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pelztells-blog · 8 years ago

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Madrid

This past weekend was another long weekend for me (third one in a row, not that I’m bragging or anything) (except I am), so we had decided to go to Madrid. I’d traveled to Madrid during The Great Backpacking Trip of 2007, but it was at the very end of my trip and I have very few memories of Spain. I was so exhausted at that point, I don’t know how much sightseeing I actually did when I was there. I was therefore excited to have the chance to re-explore the city that Lonely Planet claims ‘no city is more alive than’ (and was the tipping point for booking). Leading up to leaving though, I wasn’t as excited as I thought I would be. The political events in the United States left me sadder and more overwhelmed than I had expected to feel. The depression was strong, coupled with the fact that Belgium’s typical weather had arrived in full force. The last week had been cold, grey, and constantly rainy. It’s enough to make you curl up in a ball and weep (well, if you insist). So, as Thursday approached, I felt tired at the thought of going anywhere. Jason is never as enthusiastic about traveling as I am, so the two of us were a real pair.

However, the sun does continue to shine, and shine it did in Madrid. I am so, so glad we went. It was exactly what we needed. Technically, I am not supposed to be traveling as I don’t have a registration card in Belgium and my 90 day visa has expired. We’d booked the plane tickets back when we thought I’d have my registration card and didn’t want to lose the money, as we had booked nonrefundable tickets. However, there is something called the Schengen Area, which involves 26 countries in the EU that have abolished passport control and any other type of border control. Essentially, it makes it like one big country for travel purposes. Both Belgium and Spain are in the Schengen, so we’d heard from multiple sources that we should be fine to travel as no one should be checking passports except as verification of ID. We decided to risk it, figuring if we got stopped at Belgium’s airport, that would be it, and we’d head back home.

I left a period early on Thursday and met Jason at the train station, and from there we headed to the airport. We made it through security without showing a thing, as we were already checked in. We were through and at our gate without any issue. The hardest part was Ryanair’s boarding process as we had to walk half a mile to the plane, which explains how they are able to offer such cheap airfare. You just need to walk to the nearest suburb surrounding Brussels to board your plane. They gave us a free pudding cup and a bottle of water though, so I was good to go. I used that water to help gulp a Xanax and I was ready for night time flying.

I do not like to fly, which is an understatement, so I take medication to be able to do so successfully. I especially hate night flights, because there is a greater chance of turbulence at night (I’ve looked it up), and I don’t like not being able to see outside (...and also am a control freak). I used to just suck it up, which meant endlessly harassing flight attendants and crying whenever we hit turbulence. Then about 5 years ago, I flew with my sister to New York for my uncle’s wedding. It was dark and rainy, so while it wasn’t a terrible flight, it sure wasn’t smooth either. We shared a row with another lady who didn’t like to fly either and carried zen beads with her to help with her anxiety. Throughout the bumpy flight, Erin tried to distract me with crossword puzzles (my go-to when I’m feeling particularly panicky on a flight), but they weren’t working. After I’d repeatedly asked the flight attendant when the turbulence was expected to stop, why we were experiencing it, and when we would be landing, all to his extreme exasperation, while being on the verge of tears for most of the ride, the lady turned to me and gave me the zen beads, declaring I needed them way more than she did. I thanked her and shortly after made an appointment with my general practitioner to get a better grip on my fears in the most medicated way possible. She prescribed Xanax and I discovered how to fly successfully. It involves me being unconscious for the whole of a flight, so it’s a winning situation for anyone who happens to be sharing a plane with me.

So with appropriate measures taken, we boarded our plane. I fell asleep 30 seconds into the flight and everyone had a lovely flight experience as a result. We landed and then taxied. Then we taxied some more. I’m pretty sure we took a quick drive around Madrid in the plane before coming back to the airport where they finally let us off the plane.

We’d been given a couple Airbnb gift cards for our wedding and had decided to use some of that towards our stay in Madrid. I had booked the place, again, and my streak for amazing sleeping quarters continues. I had a place picked out originally that had a cute little terrace and other nice amenities that I’ve forgotten now. I was just about to book when something messed up with my browser and I lost the place. I started looking for it again when I stumbled upon another apartment. It was a brand-new posting, and it was clear the guy was new to Airbnb, which meant his place was SUPER cheap. That was about all it took for me. He was verified by Airbnb, and I’m a big believer in everyone has to start somewhere, so why not by us being his first stayers? The place looked clean and cute, and honestly, we’re only sleeping there. Most of the day is spent exploring. Anyways, I guess I didn’t tell Jason all of this, except to show him pictures before going ahead and booking it.

We were to meet the guy at a station called Lavapies, which meant switching trains 2 times from the airport. It was that or take a taxi, which was recommended on blogs I’d read. I know it would seem like after our incident with Snagov, that it would make the most sense to get a taxi, but I am actually pretty good at navigating trains (just not random buses in the middle of Romania), and was confident I could figure out how to get to the corect station from the airport. I did get us there, because I am amazing at navigating train stations, it was finding the train in the airport that was the hardest part. It was buried deep within Madrid’s airport, or so it seemed, and it took a lot of wandering around to find it. Once we did though, we were golden. We rolled up to the correct station, albeit 20 minutes later than planned, and met up with our host. He was a super nice guy, despite the fact that he spoke no English and us no Spanish or French. It was pretty late by the time we got to him, close to 10pm, and the dark of night doesn’t always make everything seem so nice. It seemed like we were possibly staying in the sketchiest part of Madrid. We arrived at his apartment building and walked up to his place. In the pictures, it looked like there were a few rooms to the place, like a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, dining area. All of that was indeed there, but it was all in one room, with a little closet space dedicated to the bathroom (which I promptly flooded upon my first shower). As we looked around our small bedroom/dining room/kitchen, I could practically hear Jason’s thoughts. The guy left us a bunch of helpful brochures of things to do and free coffee which I appreciated. However, after the door closed, Jason again informed me that this was another example of my planning skills. I reminded him that he was supposed to plan this trip, but had decided to defer to me again, so this was actually his fault. We logged on to the terrible wi-fi and fell asleep to Netflix.

When we woke up the next day, we got ready for an adventure filled day of exploring. Jason showered, but I did not as we did not have shampoo again. We can’t find travel sized bottles of shampoo anywhere (in the two stores we checked) and aren’t checking bags on flights, so I’m not sure what the solution is. I have a small conditioner bottle left over from when Erin came to visit and have been refilling that, so we had conditioner again. Since we were once more going with my method of traveling, we had nothing planned that we wanted to see. To avoid any meltdowns, we each picked 3 things we wanted to tick off while in Madrid, decided what to see first, planned some directions, and were off. We’ve already come so far!

We went first to Chocolateria San Gines, which was recommended for the churros and hot chocolate. We were super lucky to find a spot outside, and eating there was relatively cheap. More importantly, the churros and hot chocolate were ridiculously good. Fattened up by fried bread and chocolate, we wandered on to the Plaza Mayor, which is the big main square. We didn’t want to eat anymore or drink yet, so we just did a quick walk through and moved on. The day was super warm and sunny and just perfect for wandering around. We went to the Mercado de San Miguel, which is a large covered market with tons of little stands selling cheap drinks and tapas. We tried our first tapas--one grilled octopus and a honey mustard cod one, and they were so good! We left there determined to come back to drink all the cheap wine. We strolled on past a church, stopped in for a look, basked in the sun for a bit on the Plaza de la Villa, and then found ourselves outside the crypt of the main cathedral, the Santa María la Real de La Almudena. I’m not sure what I thought the crypt would be like, but I had underestimated the amount of graves in the floor that we would have to try to negotiate walking around. Nothing like a nice full crypt on a bright sunny day. After being appropriately creeped out, we left and went into the actual cathedral. We’re getting to be cathedral snobs at this point (from the 4 or 5 we’ve seen), so we weren’t swept away or anything, but it is a nice place. The ceilings were painted really bright colors and there was a huge gold centerpiece with a long line of people extending down from it. We decided a zoomed in camera picture would suffice over waiting in line. Next door to the cathedral is the Royal Palace of Madrid (Palacio Real). It was huge (the largest palace in Europe by floor area), and the outside looked really grand, so we decided to do the tour of the palace. It’s amazing to see all of the detail and famous art in all of those rooms and to know someone used to walk the halls hundreds of years ago as their place of living. It’s definitely worth the €10 price tag. We left the palace and saw a park to our left close by, so we thought we’d take a walk through there. As we approached, there was a little group of men at the entrance to the park. One was playing violin, one the keyboard, and the other was singing opera. It was the kind of moment that made you stop what you were doing and just enjoy the music. It’s those little experiences that I am so thankful to have. At this point, we’d traversed around half of Madrid and decided to stop and have a drink and maybe some food. We stumbled in to Puerta del Sol, another large and extremely busy square in the city. There were a number of little cafes, and we found one to sit at outside and people watch with a drink. Nicely buzzed, we decided to head out towards Buen Retiro Park. We’d basically blown through our original 3 sights plan and it was still afternoon, so we figured we might as well keep going. Buen Retiro Park had been mentioned in multiple sources we’d read as a must see, so off we went.

Everyone should go to Madrid just to sit in that park. As soon as we walked in, I had the first (and only) memory of being in Madrid nearly 10 years ago, sitting in that park for a day, just reading a book. The park has a large pond, so you can rent a boat for €6 and spend 45 minutes trying not to crash into any other boats (not successful) and floating around (successful). I highly recommend it, as it was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. We spent a decent amount of time at the park after we finished boating and probably still only saw a very small part of it. On the way in, we’d passed by an Irish bar (I can spot one just about anywhere), and as the sun was now setting, so we thought it was a good time for a beer. Plus we’d been walking for about 6 hours at this point and needed to sit somewhere. We spent a good hour or so there chatting with the bartenders in which I learned that a band would be playing that evening, but not until around 11:00pm. It was about 6:30 at this point and we felt that drinking for the next 4.5 hours would have some detrimental effects. We were starving, so we decided to find food in the in-between time. Jason and I both get hangry hungry if we haven’t eaten for awhile, and it always seems to just go off like a switch when it happens. It switched about the second we stepped out of the bar. No particular direction in mind, we ambled off towards what looked like a busy part of the city. We ended up on the Gran Via, one of the main shopping streets. It seemed as if all of Madrid plus every tourist that was currently visiting Spain had decided to roam this street along with us. People were streaming about everywhere. This did not help our hanger hunger, especially since we were only seeing shops and not restaurants. We finally pushed through the throng and darted down a side street, away from the current of people. There were four restaurants on the street which due to my indecisiveness and inability to eat a slew of foods, still ended up taking us awhile to choose from. Once I established that Jason and I were absolutely going to murder something if we didn’t eat, it made choosing the one closest to where we were standing a lot easier.

There were about 3 things on the menu I could actually eat, so we decided to split those things. One of the items we ordered were 4 mini-burgers, with one of them being a chicken burger. While we were eating the chicken wings we’d ordered first, I thought the chicken looked possibly undercooked, but the lights were quite dimmed and I decided that was probably what was causing the chicken to have a pink glow. Then the mini burgers arrived. I bit right into mine, and noticed the texture seemed off. I examined it a bit more closely, where I then realized that the chicken was most definitely still a nice shade of pink. Horrified, I showed Jason who proceeded to bite into it to taste it (because apparently that’s what you do with potentially raw meat). Doubly horrified, that was the end of meat for me (for the night). After we finished eating, Jason rated the 4 mini-burgers, and the undercooked chicken won second place if that’s any indication of our enjoyment of the food. Feeling nauseous at the thought of the chicken, it seemed like the only thing to do was to head back to hear some (non-Irish, what the actual hell, after waiting all that time) music to end the night.

We woke up late on Saturday, but having seen most everything we wanted to the day before, we weren’t in any rush. I was forced to shower, and this time I used body wash on my hair. I had enough conditioner that I was able to comb through most of my hair afterwards and only ripped out 1/4 of it. After cleaning up the pool I left behind in the bathroom, we went back to the Plaza Mayor to find some coffee for me. The plaza is covered in restaurants, and all of them have outdoor seating. The sun was out again, and it was another warm day, so the goal was to choose a spot to sit outdoors. We didn’t have to think hard as a very persuasive waiter whisked us into a seat when we hesitated outside his restaurant. I ordered my coffee and Jason asked for a mojito. Unable to accommodate the mojito listed on their menu, the waiter suggested a gin and tonic, which just happens to be one of Jason’s favourite drinks. He readily agreed. A large sangria type glass arrived filled with ice, the bottle of gin in the waiter’s hand. He instructed Jason to tell him when to stop. A couple of times Jason said ‘That’s good’ but that doesn’t translate to mean ‘stop’ in Madrid (or possibly anywhere besides the United States), so the glass continued to fill as Jason’s eyes grew wider. Finally, when the glass was nearly half gin, the waiter paused and asked, ‘Stop?’ slightly incredulously and a little surprised by the possibly alcoholic American at this point. Relieved, Jason concurred that he should indeed stop pouring gin. One of us would not be sober much longer. I mentally prepared myself for the likely €20 drink on our eventual bill.

An hour later, large gin and slight tonic drink consumed, we walked back to the Mercado to put food in Jason’s alcohol filled stomach and sampled some paella, wine, mojitos, and olives. I also accidentally tried vermouth thinking I was asking for wine, so now I know I don’t mind vermouth. The crowds were pretty intense since it was a Saturday, so we decided to go to the Museo Nacional del Prado, the big art museum. We got there around 4:30 and saw that it was free to get in at 6:00pm. It seemed stupid to pay €20 if we could just wait an hour and a half to see everything for free. As we left to go find a bar to sit in to pass the time, we noticed there seemed to be a large line forming, but naturally we ignored it completely and journeyed onwards towards beer. An hour later upon arriving back at the Prado, we observed that the line now seemed to have multiplied about a hundred times over and was stretched down the entire length of the building and then some. Figuring this seemed peculiar with the closeness to the free admission, we inquired into the purpose for the line.

It was the line to get in for free. We walked a quick mile and found ourselves at the back of it. Once it turned 6:00pm, the line started to snake forwards and then picked up steam. We were able to enjoy a casual stroll on the walk back towards the entrance. As the ticket window drew closer (because we had to get an admission ticket to enter the free museum, which seems to defeat any purpose), a girl sidled up next to Jason and I, cutting into the line we’d just spent the last 45 minutes standing in. I stared at her, nudging Jason.

‘Are you seeing this? I’ll be damned. Scoot in uncomfortably close to the people in front of us.’

Then I heard the girl behind me talking to her boyfriend.

‘What is she doing? I will kill her.’

Feeling better about my reaction as I hadn’t proposed murder, we all tried to shoulder her out. No one would actually say anything though, so she ended up getting in ahead of all of us despite our best passive agressiveness and threats of death. Whatever, it was still free.

We made it in around 6:30pm and did the art thing. Neither Jason nor I are hugely in to art, so his enthusiasm started to fade after about 15 minutes, and mine didn’t last too much longer. When you’re in for free though, you feel like you should get your lack of money’s worth. We knew there were some Rubens in there, and as he was an Antwerpian painter, we’ve developed a small allegiance to him and wanted to find his work. Once that was completed and we’d seen every other name we recognized and felt cultured enough, we left. Food was calling again, but preferably well cooked food. We found a nice outdoor spot right by the Plaza Mayor and ordered enough food for for 4-6 people to eat comfortably. Properly overly stuffed, we decided to head home as we had a super early flight the next day.

The next morning, before dawn, we took the train(s) with ease to the airport, mingling with the still drunk people who were just heading home, and avoiding a pizza box that one drunken man randomly threw towards the train while we were boarding. We breezed through airport security, hopped on our plane where we both passed out, and landed back in Brussels two hours later, where it was freezing, gray, and raining. Home sweet home.

vimeo

The little musical group in the park