After walking through the rain to get to the bus at Dingle we made our way to Kerry airport.From there we flew to London Lutron, which we laid over at for 5 hours before our flight to Madrid. As peanut butter was already becoming intolerable, we scraped together what pence Tim had left from his trip to visit Tricia in London early in the year to get a couple of cheap salads. Unfortunately that salad cream the British use is an abomination, it’s nothing but rubbish, and as such we used some vinegar and mustard stolen from McDonald’s to flavor our meals. Finally, after about 14 hours of being on buses, planes, in airports and metros, we arrived in Madrid. Tim’s roommate from BC, Ethan, met us at our ‘graffittied’ hostel, and we hung out for a little while before going to bed. It was very nice to see him and he showed us a unique part of Madrid’s culture—the botellon, a phenomenon where raucous youths do not go to bars or other establishments in the evening, but just occupy public parks and squares to have their fun.We grabbed a couple of Kebabs at a trusty local establishment and hung out on some kiddy toys.After a bit of this fun we quickly went to bed—we were completely exhausted from our long day of travel.
The next morning we woke up and walked down to the Palacio Real. We arrived just in time for the changing of the guard, even though we stopped in the Plaza de Espana to take a picture of the statue of Don Quixote with Sancho Panza. The changing of the guard was as most changing of the guard ceremonies are, though this one was a bit more upbeat than ceremonies we’ve seen in the past, complete with horses and music. After this we chose to wander the streets of Madrid for a couple of hours, something we try to do almost anywhere we go, in order to get a feel. The city was not at all a monolithic entity, it was sometimes modern, sometimes traditional, some streets were narrow and some were very wide. At times it felt like being in NYC, but at others we certainly felt as if we were somewhere we hadn’t been before. At the advice of Ethan, we next went to the Museo de Reina Sofia, the modern art museum in Madrid. Thanks to Tim’s Spanish, (not certain if it was because the guard understood him, or because he couldn’t understand the guard) we got into the museum for free, and as far as modern art museums go we certainly enjoyed it very much. The highlight of the museum for everyone is Picasso’s “Guernica,” and enormous piece which was flanked by two guards ready to pounce on any unsuspecting photo-snappers.
After the museum we walked back to the hostel where we met a very suavely dressed Ethan—a man on the verge of graduation, a ceremony which for some reason his Spanish school felt the need to go forth with. The ceremony was nice, we sat as four us his teachers gave unintelligible speeches in Spanish, and then listened as two of the American students gave speeches in Spanish, which Tim could somewhat understand. The best part was afterwards—we’d always heard that the Spanish know how to celebrate, and these people corroborated that report, with enough free food to feed an army. We left stuffed. Then we went back with Ethan to meet his host family, Tim and Ethan spoke to his host babysitter for a while in Spanish and the mom lavished some more free food upon us. We then went out for a little while with Ethan and some of his friends from school to celebrate. The most memorable part was getting a beer at this deli around 1130PM. It was a place we never would have thought to go into otherwise unless we were there with someone who knew that this existed. Spain really likes ham, so this deli had, as many do in Spain, dozens of Pig Legs hanging from all over the ceiling. Under this delicious canopy were two beer taps which were used to fuel the bar scene which flourished at night. If nothing else, it was unique. Another interesting note from the night was that on almost every street corner in Madrid, one can find small, cheap grocery stores run by people straight from China. These people often speak shotty Spanish, shotty English, but obviously good chinese. We went into several of these stores looking for necessities such as sun screen (Allie) or contact solution (Tim and Allie). Often we’d walk in speaking English to each other, so the Chinos (as the Spanish call them), would attempt to engage us with English. When that failed Ethan would try to talk to them in Spanish, and would fail. Finally, Allie would start using Chinese, and we’d be able to get across what we needed to say.
The next day we woke up and again did a bit more walking around before we reached El Parque de Buen Retiro, a massive park in Rome. It had a beautiful monument set beside a man-made pond as well as many places to walk around peacefully. The pond was filled with bobbing paddle boats, but we elected not to take one out as the water was a bit dirty. We sunbathed on the side of the pond, listening to an absolutely dreadful Sax player across the way, we probably heard him play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” 10 times in 40 minutes. Later when we walked around again we found some respectable musicians, including accordion players and one Harpist who was quite talented.
Then we met up with Ethan, who brought us to another part of the park where there was a festival going on because the Champion’s League Final was taking place that weekend in Madrid (very important soccer tournament). It was pretty amazing to see how much they had set up just for a few days—they even had a mini soccer field complete with stands and a megatron where we watched some supremely talented 12 year olds play soccer better than most Americans could ever hope to. Then we walked to the Prado Museum, which was just across the street. It was an impressive museum, very very large, and we checked out some of its awesome Spanish art. Then we walked back towards our hostel, ready for an early night after two pretty late ones. We stopped for one last meal with Ethan, getting Tapas. The place he brought us to had a unique spin on the common Spanish dish, giving Tapas in the form of small baguettes with toppings. Allie especially enjoyed her chocolate, almond shaving mini sandwich.
Then it was time to part with Ethan and Madrid, as he had to study for his upcoming finals and we had to get ready for bed and Barcelona. We enjoyed Madrid, especially spending time with Ethan as it was good to see him and we got to see a very different side of the city from what we would have seen by ourselves.
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