Madrid Spain: Mullet Capital of the World
Trip Start
May 01, 2007
1
13
45
Trip End
Apr 29, 2008
Madrid,
Spain
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The bus ride up from Casablanca was a touch of an adventure: It departed an hour late, and broke down several times (fatally, after we got to Spain). The border crossing wasn't explained to us at all, and caused a bit of stress for us. We had to fill out some yellow card (which no one provided to us when booking, or when we got there) that we had to search for. Thankfully there was a very nice Moroccan guy who helped us out, even though he didn't speak a word of English. About 24 hours later, we were in Madrid - stinky and exhausted, but there. Why they would put us on a coach on it's last legs is beyond me, but its all part of the fun I suppose.
Madrid is a great city. The architecture is fantastic, there are monuments, fountains and parks everywhere, and the streets are full of lively people. It almost seems like no one works here - squares are always packed with people sitting around, drinking coffee or beer. The night really comes alive here - as a matter of fact, the club scene doesn't even start until bars would be shutting down in Canada. You can see people wandering around outside after dark, drink in hand. It's a different world from what we're used to in North America, for sure. It seems like a fantastic, low-stress lifestyle. Buskers abound in town, but they aren't pushy as we've become accustomed to, in a particular North African country that will remain nameless...
01 Plaza Mayor
We took several self-guided walking tours throughout the city, burning several calories and hours in the process. We saw a small stone Egyptian temple that the Egyptian government donated to Spain, a monument to Don Quixote, a statue designed by Galileo, palaces, Cathedrals... you name it. Madrid is really a walker's paradise - it is compact enough to walk across the entire downtown without killing yourself, and the drivers will even yield to pedestrians.
Unfortunately we didn't get to experience much traditional Spanish cuisine, as doing so would have annihilated our daily budget. We pretty much stuck to bocadillos, which are tapas sandwiches, about 3 inches or so long, for 1€ each. They've got some pretty funky fillings, like blue cheese and bacon, but were uniformly good. The other traditional things we had were paella, sangria and porros. The paella...well it really doesn't bear repeating our paella experience, and the sangria didn't really agree with me, although Terri liked it just fine. Porros are pretty much fat churros (which they serve at Taco Bell with sugar and cinnamon). We got them with melted chocolate for breakfast - pretty good stuff.
Madrid made us feel comfortable, and everyone was very pleasant, even though no one speaks English. We actually found that to be more humourous than anything - it was fun pantomiming everything, or translating things into Spanish on the Internet to give to the owner of our hotel. We could definitely return here in the future, and we'd certainly recommend it as a travel destination.
Our next stop: The Eternal City of Rome. Stay tuned...
