Madrid, Toledo, and Western Spain.

  Madrid, Spain
Friday, February 29, 2008

Day 1 - Madrid is great!

Arrived in the hostel

  

Los Amigos - Opera Hostel

We're recovering from Jetlag, it's pretty bad this time. The best part about getting tired at noon is the whole city shuts down anyway. The spanish still retain their traditions of the mid day nap. Small shops close down between 12 and 2 for a mid day siesta, then they open again until about 8 or 9. At that point most people stop for tapas and a beer at a bar. Then after that, at about 11 or 12 they go to dinner. Then if they feel up to it they'll get ready and go out at about 1am. I have never seen so many people out so late in a city before.

Chocolate con Churros

There are several cool plazas spread out throughout the old city, probably markets in an earlier day. Now they are surrounded with restaraunts and tourist shops to cater to the large number of people who visit every year. Puerto del Sol is one of these places. Similar to Times Square (but not so commercial) it is the center of the city and a great place to sit and people watch. We tried to go to Toledo, but we found out that our rail passes didn't cover the route, dejected we tried to go to Segovia and found that our rail passes didn't cover that route too. Rather pissed off that we spent all this money on passes that were no good we found an information stand and learned that "special routes" and senic routes aren't covered in our passes. It was just coincedence that the only two special routes out of Madrid were to Toledo and Segovia. Just our bad luck starting off I guess. We walked home from the Train station looking around and enjoying the scenery. After exploring the city we took a jetlag induced siesta and then went to see the Museo de Prado, Spain's largest classical art museum.

The Museo de Prado

We saw some really famous pieces and hundereds of masterpieces by Goya and other influental spanish artists, the Prado is gigantic and there is no way anyone could see it in a day. We managed to see all we needed to see in three hours.


Day 2 Toledo

Toledo seal

We woke up early and did some planning for our trip to Lisbon and Barcelona. We're trying to stay at least a week ahead in out planning so we can adjust if there are any problems. We arrived at the train station but found that Toledo trains have to be purchased at a counter and not at an electronic kiosk. The ticket counter was a "take a number" system and was about as efficient as the DMV. After an hour and fifteen minutes of waiting in line and two missed trains, we finally got our tickets and proceeded to Toledo. Once there we got lunch materials at a small grocier then set off to find the Cathedral.

Toledo Street

A note about Toledo. It is a 15th century city that is on a hill surrounded by a river on two sides and a 30ft high fortified wall on the other. The city looks very similar to the way it would in older times. City laws prevent any new buildings or renovations to the outside of the buildings to keep the old feeling. The streets are very narrow and can barely fit three people wide at times. It seems like no matter where you're walking in Toledo you are walking up hill. Our feet were killing us by the time we found the Cathedral but it was well worth it. After seeing the Cathedral we walked around the city and ended up in Zocodover square where we sat and watched the people for a while and I got a beer at McDonalds.

Royale with Cheese

I wasn't even thirsty, I just wanted one so I could say I got one. :-) One of the most remarkable things about Toledo is the Sword factory located just outside the city. Swords are on display in almost every tourist shop and supply store. I visited this city when I came to Spain with my high school Spanish club, so I already had a sword from toledo. I don't know how I would have carried one around if I bought one anyway.

Toledo Sunset

The sunset was beautiful and the train ride back was quick. Overall a great day trip and worth doing if you ever find yourself in Madrid for a few days.

Day 3 - Reina Sofia and the MADrider Pub Crawl
We slept in because it was sunday. When we finally go motivated we made our way to the madrid art museum, the "Centro de Arte Reinea Sofia". Karla and I have visited a few modern art museums and we enjoy arguing with each other about what pieces we like and it always ends up being a long winded discussion on what exactly classifies as modern art. Every time I go to a modern art museum I wonder why I'm not featured as the touring artist because at times I thing that an eight year old could create pieces that look better than some of the stuff on display. There was a Picasso exhibit that was touring from France that had over 5,000 pieces ordered in chronological order. Many of the "pieces"were just pages out of his notebook that were framed and put on display. Sometimes I wonder if Picasso ever intended for his notebook to be in a gallery..... We both agreed that we liked the Salvadore Dali pieces (most of them), he was very talented and I like the way he uses his shading. We also decided that be both didn't like Miro, a famous Spanish surrealist painter that is talented, no doubt. But he has pieces in the museum that are absolutely a waste of space! anybody can paint a canvas stark white and call it modern art....
After 4 grueling hours of modern art, we went across the street to the Pinocchio cafe. I learned somthing very new about Europe that may not be listed in all the guide books. If you go to a restaraunt and they bring you bread, it's not nessicarily free!!! We were brought chips and bread before we ordered and when we got the bill, there was a 3 Euro charge for it. In America it would be scandalous to charge for something that the coustomer didn't order, but that's why we're on this backpacking tour. To find out how Eruope differs from our everyday lives. Anyway, don't eat the bread, just send it back! I tried to get back at the place by not tipping the waitress but then I also found out that there is a VAT (value added tax) put on to the bill as well that counts as the tip. So you don't need to (and shouldn't) tip on top of that. This is the main reason or reasons why people will tell you that everything in Europe is so expensive, above and beyond the fact that the Euro is overpowering the dollar at the moment. We went back to the hostel after lunch and took a little siesta.

Madrider Pub Crawl

At night we went on a local pub crawl. This was a truely Spanish pub crawl in the sense that it didn't even start until 11:30. For 10 Euro's we went to 4 bars and a salsa disco, the members of the event all got some free shots and drink discounts, we got to see some deep parts of the city bars that we would NEVER have found by ourselves. The first place was a spanish bar, but it played American popular music over the sound system. The second was an Argentinean Disco but it was early in the night so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. I don´t know what about the bar mad it Argentenian, except maybe the bartenders.... The third place was...the third place was.... Well, the fourth place was a Hip Hop bar that had a DJ spinning American Hip Hop hits. I.....don't remember too much else, check Karla's blog for details of that night. (p.s. Karla is journaling by hand and probably won´t updat her blog until the trip is finished. I´m digital, she´s analogue, to each their own.) 

Day 4 - Leaving Madrid
I DO hovever, remember that I had a splitting headache the next morning and it was a reason to sleep in until we had to check out of the hostel. We had to be out of our rooms by 11:00 but we stayed in the common area until about 1:00 planning more deatails about how we're going to get to Ireland and looking at train schedules and what not.

Plaza and Karla

At the recommendation of the front desk clerk, we went to Plaza Mejor in downtown ate some Bocadillos. They are local sandwiches that are like sausage/hotdogs served in a long dinner roll that soaks up the juces from the meat. Spicy and Spanish, they are a local treat worth eating again. And affordable at E2.30 a piece. Some people were even eating calimari bocadillos which seem really strange to me, but, I was just excited that I tried somehting new, lets not go overboard with the calamari.... 
After restabilization of my stomach, we walked down to the Royal Palace and took a tour. In the heart of the old district of Madrid the palace was originally designed to be the largest palace in the world but after the architect suddenly died during the final stages of the design, his understudy had to complete a smaller version of the palace, a fraction of the size, with a mere 2500 rooms. Only 50 of these rooms are available in the tour, along with the courtyard, armory and gardens. I know you're not going to believe this but it's not the best palace I've ever seen....

Spanish Palace

Due to the fact that it's in a suburban area, the grounds are not as elaborate as the gardens of Versailles in France, and most of the rooms we walked through were no larger than a standard hotel room. However the decoration and architecture in this palace was defiantly a close second to the French palace of Versailles. At the far end of the courtyard was a gigantic cathedral, I guess the king and queen didn't like traveling very far on Sunday's to get to church, so they had the church built in their back yard.

Palace church

We didn't tour this church but I assume it was massive, had a dome in the center, was shaped like a cross, and had stained glass windows and paintings on the ceilings by local yet famous artists. Once you've seen three dozen European cathedrals you've seen them all. (the Vatican doesn't count). After walking through the palace gardens and wishing we were royalty, we grabbed some ice cream and enjoyed life in the park. Madrid was definitely everything we wanted it to be and it was a great place to start our journey. After saying our goodbyes to the city we packed up our bags and headed off to the train station. When we got on the train we realized that the seats were not that different from the seats on a standard Amtrak train. I even noticed that the rail cars were made by the same Italian company "Talgo". Our rail passes only afford us second class seating so we had to travel to Lisbon from Madrid overnight in regular seats. It brought new meaning to the word SUCK. And we kind of wondered if this whole "free rail" thing was really worth it. I mean, it wasn't even completely free, the reservations on the train were 6E each direction, it was only the ticket on the train that was free. Karla got a little bit of sleep on the 9 hour train ride to Lisbon, I think I got a whopping 20 minutes of sleep near the end. When we arrived in Portugal we both decided to fly in and out of Ireland rather than take the train. So far it was good for day trips, but overnight trains without sleeper cars are for the birds.
More as it develops.....