El Rastro and the Sights of Madrid

Trip Start Jan 26, 2008

Trip End Feb 29, 2008

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Where I stayed

Cat's Hostel Madrid

(Madrid hotels)

Flag of Spain Madrid, Spain
Monday, February 18, 2008

We had a night of interrupted sleep thanks to our fellow residents. There were three girls in particular who seemed to be locals but perhaps usually lived outside of the city and were staying at the hostel in order to enjoy a night out on the town. They were very noisily as they were on their way out at 10:00pm, then back in at 11:00pm, turning the light on and chattering away. They soon went out again and peace was restored only to be interrupted again at 12:00am when they returned, once more turning the light on and chattering away. Again they were soon out the door, this time retuning at 3;00am and showing the same degree of consideration for the rest of the room's occupants as they had previously, I.e. none.

We got up at about 8:30am, showered and then headed downstairs for free breakfast - croissant, orange juice and hot chocolate. After that we headed out to see the El Rastro open air markets

Glorieta de Puerta de Toledo

. Essentially all the streets in this area of town are closed to traffic and stall holders set up along the various streets. there is one main thoroughfare where you can find clothing, jewellery, souvenirs and the like, but up the side streets there are usually more specific stalls - one side street was essentially an open air art market, one side street had a series of stalls selling pet products, etc. Belle picked up a sterling silver chain to match here amber and silver pendant from St Petersburg but otherwise we saved our pennies today. After wandering the market for a couple of hours, we headed up Gran via de San Francisco and took in the Glorieta de Puerta de Toledo and the San Francisco El Grande. Then it was north up Calle de Bailen and over a bridge which offers an impressive view away to the west as the city drops away below you. Continuing up Calle be Bailen we came to the Plaza de la America from where we had a view of the Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Almudena and the Palacio Real. We then headed back to Plaza Mayor for a lunch of Bocadillas de Callamari, a bread roll stuffed full of wonderfully fresh fired calamari rings.

After lunch we headed East to take in the sights of the other side of the city. We made our way to Paseo del Prado and took in the sights around the Museo del Prado. There was a small exhibition of large bronze sculptures just outside the museum, there was an enormous queue to buy tickets to get into the museum, and there was a memorial to Goya that was photographed while we decide that we did not want to endure at least a 50 minute wait in a very slow moving queue

Palacio Real

. Going north up Paseo del Prado we passed the Iglesia de San Jeronimo el Real, Fuente de Neptuno, Monumento a los Ca�dos por Espa�a and the Palacio de Linares. We turned west and headed along Calle de Alcala, back toward Puerta del Sol where we managed to spot the Bear and the Strawberry Tree and said bear was duly photographed. We browsed a few more of the shops and when we started to notice the pangs of outrageous fortune, no, no, slings and arrows of hunger, no, no the outrageous fortune of hunger, that's it, we headed back to Plaza Mayor and found a Tapas bar that looked busy and so held the promise of excellent food. We went in and ordered some Patats Bravs - potatoes with a spicy sauce, Boquerones fritas - deep fried sardines, some deep fried little octopi(usses??), some mushrooms with garlic and olive oil and some green olives (actually the green olives just turned up, but we did order the other four dishes). I then proceeded to enjoy very much the Sangria as we slowly made our way through the majority of what had been placed before us. We thought we did pretty well to finish most of our food but the guy next to us, a local, got through a bottle of red wine, a big plate of cheese, an equally big plate of Jamon, a huge bread roll and a dish of garlic fired shrimp. We, it seems, are rank amateurs when it comes to eating Tapas.

We slowly waddled back to our hostel where we tried to find somewhere comfortable to sit while we waited for the laptop to charge. There are few powerpoints around the place, there is one in our room but there is nowhere to sit in the room except on the floor and I did not feel safe in just leaving the laptop plugged in to charge while heading off somewhere else. We eventually ended up in the bar where there are a few powerpoints, and while I waited for the laptop to charge for just on two hours I proceeded to download some 250MB of software updates for my MacBook - that will teach the hostel not to be more laptop user friendly! Latter in the evening we finally managed to get the comfortable chairs in the chill out room where we spent a quiet evening reading and doing Sudoku.