Madrid, Spain
So, I am going to try and make one post per country just so everyone can get a feel for my stay per place. We had a very nice hostel. It was quite full for our stay. I like Madrid, though it has the feel of most large cities: very little greenery, everyone is speaking a foreign language (in this case Spanish) and I am finding cool little things to occupy myself. Kevin spoke spanish, god it's sexy! It really helped to travel with someone that spoke the language definately take a phrase book, not everyone in the service industry speaks decent spanish. We went to the Prado museum and the Sophia museum. Saw Las Meninas and the garden of Earthly delights in the Prado and tons of Dali in the Sophia. We hung around in the gardens of the palace which was a short walk from our hostel. We did a pub crawl which involved 4 free shots at 4 bars until like 4am when we crapped out before the last salsa club. I am still recovering from a cold/sinus thing, so I wasn't up for staying out in the smokey bars all night. Most Spaniards stay out till 5-6am. The pub crawl was relatively cheap: 10E considering that most of the places that covers that was a good deal. Of course, we bought extra drinks but hey, it was awesome. Kevin and I did our own personal pub crawl the second night we were here and we both got a little tipsy. We did 3 pubs that night, mostly Irish pubs because they are free and chill.
We took a day trip to Toledo. That is a very nice city. Our eurorail passes didn't work for that trip, which kinda sucked so the tickets were out of pocket. It was a 30 minute train ride from Madrid. Incidently, the metro is really good here. very easy to navigate. Toledo is a rustic town with a giant wall around the city. It's an old fortress town with a cathedral which was the main attraction. The Cathedral of Calle Cardenal Cisneros. We had some trouble navigating but enough people could point us through the narrow cobble stone streeets, that we were finally able to find it after two hours... of walking up hill. I hung out in the Plaza of Zocodover. Yeah, needless to say we were exhausted pretty early. We went back to the train station area and sat under a bridge (Puente de Azarquiel) and watched the bats feeding... until we realized they were eating the mosquitoes around us and then we cleared out of there pretty fast.
We had breakfast at Dunkin Doughnuts but I had pastries that were unavailable in the states, so I didn't feel so weird. We saw the modern art at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. We saw a number of Dali and Picasso works. We did a pub crawl for 10E to 4 different bars and free shots at each and salsa dancing. We bailed at 4am, the crawl went until 7am! They party HARD in Madrid! UNbelieveable!
All and all, unless you have an insider that lives here, I'd say you could see everything you want in Madrid in about 3-5 days depending on your speed of tourist. Unless you are going for the night scene and then knock yourself out, it's kickin'.
We took a day trip to Toledo. That is a very nice city. Our eurorail passes didn't work for that trip, which kinda sucked so the tickets were out of pocket. It was a 30 minute train ride from Madrid. Incidently, the metro is really good here. very easy to navigate. Toledo is a rustic town with a giant wall around the city. It's an old fortress town with a cathedral which was the main attraction. The Cathedral of Calle Cardenal Cisneros. We had some trouble navigating but enough people could point us through the narrow cobble stone streeets, that we were finally able to find it after two hours... of walking up hill. I hung out in the Plaza of Zocodover. Yeah, needless to say we were exhausted pretty early. We went back to the train station area and sat under a bridge (Puente de Azarquiel) and watched the bats feeding... until we realized they were eating the mosquitoes around us and then we cleared out of there pretty fast.
We had breakfast at Dunkin Doughnuts but I had pastries that were unavailable in the states, so I didn't feel so weird. We saw the modern art at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. We saw a number of Dali and Picasso works. We did a pub crawl for 10E to 4 different bars and free shots at each and salsa dancing. We bailed at 4am, the crawl went until 7am! They party HARD in Madrid! UNbelieveable!
All and all, unless you have an insider that lives here, I'd say you could see everything you want in Madrid in about 3-5 days depending on your speed of tourist. Unless you are going for the night scene and then knock yourself out, it's kickin'.