madrid

The weekend of the 20th (I know late posting) I went to Madrid with Chrisy. We took the midnight bus from Sevilla to Madrid, so we got into Madrid around 6:30am! We wanted the whole day on Friday to sightsee, so it was definitely worth the lack of sleep. We took the metro to our hostel´s stop and literally walked two blocks to get there. It was pretty early, but when Chrisy made the reservation, she said that we would be arriving very early. We rang the bell for our hostel, and there was no answer. So, I rang it again and the door was buzzed open. When we got up to the third floor, a little lady who had clearly just woken up came to the door and looked a little peeved. She was telling us it was too early and we could not check in yet. So we left our bags there and walked to a little bar for some breakfast where people were still drinking (from the night before! Welcome to Spain!). She told us to come back around 9:30 or 10, so we just walked around to get a feel for the city. After checking in, we decided to go to the Prado, figuring that would take a good amount of time to get through. Little did we know... we had a map of the whole place and somehow still managed to get lost (trying to get out!) It was like a horror movie: trapped in a museum, with a bunch of religious paintings and Jesus on the crossafter every turn... I know. It´s the Prado. You HAVE to see it, and I´m glad I did because of all the famous paintings and artists. But by the end of it, if I had to look at one more religious painting, I thought I would die. We went back to our hostel and took a nap before dinner and a night out! We ate at this really good Italian restaurant in the center of the city.
We went to a famous club in Madrid called Kapital where cover is pretty expensive, but we had to check out what all the commotion was about! This club has 7 levels that all play different music, but on a Friday night it was kind of lame. Oh well, we finally found a perfect spot to dance on the main floor. On the stage, there were these dancers that were hilarious to watch ( I took a video), but my favorite part were these HUGE bursts of cold air that came down from the ceiling onto the dance floor. So refreshing, I can´t even explain it!
On Saturday, we woke up pretty early to get a jumpstart on our day. We went to Palacio Real, which was very pretty, but we heard it wasn´t worth it to pay to go inside. So, we just walked around town and stumbled upon a plaza that had so many street performers! They weirdest one was this couple sitting down, COVERING themselves in mud. In their ears, covering their eyes, mouths, you name it. It was so gross. After the plaza we went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. I definitely liked it more than the Prado. There was more diversity in the themes of the painting and I liked the artists more (Picasso, Dalí, Degas, Monet, etc.) I found a new favorite painting.
After the museum, we decided it was time for some shopping. We took a huge loop around the entire city and eventually got to the street (that wasn´t on the map) We were pretty tired though, and I thought my knee was shattering in my leg, so we went back to the hostel. We went to the Mexican restaurant right across the street from our hostel for dinner, and immediately realized we were exhausted, so we just went back to our hostel and crashed.
On Sunday, we woke up earlier, checked out of the hostel, and made our way to El Rastro. El Rastro is a huge street market in Madrid and apparently there are a ton of pickpocketers (we didn´t see anyone get robbed) so we left everything but some money in the hostel. This place had EVERYTHING you could possibly need. After shopping around and getting our bags, we headed to the metro. We took the train the longer way to get to the bus station, so what should have been a sufficient amount of time (an hour) to catch our bus ended up being a race to catch it. We caught our bus though! The trip was problem-free and so much fun. I saw everything that I wanted to in a short weekend. I yet again I´m glad I´m in Sevilla for the long haul though!
Miss you all
Love, Franny