Madrid and (holy)Toledo!

Long time no post. Here we go.

Feb 27th: After the rather smooth experience of the night bus, Krista and I arrive in Madrid at 7:30 am. Far too early to go anywhere, we decide to have coffee and toast at the train station. Taking the subway to our hostel, I start to notice that people are wet...naturally I assume its raining outside. NO. It was snowing. Snowing in march in SPAIN! We were none too amused by this. Krista and I meet up with Will (who was joining us for this leg of the trip) and we check in to our hostel. For lunch we found place that served unlimited tapas with the purchase of one beer. Sold. The weather had picked up a bit after lunch, but still gray and kind of rainy. We walked around the downtown core, went to Buen Retiro park and ate chocolate and churros. Krista fed most of hers to the birds. We went to the Prado museum and I bought my dad a t-shirt. Not a bad first day in Madrid.

Buen Retiro Park 

Feb 28th: Free breakfast at the hostel. Much toast was eaten. We then met up with our friend Silas' cousin Dany (who is from Madrid). He was awesome and gave us a tour of the city. He was even knowledgeable of all the history etc... For lunch we went to the Museo de Jambon (not an actual museum). There we had a full 3 course meal for pretty cheap. I also tried this cinnamon rice dessert that was like a soggy rice pudding. I really enjoyed it! We walked down Rio street (a commercial shopping street) and played Dutch Blitz. I must also mention in was POURING rain this day. Of the apparent 37 days a year in rains in Madrid, we experienced 2 of them. After Dany left we went to the Reina Sofia museum. There, we saw paintings by Dali and Picasso. The most famous being Picasso's "Guernica". We caved and had the inexpensive Burger King for dinner (the first time I've eaten at Burger in at least 5 years).

Feb 29th: Toledo time! We woke up early and caught our bus to Toledo. Today was by far the warmest and sunniest of the entire trip. A perfect end, especially because Toledo is a beautiful town. Built on a hill and guarded by an enormous wall, it is very historic with winding little streets and many a church. There was even an old Jewish quarter and Synagogue (no longer in use bien sur). We spent most of the day walking around, checking out museums and enjoying the nice weather. The lunch was also the best by far (maybe tied with the paella). We had loads of bread and sangria and I ate pasta bolognese and a meat dish that reminded me a bit of brisket. Delish! We also had marzipan and gelato. You know, that famous Spanish gelato...cough cough. I also got a bit of a tan (if my face going red counts). That'll do Spain, that'll do.

Toledo!

Feb 30th: Having loads of time before our plane takes off, we decide to walk around and sit in a park near the palace for a bit. There I saw my 9th and final pug of the trip. 9 pugs in 7 days, life just isn't fair. Unfortunately, due to a mis-communication, Will hadn't yet printed out his boarding pass or even checked in online. It was a stressful 45 minute subway ride to the airport. After running and being forced to open up my suitcase going through security (I had a lot of plastic bags I was bringing back for garbage purposes, thinking back that is a tad suspicious), we all made it on to the plane. Even Will caught a break and got his boarding pass 20 min before we took off. Never a dull moment. Once we arrived in Geneva we took the train back to Grenoble. A rather stressful but good end to my Spanish adventures.

Fun facts:

-You must go to Toledo

-Apparently Spain has a deal thingy that if you can prove your family is of Spanish decent, and was kicked out/left because of the Spanish Inquisition or general anti-semitism you can re-gain Spanish citizenship. Why is my family not Sephardic??? dammit.

-I know a great deal more about the Spanish civil war than I did before. Knowledge is power!

-Bar and club promoters will chase and hunt you down to try to get you into their establishment.