. Around 9 pm...we approached the building, rang the bell, and I explained in Spanish to the cold voice on the other end that we had a reservation for three. It wasn't as nice as the hostel in Amsterdam, but I don't think it warranted all those bad comments. Although the ones about the gross showers was true, but who has time for that anyway? (I did figure out before this flight, though, that solid deodorant is, in fact, allowed on flights...don't worry about that one)
After dropping off our bags, we hit the town. We picked up a card from a tapas bar at the hostel but didn't like the looks of it and carried on with our search for food. We didn't really figure out the whole tapas thing that night because at the bars we checked out, it looked like you had to order them rather than get them with drinks. Finally, we settled for a kebab place, much like those in Paris, but it was really good and they used a different type of sauce. We considered continuing our bar search after dinner, but opted for ice cream instead. Not only did the waiter let us get ice cream after telling us they were only selling drinks for the rest of the night, but when Molly and I tried to get a photo with their jack o lantern, they let us pick it up and then the waiter even got in the photo. I'm so glad I study Spanish, or this trip would have been a lot more confusing!
Saturday we took Madrid by storm. Those m&m's our roommates gave us on their way out the door in the morning might have helped. Breakfast of champions. We tried to validate it by reasoning that it was Halloween, not to mention all our walking that day.
Molly and Kate, digging in. This was 8 am, but just as well could have been 8 pm...
We started the day with a walking tour from a guide book Kate brought and took lots of photos along the way.
Those shrubs are on the roof of part of the Museo del Prado building. We passed here on the tour and returned at 6 pm for free entrance!
After the tour, we went into the royal botanical gardens and crossed the city to get to the Palacio Real.
We passed through the Plaza Mayor a couple of times during the trip.
Our next goal was paella. We decided to get it for lunch, regardless of price, in order to have a filling and authentic meal. Kate doesn't let us take photos of her, so she became mine and Molly's official photographer. We'll count her fork at the bottom of the vegetable paella pan as her representation here.
Our next goal was paella. We decided to get it for lunch, regardless of price, in order to have a filling and authentic meal. Kate doesn't let us take photos of her, so she became mine and Molly's official photographer. We'll count her fork at the bottom of the vegetable paella pan as her representation here.
Next up, the Reina Sophia, Madrid's modern art museum. For free, I might add (we looked up museums' free times in advance). My friend Laura and I absolutely loved it when we went in high school, so I was really excited to come back. Since we only had one full day, we didn't linger but made sure to see Picasso's Guernica and all of the studies he did in preparation, such as this one.
Then we hit the weird stuff. I like modern art, but not the abstract and out there kind of work, such as this Crystal Times reflexion sin sol/projecciones sin objeto. As far as we could tell, it was a finished exhibit and pretty much a series of empty rooms. We were alone and took some silly pictures to make it more interesting.
Since we still had time before the Prado would be free (heaven forbid we pay), I suggested we check out Atocha because it has a cool rain forest in it. I did not remember turtles, but there were a ton of them too. This is also the station that was attacked in 2004.
After getting jealous of the Madrid railway/metro station with a freaking forest in it, things got worse when we visited the Parque del Retiro. So many French gardens are mega-manicured; you can't walk on the grass and shrubs are shaped like boxes. The Spanish, on the other hand, embrace the whole "natural" aspect of nature and just leave it at that. That waterfall is likely man-made, but look at those nice and normal trees around it!
There were a lot of performance artists around the lake (with boats!) and people selling balloons, like this terribly sad Spiderman. The suit didn't fit him too well, but it looked better than the one with a beer gut we saw the next day in the Plaza Mayor! Kate and I then proceeded to find a nice spot in the grass to crash for about 30 minutes. Afterwards, we got into a huge line for the Prado's free entry, but it went by pretty quickly and we got to see some incridable artwork.
We went for tapas attempt round two in the evening...which sort of worked, but I don't think we got the full effect of going out for Spanish tapas. I think that, however, would have required much more beer consumption. Instead of drinking copious amounts of alcohol, we went to another bar with a stranger! The lesser of two evils, right? We chose the first bar because of its wonderful Halloween decorations and after not getting service at a table and wondering if you have to go to the bar to order, we just found some seats at the bar. Our neighbor over there heard us speaking English and when the game he was watching ended, he joined our conversation - he's a Swede working in Madrid. We haven't been too impressed with young Parisian males, so we were quite pleased to meet someone friendly who didn't say a single creepy comment to us. He showed us another bar nearby that serves a typical local drink consisting of wine with sugar water - he didn't call it sangria, but it had two orange slices in it and I imagine is pretty similar. Walking back to the hostel, the streets were packed! Definitely more crowded than during the day. We could hear people on the streets outside until wayyy into the morning hours. Oh, and there were ladies of the night, if you will, a few streets down too. Kind of like that time I stayed in the red light district in Amsterdam...
We woke up again at 8 on Sunday, checked out of the hostel, and started another day in this beautiful city, absolutely loving the weather. On our way to a market, we kept an eye out for another tradition spanish dish, tortilla espanola (spanish omelet - egg, potato, cheese) for breakfast.
This meal at a little diner was only 3.30 euro! It completely made our day in so many ways - delicious, cheap, the wonderful atmosphere...
We spent the rest of the morning at a market where we each grabbed some good finds before it got uncomfortably crowded. We got lost making our way back to the Plaza Mayor, but everything was okay when we found the bakery at which we drooled while looking at the window display hours earlier. As students in France aka baked goods connoisseurs in training, we had to give the Spanish bakers a chance before we got on the metro and headed back to the airport. We were in such a good mood from the lovely Spanish climate, friendly locals, and vibrant culture that we chatted and laughed our way through the airport downtime and bus ride back to the city (I may or may not have pretty much passed out on the plane).
Paris greeted us with cold weather and rain, but we had expected nothing less.
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