Madrid (with Charlie)

On Monday, December 26th, I went to Starbucks to use the free wireless and I booked a hostel in Madrid for two nights, got 40 euro plane tickets to Stuttgart, Germany and booked a room there too – we are able to get to central Europe much faster with the cheap flight. The first leg of the trip was set. We plan on taking a short train to Munich on the 30th and staying there for New Years. I relayed all the information to Charlie, including a meeting place for Tuesday morning -- 10:30 am at the statue in the middle of the Puerta del Sol in the center of Madrid. The rendezvous site was set. All afternoon I packed (lightly but warmly – 1 t-shirt, 2 long sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of pants, 2 fleeces, 1 wool sweater, 1 rain/wind shell and two warm hats). I was hoping that Charlie wouldn’t forget to bring the wool socks, long underwear or gloves that I had asked him to bring. It was hard to leave my family. It was difficult to realize that I would be gone for so long. They did my laundry for me and sent me off with lots of food. Pedro drove me to the bus station in Sevilla at 11:30 pm so that I could catch the midnight bus to Madrid. It was a long and slow bus ride. I don’t remember much of it – I think we stopped twice but I never got off until we arrived in Madrid at 6 am. It was only 17.50 euros – a bit cheaper than Charlie’s ticket to Madrid. I spent some time in the bus station waiting for the sun to rise. It had rained that night and the sky was still dim when I took the metro to Puerta del Sol. I went to the only café open that early (Madrid party’s late but doesn’t wake up early). Our hostel is geared towards backpackers. I went there at 8:30 to drop of my pack. We are in a dorm room with 8 bunk beds. There are a few other similar rooms, a big kitchen, a lounge area, two computers with internet and lots of little bathrooms with showers. There were some open beds so I took a nap. A little before 10:30 I went to the statue in Puerta del Sol to wait for Charlie. I spotted him first.

I took him to the hostel and we talked over some fanta and muffins in the kitchen. I got out my huge Europe map so we could start planning the middle part of the trip. We had our Eurail passes and the entire continent of Europe spread out before us. The possibilities were endless. We decided to concentrate on Madrid first, so we got out a Madrid map and planned the rest of our day. I tried to show Charlie the highlights in the center so we walked by the Palacio Real and then through Plaza Mayor. Plaza Mayor had lots of stands set up selling all kinds of things (we got something for Martha – she’s going to love it), and then we stopped at a market to buy some goat cheese and bananas for lunch. We also walked through the shopping area and browsed through few stores. We went back to the hostel to eat our ham and cheese bocadillos.

Charlie wanted to see the main University in Madrid. Its one of the places he is considering for studying abroad for a semester. We took the metro to the campus. I sat on a bench and listened to Charlie’s ipod while he walked around, I wasn’t so in to seeing the university buildings. It was a pretty boring campus. We took the metro back to the north side of Madrid to walk through the Chueca neighborhood. It’s supposed to be the new hip and vibrant area of Madrid. There wasn’t much going on during the early afternoon. We walked down Gran Via street, a Broadway-like street full of theatres. We had to stop for coffee, our legs were dead. The weather was overcast but pretty warm, in the mid 50s during the day. We kind of got lost and took a long way home. There is a lack of internet cafés and grocery stores in the downtown area. A little convenience store near the hospital had some good food; we picked up spaghetti, tomato sauce and tuna for dinner. 3 euros for a lot of food. There are at least 15 Starbucks in Madrid. We saw them everywhere.

Over dinner we discussed the first week of the trip. Although we were both exhausted, we went back out again (it was only 7 pm). We finally found an internet café and sat down for an hour to look into train times and hostels. We booked a hostel in Munich for Friday and Saturday night. Munich was the hardest city to find beds. We booked two beds in a hostel in Vienna for Sunday and Monday and a place in Prague for Tuesday and Wednesday. All the places are hostels with dorm rooms, kitchens, laundry, internet and breakfast included for 15-20 euros per bed. The trains won’t be that bad either. 1.5 hours from Stuttgart to Munich, 4 hours from Munich to Vienna and another 4 hours to Prague. We were both exhausted and slept a lot that night.

On Wednesday we went to the Reina Sofia museum in the morning and spent a few hours there. One of the temporary exhibits had changed since I was there in October. I finally got to see everything there. The train station is across the street from the museum, so we went there to get our Eurails validated and stamped and booked tickets from Stuttgart to Munich and from Munich to Vienna. The process was pretty simple. On the way home we stopped and got some groceries and then ate lunch back at the hostel. That night we got some Turkish kebabs and saw a movie at a theatre nearby, The Constant Gardener, in english with spanish subtitles. On the way back we looked for a good bar but didn’t find a cheap one, went to one that had just closed and then went to another one that was dull so we didn’t stay very long.

The next day we went to the Parque de Buen Retiro, a huge park near downtown Madrid. We walked around and took some pictures. We cooked lunch at the hostel - pasta carbonera. We walked around some more, I feel like I know downtown Madrid really well now, I’ve spent 5-6 days walking all over the city.