Getting To Madrid

I woke up this morning on the train from France. It was kind of fun to look around the train and wonder who was Spanish and who was French, and if there were any other total foreigners hiding out in there. It was also funny to note that there were some people in the train who weren’t there when I fell asleep and others who had disappeared, and wondered if I would have managed to wake up if my stop was at, say, 4 in the morning. I vaguely remember being woken at around 6, despite the earplugs that the train provided, by people moving around to attempt getting off at Valladolid. I had considered stopping there, but the city just didn’t seem all that interesting. When I did wake up for good, I took the time to slowly slide the curtain open and peek out the window. In a moment I knew that I was in Spain. The landscape was completely different than any of the other ones that I had seen. It was green like in Holland, but a much crisper green that ironically reminded me of northern forests or mountains (hello? In Spain?). That grassy terrain was permeated with reddish rocks that vaguely reminded me of either Arizona or the surface of Mars, and the overall impression that I got made me think that a mountain goat would feel right at home in this area.
I made it to Madrid and out of the curious landscape at about 9 in the morning and proceeded to look around the train station. It was big, but not as big as the Berlin station. I would say that the Madrid Chamartin train station was about as big as the one in Bordeaux, though I would later find out that there was another station in Madrid called Atocha which was bigger and more important. It is also decorated like a rainforest on the ground level, something that I found appropriate as I began to experience the Spanish weather. I ventured out of the train station to find a giant residential and business district with absolutely nothing that interested me in the least. Feeling defeated, I went back to the train station and finally noticed the Tourist Information Booth, where I asked if there was any youth hostels in the area.
There were four in the city, and the woman who gave me the information about them told me that I should take the subway to almost the center of the city and pointed out on a map where I could find them. Finally with a map in my hands, I realized that I was on the outskirts of town, and that’s why there was nothing interesting. Haha, that would make sense!
I went to the nearest hostel, which was also supposedly the best one, and checked in there for two nights. I considered Madrid one of the most important cities that I would be visiting, so I wanted some time there. I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do first, so I hurried and put all my stuff away in time for the free tour at 11:30. The guy who led me from the hostel to the tour was an American who had been fired from teaching Spanish and had taken up being a tour guide, and I was shocked to learn that he knew someone who had lived in Inverness. It’s a small world I guess. He left after depositing me in a larger group with a guide named Pablo for the general tour, and then the tour commenced.
The first thing that we saw was the Puerta del Sol, the center of the city which was adorned with a statue of the man who had torn down the wall there and expanded the city, but which was often likewise adorned with protests of various sorts. For the past couple years there had been people dressed in bright yellow wandering around offering to buy gold (I don’t know who for) at about 18 Euros per ounce, and given that they were was nothing magnificent, but Pablo strongly recommended going to one of the shows. He said that there were cheap tickets sold at the last minute, but I still doubt I will make it. We moved on to the Royal Palace, which had replaced a military complex that the Hapsburgs had ruled from for centuries. That building wasn’t good enough for the fashionable Bourbons, and it had tragically burned to the ground during a drunken town festival, though on the bright side all the furniture, artwork, and servants had been saved. That tragedy conveniently gave the French rulers a chance to build a much more beautiful palace, and from that point there was an informal rule that no building could outshine it, a rule that explains the dull theater and cathedral.
The cathedral was only a short walk away from the palace, which attests to the relatively good relationship between church and state in Spain throughout history. It was far more ornate on the side facing away from the palace though, careful not to bruise the egos of the royalty. It is also right by the city park, which is bigger than Central Park in New York and a nice place, during the day, to have a picnic or barbeque. At night it become the Spanish Red Light District, but I was not fortunate enough to see it at that time. At one point the city tried closing the park at night to prevent that, but then the people who had been hanging out there went to more central points in the city, like the opera house. The park was secretly reopened a year later.
The other thing during the tour was the museum district, and the highlight there is certainly the Museo del Prado, which I plan to visit on Sunday. After the tour I had lunch with some of the people who were on the tour with me. We had Paella, a mixed dish with rice, prawn, some other seafood, and chicken. That was great, but much more filling than I had expected. Most of the people there were university students, so I felt at home there. One girl was going to a Real Madrid game, and we discussed going to a bullfight with varying enthusiasm. I will definitely go tomorrow.
After the tour I left to get checked into my room thinking that I would go to the Tapas night later, but then I realized that the guide had gotten sick and cancelled the event. That being out of the question, I visited the Reina Sofia museum of modern art. My favorite art there were the works of Salvador Dali, but there was a lot there. Then I went to a restaurant that had been recommended to me. It was called the Botin, and claims to be the oldest restaurant in the world. Their specialty was the roast suckling pig, which was good but in my opinion overpriced. There were many tourists there, mostly American and French though I did hear some British voices in the mix. Tomorrow will be another great day in Madrid, I’m looking forward to seeing what it will bring.