Madrid!

Simon and I said a sad goodbye Tuesday morning, with him heading back to work and study; while I'll continue to Madrid to meet Sibel and Colleen, friends from PEGS, and Sibel's older sister, Selen.

I caught the fast train from Barcelona to Madrid, three hours compared to the six of the more regional train, and met the girls in our hotel.

We spent the afternoon catching up, walking around Madrid streets, it's parks, the girls had some chocolate churros and we even did some shopping for beachy clothes needed in the next few weeks. We had dinner in a well known tapas street, though by the time we got around to sitting down, it was 10pm and the second Madrid-Barcelona soccer game was on, so again the whole city was glued to their sets, even our waiter.















Madrid has nice wide streets, and a more relaxed feel to it than Barcelona did. The next morning we were up early to head to the station where we could reserve our tickets for the next legs of our journey. Leaving with lighter wallets (a sleeper ticket reservation was 76 euro each, and that's even with a Eurail ticket pass!), we had breakfast at a nice cafe around the corner from our hotel that the girls had discovered (with a lovely man running it), and headed to the square to catch a walking tour.

I always find the walking tours interesting, even if three hours can take a while! There are always so many little stories that you don't find out if you just wander by yourself. In Madrid, there was so much history that we were told, from the rise and fall of different kings, democracies and dictators, to the slow progress made on commissioned buildings (the cathedral took something like over 100 years to be finished) and the oldest restaurant in history (guinness book of records approved); as well as the obligatory information on the best bars in town, etc!


After this, we had some lunch, filled in an hour shopping (Colleen bought a very cute little jumpsuit!) and headed to the El Prado museum and another that housed Modern art, including some Dali. During the early hours of the night, these museums and galleries are free of charge, sweet!
After another late memorable dinner, where colleen asked for chips and was given potato crisps and selen was served cooked, but re-frozen fish, Sibel and I headed back to the accommodation while Colleen and Selen joined the walking tour's pub crawl across the city.

The next morning we headed to the train station to catch a train to Cadiz (car-diz), and watched the scenery go by (well, Colleen and Selen caught up on last night's sleep!) for four hours.

The trip to Cadiz seemed greener than that from Barcelona to Madrid, with crops almost the entire way, rolling hills every now and then, but not much happening overall. Everything in europe is so well connected, these trains to cadiz run every hour or so, and its a pretty small place! Australia's lack of public transport options are cringeworthy in many respects, even when the larger distances are taken into account.

Location:Madrid, Spain