Madrid, Spain
Having arrived on the over night train, I dropped my bag off to store and hung around for a while waiting for a 'free' walking tour. I usually do the free walking tours in every city I go to, and this one was ok, but the guide grated in my nerves a bit and at the end I had only a €10 but I had only wanted to give her €7-8 but felt too dodgy asking for change. We had lunch afterwards at a place the guide recommended which did a nice 3 course meal which stuffed us full with paella, pork and cheesecake plus Sangria of course!
After lunch I headed off to the Australian Embassy to Vote. VOTE! Wooooo! 24th floor overlooking Madrid, not a bad spot to make some political choices. Apparently there had been a lot of people through already and it was only the 3rd day the overseas polling was open. So I spent my time numbering every box under the line, got it wrong and had to start again. After about an hour I finally got it right (I'd managed to double up on 4 numbers but they were almost impossible to find) and whipped it all in to my postal vote envelope and popped it in the ballot box. It was probably the most entertaining voting experience because I was the only one there and was chatting to the two invigilators who were working, they were quite nice and had little to do so were chatty if engaged. One was looking at blogs about Miley Cyrus Twerking which started an entertaining discussion. I also informed one of them about the evils of some of the parties, like Rise Up Australia and Australian Voice which were both horribly scary parties keen on purging Australia of any immigrants and other KKKish sentiments. Thankfully I did use the group preferencing booklet so I could work out what some of the parties (like Australian Voice) were like as they incredibly misleading names! But then who is going to name their party the Aussie KKK?
That night I was really exhausted and desperate for some vegetables so I went out to a trendy market that had sort of like a food hall that sold tapas style small plates of different cuisines. I ended up with a vegetarian Greek moussaka and a grilled vegetable and hallumi stack. I was a little bit in heaven. And then I was really done so I went home to bed.
The next morning, after some discoveries the night before and hurried discussions online with a friend, I spent the morning finishing off my job application and sent it off. It originally had a closing date of September 14 however when I'd jumped online the night before, I saw it had moved to close on August 24 and it was already August 28! However, a cunning friend had advised I get in touch early so the company already knew to expect my application so I hurriedly finished updating it (the ad had also changed some of the desired criteria!) and emailed it off, apologising for missing the closing date since the date had changed. So fingers crossed all! Though I understand I had secured a meeting/interview for the week I get back even before I'd submitted my application which is a rather lovely sign, yay for friend suggesting stalking the CEO. (Update: never got the Skype interview and the Gm, not the CEO, gave the job to someone else without me really being in the running, boo!)
Feeling rather virtuous, I headed out for a quick lunch and then made my way to The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza which is possibly Europe's largest private collection that is now managed by the government. It was an amazing cross section of art from across the centuries. I really enjoyed it and took a few hours going through it all. I had bought a combined ticket to the three big galleries and I had originally planned to go to another gallery that afternoon however one and writing a job application had been enough brain drain so instead I headed to Las Veratas, the bull fighting ring. It was a huge ring and I did the audio guide tour and I have to admit I am now so morbidly fascinated that I actually would like to go and see a bullfight, just to understand what the big deal is.
I headed back to the hostel and met some friends who had been to La Tomatina in Valencia. We headed out for Tapas at the place I went to with Busabout and enjoyed a few sangria's and hearing all the gossip.
The next morning I got up relatively early and headed out to Museo de Prado and spent 3 hours looking through their enormous collection which includes some medieval works that I recognise and has a Mona Lisa, ie one done at the same time but by one of Leonardo Da Vinci's students, it's more colourful and less aloof, but really cool. By the time I'd seen it all, I was parched and starving so I sat down for a sandwich and chill out at the museum. I headed out and had a sneaky ice cream on the way to Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. I spent the afternoon wandering through that gallery and especially spent plenty of time looking at Picasso's Guernica. I'd studied it during high school so it was really quite amazing to finally see it in real life. It was stunning and humbling. (My Kyogle High School Art Teacher, Tina, would be so proud!)
By the time I'd finished at the gallery, I was pretty weary and my feet hurt, so I walked back to the hostel through the park, Parque del Buen Retiro and found the El Angel Caido or statue of the falling angel, ie lucifer falling from heaven which is exactly 666m above sea level. Cool, huh? I finally got back to the hostel at about 8pm, absolutely exhausted. I resorted to a microwave meal from the supermarket and sat in the common area while my washing went through the motions. I finally repacked my bag and went to bed sometime after midnight, ready to get up early for my Iberian Adventure.