Quite Curious

alf of our Spain trip was in Barcelona, the last half was in Madrid. Totally different experience. Barcelona has this super chic, LA-like beach city thing going on, and Madrid had more of the old-town, big city feel. It was a one hour plane ride from Barcelona to Madrid. We could have taken the bullet train, but for some reason, it was ridiculously expensive, and taking the night train would have taken 9 hours (and still cost more).

We didn’t do much this day, just kind of hung out at the park and in the shopping areas. Madrid is mostly museums, which we avoided as much as we could. My camera ran out of memory so most of these photos are from Mike’s camera.

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See: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Hotel Victoriano

We arrived at our hotel, Hostal Abel Vicotoriano. (Photos here). It was really nice! It’s a family-owned guesthouse, with rooms that share common hallway bathrooms, or rooms with a private bathroom (we had the latter). They hotel is the entire second floor of a high rise shared with several other businesses.

The price was great (I think we paid $30/ea per night), the place was clean and well decorated, the people didn’t speak much English but were very sweet, and the location couldn’t be better - it was right outside of a metro stop. The room was on the smaller side, but I don’t think it bothered us that much since we’re used to living in small spaces.

The only downside was the noise! We were in Madrid on Friday and Saturday night, and it was party city outside. But why, I’m not sure. The only thing around was a falafel place and a drugstore.

The itsy bitsy bathroom and the itsy bitsy television with three stations. I think I actually like staying at these types of places. The nicer the hotel, the more likely you’ll want to stay inside, right? So get yourself a tiny room and you’ll want to go outside and explore more.

They gave us these yummy candies we started to refer to as “sourballs”. They were lollipops that were sour in the middle, and for some reason, they were exceptionally good. We stole all the lollipops in the candy jar in the lobby every night, and looked to buy some every time we were in a supermarket in Madrid. No luck, though.

Here’s the view from the room. The balcony was under construction.

I had a sardine and cheese sandwich before we left for Madrid. I know, it doesn’t look tasty in the photo, but it was. Except it was a little too salty. It was basically two slivers of sardines (plenty, if you ask me, they were very strong) and manchego cheese served on a baguette which had been rubbed with a tomato. Very rich, very good.

The thing I noticed about the Spanish is that they don’t seem to take pride in their bread very much - they were all exactly the same, no matter where you went. It was just a vehicle to hold meat, which is something that they do take lots of pride in.

El Rastro Flea Market

One of the first things that we did in Madrid was go to El Rastro, a flea market that occurs every Sunday, and is supposedly one of the largest flea markets in Europe. I believe it. It was enormous. Was there cool Spanish stuff to buy? Yep. Was it mostly cheap crap from China that you find in any American store? Yep. A bit of a disappointment but was fun nonetheless.

Lots and lots and lots of people, and lots and lots and lots of cheap stuff from China.

Parque del Buen Retiro Park

We thought we would take it easy today, so we went to one of the city’s largest parks, called El Retiro. This was, the mother of all parks. I think it’s bigger than the entire city I live in right now. It had all these lakes, and palaces, and gardens…my god, we didn’t even get to see the whole thing.

So I was really, really hoping that we could go paddle boating in the lake that day like the pretty picture in the tourbook but nooooo they had to shut it down for some reason. The thing I realized about Spain is that they decide to close things down on a whim, and it’s really all very unpredictable.

But we had fun anyway. We wandered around, took pictures of cool stuff, fed the pigeons, had good beer. Their beer is not only better, but it’s cheaper than buying water.

They had a few of these super manicured gardens, with all the flowers properly labeled. Come to think of it, this was the cleanest, most well-maintained park I’ve ever seen.

Me, being silly.

Mike’s turn to be silly.

The Crystal Palace

While we were walking though the park, we stumbled upon the Crystal Palace - a pavilion made entirely of glass! It was pretty impressive.

It was so beautifully constructed.

It was closed when we got there, not sure why. It’s also closed on rainy days, which is really too bad because I think it would be cool to be inside while it rains.

Madrid’s Metro System

Madrid’s metro system is a bit older, and a bit more crowded. It was still the same prompt service that we got in Barcelona, though.

It’s amazing how these metro stations are constructed. You can walk from one part of the city to the other just walking through these underground stations. We walked half a mile from one to the other once. And these escalators? There were stations that had FOUR of these levels. It’s hard to even understand why and how some of these stations get so deep into the ground.

Oh, and the people looked more like regular city folk - not like the models that we saw everywhere in Barcelona.

Great signage everywhere. It helped a lot.

Some of the stations look really nice. This is one of the entrances to a big stop - the “Sol” station.

And…there’s more ham

I went on the other day about Spain’s strange obsession with ham. Well. While we were in Madrid, we stumbled upon the motherload, the “Museum of Ham”. And then…we saw “Ham Paradise”. As if we weren’t already dazed by the amounts of ham people were trying to sell us every time we sat down to eat.

And…

Chueca

Funny story. That evening, we decided to wander over to a shopping district in Madrid called Chueca. It had lots of great stores and cool stuff. So we were wandering in and out of these shoe stores, everything was going fine…and then almost instantly, the entire area became a kind of scary, rowdy, party place. And not just and party district - the gay club district, which is normally fun, if you’re in San Francisco or something. Our body clocks had been messed up since we started the trip so we completely forgot it was Friday night, and that the clubs just started to open. Oh well. It was an experience to remember. I’m telling you - it was like shopping mall to nightclub town in five minutes. So weird.

Saw some guys draw graffiti on a storefront. It was the opening night for the store. Thought it was interesting.

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See: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4