Madrid

So this is the first entry in the travel blog. Advance warning: it’s a bit long. I’m not sure if I will keep up this length or not, but here’s what happened once I left SFO:

The flights went about as well as could be expected. I purposely underslept the night before so I would be ready to pass out on the plane. That is always my strategy for long flights despite the fact that it invariably backfires. I didn’t sleep that much. In fact, I am convinced that airlines calculate exactly how to make their seats comfortable and then fall just short of that on purpose for their own entertainment. There have to be hidden cameras somewhere. That window is always in just the wrong place, and there’s never quite enough room to lay forward on your tray table without your back seizing up. Anyway, after pivoting and slouching and craning for a while, I just gave up. I watched movies and played games on my personal video screen. (Delta installs touch screens behind every passenger’s head. That seems downright malicious, but I was entertained.)

We landed in Madrid at about 9:30 in the morning and got right to it. First, we made our way to the hostel to check in and drop our mammoth backpacks. Mine is sort of large and about 40 lbs when fully loaded. Reed brought everything from his apartment - aside from his wife, though she probably could have fit in his tremendous backpack. Even the guy who runs the hostel was impressed. The hostel itself was exactly what we needed – nothing fancy but a good bargain. Then we set out to explore Madrid. We walked around a bit and took in some sites on our way to the Museo del Prado. Everyone said it was the first thing to do in Madrid, so we took in some culture. I even spotted a few paintings that I could identify – just enough to make me feel like I learned something from that awful Art History class in high school.

We walked all over the city on the first day. The weather was a sunny 95 degrees. I loved it. It was nice to get a taste of summer that you just don’t get in San Francisco. Madrid is not quite a huge city and not quite a small one. It has many narrow, cobbled streets with beautiful, classic Spanish architecture, but it also has some large thoroughfares that cut through now and then and meet at large fountains or plazas with archways. It’s like a somewhat smaller version of Rome in that way. Despite being the most populated city in Spain, it doesn’t seem to have a lot of tall buildings, and though it has graffiti here and there, it doesn’t feel urban or seedy. It has its own charm. We walked past lots of plazas and restaurants with outdoor seating and through a huge Central-ish Park. The one thing we didn’t pass much of was people. I was really surprised. It was very quiet throughout most of the day. We still haven’t quite figured out why Wednesday, August 10^th was such a quiet day. But it was.

I was also surprised by how much I wound up speaking Spanish. Most people speak at least some English but not much. Maybe if we stayed at a proper hotel it would’ve been different. And while we probably could have been fine struggling with English, I felt like my Spanish skills made things a lot easier. So that was nice; I held my own. Now and then, I think people mistook me for a Spaniard. If I had worn as much gel as I did in 5^th grade, I would have been more convincing. I’ve also been helping Reed with his Spanish and teaching him some of the finer phrases like, Eso es lo que dijo ella.

Later on the first day, we had our late dinner outside in a really nice plaza. We ate tapas - because that’s how it’s done. The city started to come alive in the evening and the locals came out to the streets. Then we finally crashed for some much overdue sleep. I don’t remember the last time I was that tired.

We started our second day at El Palacio Real de Madrid – which is purportedly the largest palace in Western Europe. Quite a few rooms were open to the public as walked throughout the interior. I have seen my share of palaces, but I was still impressed by this one. The throne room in particular was really impressive. But I only managed to snap one picture before a guard told me, “no fotos.” Too bad.

Right across the way from the palace is La Catedral de la Almudena, which is a huge Catholic Cathedral. It was gorgeous inside – like many famous cathedrals but with a bit more color. I took a lot of great pictures from the inside, and we took the stairs to the top to see the cityscape.

After the Cathedral, we saw the ruins of a small, ancient Egyptian temple that for some reason happens to be way up in Madrid. Then we had lunch and went to a famous chocolatería for churros and chocolate. It’s apparently a very popular dessert – especially with the late-night, post-díscotec crowd since it’s open until 6:00am. (Speaking of the discos, I am pretty sure that I saw the Spanish version of the Jersey Shore cast – including a guy in a neon shirt that said “Sweet Music Make Good Party.” I wish I knew where he got it.)

The last site to see in Madrid was the bullfighting arena. We didn’t get to go inside because there are no bullfights during the week, but we walked around it nonetheless.

And that was Madrid. It was very cool, and a day and a half to see it seemed just about right.

Now, I'm in Lisbon. We just got to our hostel form the overnight train. It was my first of many, many trains and one of four that we’ll be sleeping on. Though I hadn’t been to Madrid, I had been to Spain. Portugal is the first new country for me to see, and since I’m Portuguese myself, I’m very curious to see what it’s like. I'm off to Fátima shortly, and I'll pick up from the night train next time.

Thanks for reading. Portuguese update to come in a few days…

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I am still figuring out this blog format. I'll probably get in the habit of adding a small handful of extra pics after every post. If you click on any picture, you can see it a bit bigger.