But let's not think about that. Let's think about THE CAPITAL OF SPAIN. Because it is beautiful. And the people there are REALLY nice.
Anyway, my friends and I organized a kind of last minute trip to Madrid for last weekend (Last minute meaning I had to stay in a different hostel each night. blech.). So the day before I went to Sants (Barcelona's EVIL Train station) for three hours so that I could activate my rail pass and get a reservation on a train to Madrid.
About trains. I love them.
Planes are so difficult: you have to go through security, get there an hour early (meaning you wait around for a while), deal with horrible lines, Ryanair customer service, all that fun stuff. Trains are so EASY. You get your ticket, you put your bag through a little scanner, you wait for about 10 minutes, and then you get on the train.
Then you get to your destination, walk out of the station, and there's the city. Okay, you don't see it quite from that angle, but you get my drift. So nice. I'm so happy I only have two more plane flights left in Europe. And then I go home and have a million more. Oh well. They have Southwest at home. SO because of my newfound train-derived freedom I walked off in the completely wrong direction, and it took me at least two hou
rs to GET to the hostel where my friends were waiting for me. Oops. Luckily this gave them time to plan out an ABSURDLY busy day, so I dropped off my stuff and we were off.
Out of the list they found of the 10 must-sees of Madrid, we did all but one that first day.
And it was lovely. We found a place with 2.50 euro beers that come with free tapas, and promised the slightly sketchy guys we'd come back for lunch the next day, which we did, and tried Calamari sandwiches. Don't try them if you don't like salt. Luckily I do :). The next day we finished up our list of must-sees by convincing ourselves that the Botanical Garden was the Retiro and being offended that we had to pay to get in. Luckily we can READ so we figured it out, and went to the Retiro later, where two different spanish couples basically had sex in front of us. Huh.
Though SOME people might think that the botanical garden was a
mistake, just because we didn't actually want to go there, let me set you straight. It was BEAUTIFUL in there, the trees looked a LITTLE sad but the Tulips and Daffodils absolutely made up for it. The best part, though, is while we were walking along, minding our business, we saw these guys:
WHOA. First, they blew some bubbles and danced around.Ya know, no big deal. Except you're in SPARKLY GOLD SPANDEX! So we took some pics and kept walking, and when we got back, there were a couple children around them, either loving it or absolutely terrified. Then the fairypeople started walking off and gesturing for us (okay, probably the children, but we were THERE) to come with them. What we were SUPPOSED to do? They frolicked over to a fountian full of balls full of gold raffia and started playing with them, except now they had some gold rattles that they were playin around with as well. It was BIZZARE. And awesome. I loved it. :)
After that, I went to Toledo for a day trip on my own, which was nice, but the city is VERY dirty and it was rainy. Also, there is SO much to do there, so many different museums and churches, but very few of them are free, and I got there so late most of them were closed. Sad. I DID go to the El Greco house museum, which was very cool, and had one of his Apostleries(?) okay I don't remember the term at all, but it's just his depiction of all the Apostles and Jesus. I liked it a lot. Also, if the people in Madrid were nice, the people in Toledo were even nicer. I went into one store and the woman waited on me while her ADORABLE daughter just ran around and around with her husband. It was so much more ALIVE than the places you have to buy crappy cheap tourist stuff in Barcelona. But I guess that's what I get for buying crappy cheap tourist stuff. Also, they had suits of armor EVERYWHERE and I would have bought Andy a sword but I don't think airport security would be very happy about that. Probably that would even be stretching TRAIN security. :)
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