Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Madrid is the last city that this Blog will report on. This fact could make a grown man cry, apologies if I forced tears upon you. Half of my heart will remain in Europe, as well as half of Matt's belongings, but the latter was not by choice, just a habit of leaving things behind. It has been one hell of a journey, but I will do one final blog wrapping up in a few days.
Suprisingly, Madrid and Barcelona have very little in common apart from the language. We were very suprised that the guys selling fake clothing and accessories were rare, which is stark contrast to the rest of Europe and especially Barcelona. Also, shops all sold official souveniers and football jerseys which was a change. One thing about Madrid that is great is the amount of shade. To combat the heat, all major shopping streets have shadecloth above them. This ensures that shopping is more pleasant and that your chances of getting sh*t on by pigeons are reduced.
Madrid's streets have no logical pattern, making navigation difficult. At times like these the ability to fly would be handy, so we hired wings for a day. This of course is a fib, we had to simply bite the bullet (apologies to the dentist) and try and make sense of our map. That brings me to our dear map. Our map was so big that it could be used as a blanket for the small country of Bermuda. It was incredibly annoying to carry in your pocket, but to it's credit we rarely got lost.
When we arrived in Madrid, we had a suprise regarding our chosen accomodation. The "hotel" was actually on the third floor of an apartment building, which was questionable at first. However the lady who owned it was lovely and cleaned our room and folded our clothes at every oppurtunity. It was a little annoying when she was trying to make our beds while we were still asleep, but god bless her. The room cost a mere €16 each a night, which was great value considering the awesome location, flat screen tv in our room and guest kitchen.
The local supermarket provided us with some great purchases to make full use of the kitchen. The highlight of these has to be these chocolate puddings topped with whipped cream that were only 18 cents each! We applied some logic in this situation and figured that if we bought 16 we would be able to eat two a day. Needless to say we didn't quite finish them, but to our credit only a few remained.
Saturday night was, in my point of view, the highlight of our trip. We had secured two tickets to watch Real Madrid take on Osasuna in the top flight of Spanish football. For those of you who don't know, Real Madrid is argueably the most successful football team in the world in the modern era. Being in the Santiago Bernabeu along with 75000 others was a surreal experience, and the positive result of 1-0 enhanced the night even further.
When we got back to our hotel after the game, we had a suprise waiting for us. In the plaza at the bottom of our street there was an organised beachball fight. This involved 5000 odd crazy Spanish people in a large square, throwing beachballs at each other. Of course this was an offer too good to refuse, and we quickly dumped our stuff and joined in. There must have been at least 25000 beachballs, as the plaza is the size of two basketball courts and we were waist deep in balls. After an hour of nailing people our shoulders could take no more and we called it a night. It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done.
The following day we were treated to the largest flea market in the world. I would also give it the award for busiest market, as we made our way through crowds for a few hours. There were plenty of cool stalls and you could easily spend a day there. Our best purchase was our "hippy pants", green for Mat and purple for yours truly. They break every fashion law ever written but every time you put them on you feel like you are wearing a cloud.
Sunday night we ventured to Las Ventas bullring to see some Spanish culture firsthand. It was definitely an experience, but personally I despised it. Mat was a bit more positive, but there is no escaping from the sheer cruelty of this "sport". We lasted for the first three bulls, but that was enough slaughter for us and we left early. Watching bulls get mocked and tortured before getting killed is not something I consider good entertainment.
In our spare time in Madrid we took the opportunity to spend the last of our travel money, and bought an abundance of clothes, souveniers and continuem transfunctioners. It did lead to a problem with packing and a few bits of unneeded baggage must remain in Madrid. (Mat should be home within a few weeks).
This is the end of a trip of a lifetime, but we both look forward to seeing our friends and family. Can I take this opportunity to thank everyone who has read the blog, I hope you have enjoyed it as much as me.
- comments