Madrid- Enero

Carolyn, Maureen and I decided to go to Madrid this weekend. At first, a lot of people were talking about going, but since it’s our first weekend most people wanted to stay here. We’re going with JMU, but since it’s such a big city we wanted to go and see the things we might not get to see when we go with the group. We took a bus from Salamanca to Madrid on Friday evening, and when we got there we had to figure out which metro line to take. We were looking at a map when an old man approached us and was so eager to help us that he actually escorted us to our first stop, and told us where to transfer. “Bienvenidos a España.” When we got to our metro stop, we only had to walk like two minutes to our hostal, which was in the Anton Martin area of Madrid. It was actually a pretty nice hostal, we had a room with four beds and a balcony that overlooked a busy little side street. The keys to our room were these little sensory things that they made into watches, which was a little weird but it worked out. We each had our own locker, and it was a little scary at first because I had never done anything like that, or even traveled on my own before Salamanca, but we were proud of ourselves and it ended up being really good. We met up with Maureen’s friend who is studying in Madrid and we hung out with her for a lot of the weekend. On Saturday we woke up at a decent hour and tried to go to some of the museums that we wouldn’t be going to when we come with JMU, but by the time we figured out how to get to them, it was siesta and they were closed for a few hours. So we ended up just walking for most of the time, which was fine because we still got to see the city. We went to a small contemporary art museum, and stumbled upon an ancient Egyptian temple that had been moved for preservation. We also came across these cablecar things that went across Madrid and had like a voice recorded guided tour thing, which was really cool and introduced us to what the different buildings were. Later that day we went to El Parque del Retiro, which was so beautiful. We rented a canoe for less than 5 euros since it was such a nice day, and just being on the water was soo nice. We had tapas for dinner, which was nice but it was really difficult finding Sunday morning we woke up and went to this HUGE open air market which is basically throughout the whole plaza mayor and a lot of Madrid. They had EVERYTHING you could possibly think of from clothes, to scarves to electronics to jewelry. It was really cool, except it was so hard to walk because there were so many people. At 3:30 we took a bus back to Madrid and I had to sit next to this French homeless guy who was so excited that I spoke English because he had been in Spain for like two months without talking to anyone. He said he was an artist- a stone mason and he told me all about his travels and said that he had walked more than 800 kilometers in Spain. He begs for money for the bus, and sometimes stays at churches that give him a little food. He was really nice, and wasn’t that creepy, I think he was just really lonely so we talked for almost the whole bus ride home, partly in English, partly in Spanish, and partly acting things out that he couldn’t remember, and he gave me a little pendant he had carved.

I liked Madrid, and I’m glad we went but I’m so glad I live in Salamanca instead. In Madrid, almost everyone smokes and you cannot go anywhere without being shoulder to shoulder with a million people.  Soy contenta en Salamanca :)

^^ The little lake thing in El Parque Retiro; My first hostel stay!