my Madrid recap
Madrid 16th and 17th of February 2008
It was Roxanne’s birthday the Friday before. We had about 25 people in our apartment at one point and it was almost impossible to move. I think everyone had a good time. It was potluck and we had a ton of food. Then we went out to the clubs. The first was a really cool salsa place then we went to a couple of our favorites after that. We were out until 5:30 in the morning.
Slept for 2 hours. Walked to the bus station and bought our tickets to Madrid. The trip was 9:30 - 1:30, we slept a bit, but not the whole time. Madrid was really warm when we got there. We took a taxi to the hotel, checked in and dropped off our stuff. It was a nice little hotel with 4 beds in one room.
Audrey (the girl that organized the trip) had gone because she really wanted to see “ARCO” which is an art exhibit that is huge and comes once a year. We took the bus to it, but it was 30 Euro to get in, and it’s modern art, which means if I did a really stupid finger painting and slipped it in there everyone would think it’s amazing. lol. So I opted to meet up with them in 2 hours.
I took a metro and picked a random stop in the center of the city next to a bunch of monuments. It actually dropped me off really close to where we stayed when I went to Madrid 3 years ago! It was right near the monument of Cervantes and Don Quixote. I got a coke at a restaurant where we had breakfast… very nostalgic. Lol. Then I walked towards Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and saw a place where we had ice cream. But I don’t remember if we got Haagan Daaz or the place right next to it. But I got an amazing ice cream from the one next to it.
I got to the palace and there was some other festival going on outside. There were people doing some “interpretive dancing” to music with a guy on stilts chasing them. Then at another stage there was a really funny group of 3 people. The guy was lipsinging to opera and the 2 girls were flirting with him. At another place it was like a giant snow globe with 2 guys mock sword fighting in it to music.
I went to meet the girls back at ARCO. They said it was amazing, but pretty weird. We took the metro together back to the middle of the city and walked around for awhile. For dinner we were starving so went into the first place we saw. It was on a smaller road and there was absolutely no one else inside. A couple came when we were eating but ate quickly and left. It was really nice though. It was candlelit and there were flowers on our table. Very romantic. It was an Italian place and I got this amazing cheesy noodly plate with wine.
We were at the restaurant for about 2 hours just eating and talking about random things. Then we went back to the hotel because we were tired. But before we could get there, we had to take the metro. We were getting off at our stop and left the metro area, but still had to go up the steps to leave. But… there was a big gate entirely covering the stairs. That we couldn’t figure out how to open. Ahhh!...trapped in the metro at 11 at night. lol.
There was a red button in a little case on the wall with writing above it, but the writing was rubbed off. We didn’t want to push it so we tried to pull at the gate some more or see if there was anything on it to get it open. I wanted to push the button.. it was the logical thing, but we weren’t sure if it was maybe an emergency button. So I was saying that I was going to push it, Roxanne wanted to do something else, but I told her the only other thing to do would be to jump the little gate to get back into the metro without paying, and that’s illegal too. So Roxanne was about to jump it and I was going to push the button.. they were yelling at me not too, but I did, and they started to run away…. and the gate opened. We were laughing hysterically for about 10 minutes because Jess said she ran to avoid the cameras (which are everywhere in the metro) because if I went to jail for pushing an emergency button or Roxanne went to jail for jumping the gate she didn’t want to be on camera, so then she could get us out later. We walked the 2 minutes to our hotel and went to sleep.
The next day we slept late and walked around Madrid. The only other thing that really happened was that we were walking and a woman came up to us handing out free bright red carnations. She didn’t look strange, but free flowers usually means gypsies. Audrey took a flower. I said to her “no Audrey, give back the flower, grab your stuff, and walk.” Another woman popped out of nowhere behind her, and I wouldn’t have noticed but she had red flowers too. I was trying to convince Audrey to get away from them and the other woman was trying to give me a flower. I said “no” in a very forceful way and she called me a “mal rubia” which basically means bad girl. It was pretty funny and I finally got Audrey to walk away.
I explained to her that you shouldn’t take things from gypsies and they were probably going to try to rob her or at the least they would follow her asking for a donation if she had taken the flower. She said she didn’t know! I don’t know how you can come to Europe and not know about gypsies… that was the first thing they told us in high school before we came to Spain. And they’re in the area of just about all the major tourist attractions.
So that was our Madrid experience. We got on the bus at 10:30 and got back into Leon at 2:30 AM Sunday night. Sunday was really cold and we were outside the whole day.. I think that might be part of why I was sick. I intended to go to school the next day, but it didn’t happen. Oh well they have a very common saying here “no pasa nada”… “nothing happened”.lol.