We took the night train from Paris to Madrid last night. It cost us an arm and a leg, but we did get bunks and got to sleep. I met a Canadian and an American in my dorm, and was lucky enough to be able to speak English with them both, where as Baye only had other women who didn´t speak any English. We arrived at 9am today and took the metro like old pros to our hostel. The information people in the metros were super nice even if we didn´t understand each other. One gentleman mimed to us, pointing to our bags and making a sad face with fingers on both sides of his eyes like tears. I didn´t get it at first until he took Baye´s hands, made them cover up her bag, and mimed someone kicking the bag out. He was trying to have us careful of pick pocketers etc.!
We checked in and got our beds set up. We have safes with locks, and we share a bunk. Today we walked to 4 different plazas, basically squares with statues and stuff in them. The first one we stopped at there were mickey mouse characters, and Elmo and Cookie Monster. We took photos with them, and then they started asking for money. We should´ve known that photos with costumed people in this heat isn´t free... but we didn´t pay anyways, we just ran away haha.
We did a LOT of walking today, and I have blisters despite good shoes with orthodics. We browsed the Plazas in the morning, got really hot so came back for a cold shower and internet, then back out again.
We went to a museum called the ¨Palacio Real¨ (basically the Royal Palace of the Spanish royal family, which is now a museum. It was INCREDIBLE. I couldn´t believe the size of the rooms, biggest ceilings all painted every millimetre with religious images, women, babies with wings, or fighting scenes. and that was just the arced ceilings. between the ceilings and walls were mostly gold, and many of the things in the castle were coated with gold. The tile floor underneath was always in complicated patterns with the world´s biggest rugs on top. Plus the tapestries hanging from the walls, the ginormous mirrors, and then the thrones... not to mention all the statues (mostly of lions). There was a whole section in the museum (besides walking through 50\3000 rooms) that displayed various suits of armour that the spanish army used to wear at various periods, for combat or for jousting. The styles are hilarious to go through, and they even showed it all on maniquen horses plus there were some for children. Really fascinating.
After dinner we walked another 30 minutes up to where we were recommended to go to a restaurant for Tapas. At this point we´d finished our water and we were absolutely dying, but at 6:30 they knew we were canadian, cause their kitchen doesn´t open until 830. So we stopped for a beer and a water, tried to browse around the area to kill time (but there wasn´t anything to see) and came back again for Japanese Tapas. they were SO GOOD. I couldn´t tell you what most of them were... we had shrimp, chilli with nachos, some kind of stuffed baked potato thing that is more like a spring roll than an american baked potato... some meat pie that was fishy, sushi of some sort, and a few more, then 2 deserts: a hot brownie and a raspberry jam cheesecake. yep, we felt a lot better after this. Took the metro back to the hostel. currently trying to figure out our next stops so that tomorrow we can get in a lot more sites! I really hope I get to go to a flamenco show!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment