A walk around Madrid
Friday, August 26, 2005
We were a little worried as to how hot it would get today, last night just kept on getting hotter, only showing signs of cooling as we got in at ten. But as we walked out onto the streets at 10am it was a very pleasant mid twenties. We headed in the general direction of the city palace, taking us around twenty minutes. On the way we came across a gorgeous park, with a huge fountain in the middle. Everything was symmetrical, and centered with the surrounding buildings. My heaven! A huge group of tourists arrived at the same time though – as did all the hawkers! – so we moved on quickly. Although we know we’re tourists ourselves, we don’t like to feel like we’re just one of many. We followed the signs to the Palace, just down the road, and found the Palace Gardens. Just stunning! It amazes me how green they manage to keep everything – although of course shrubs etc are obviously chosen for their ability to stay green in dry conditions, but still. Anyway, Maarty took a few photos of me, and many more of the rest of the garden, then we headed back up to the front of the Palace. It is monstrous! But then everything in Europe is. Just the other side of the Palace was another Park, with buskers etc, all very nice, with another huge fountain. I love the effort that used to be put into things – the thought and the detail.
Anyway, we were getting a bit peckish by now, and started looking at menus – Spain hasn’t been easy to find simple things for lunch and it isn’t terribly expensive to eat in a restaurant. We found a pub that had cheap food, and more importantly an English Menu (I don’t want to end up eating Blood Sausage or something! Yuck!). I had a potato salad and Maarty had a Spanish Omelette, which after I had a taste I wished I had got too. But nevermind. After leaving a small tip, that the waiter actually seemed genuinely thankful for (half the places just include it in the bill – what’s the point in that?) we wandered outside, and stumbled across the Mayors House… well the word ‘house’ isn’t quite an accurate description… at is huge! Imagine a square, 100m each side. Then imagine a ‘residence’ built on all four sides. What I’ve just described is the courtyard, with the residence around it. I can only imagine how many cleaners they would have to have working at any one time, to keep the place clean! We wandered through, coming across a sring quintet, playing the Waltz that I walked up the Isle to at our wedding, so of course I had to give them money, then came across the weirdest busker I have ever seen… He was all dressed in silver, with silver face paint and silver mesh gloves, and random kitchen utensils making up the rest of his outfit. He had a cheese grater around his head and was holding a wisk… and when you gave him money he did this funny little dance. It kept me laughing for hours!!! We have seen so many beggars while in Europe, it’s just incredible. But even if this guy wasn’t very good (although was very funny) at least he was doing something to get money. And was adding to the atmosphere rather than detracting from it. Maybe we just don’t have enough sympathy, I don’t know, but neither Maarty or myself feel like we should give money to people who just want a handout, I feel like telling them to go and do something about it. Well that’s my gripe, anyway. I just liked the ‘metal man’!!
By this time we had been walking for a few hours and it as starting to heat up. We have decided that Spain (or Madrid anyway) seems to keep getting hotter right up until dark, rather than cooling down in the afternoon like it does at home – no wonder they have their siesta so late and for so long! Anyway, we hung out in the hotel for a couple of hours before deciding that we should go to the train station and get tickets to go to Paris, rather than just turning up, as we had read in the Lonely Planet (which dosen’t always seem to be right about these things, but we were done with Spain and wanted to get back to France) that it was a good idea to book Spanish trains a day in advance, as they tend to be busy. We found the station on the metro map, and saw we had to take 2 trains. No problem, we do that all the time. What was a problem, was that after spending nearly an hour on the different trains, we went right past our stop! We got off at the next one and discovered that actually, our stop (connecting to one of the main train stations in Madrid) was under service and there was a bus service from the stop BEFORE our stop, to the station. So we had to go back, then catch the bus. All in all it took over an hour. Then we got to the reservatios desk… and realised we didn’t have the Eurail passes so couldn’t make the reservations anyway! HOW FRUSTRATING! At least we knew how far the station was though, as if we hadn’t done that ‘little’ excursion, we would only have left the hotel an hour defore the train left… After grabbing a quick dinner of a kebab, we decided to go to the station we had arrived in at the previous day, as we thought we could do the booking there anyway. We got to take a number! By this, I mean instead of queuing in line, you take a number from the machine and keep an eye on the board. Quite clever really! Anyway, the overnight train we wanted was full, as was the one for the next day, and 3 days after that. Ho hum. We managed to get an overnight, seats only train (ie no sleeping compartments) with a change over at the border station. Very lucky! The Spanish train was very full though and we got a couple of the last seats left. Back to the hotel for a good sleep before a long, long day!
Walked towards palace, nice park, walk to mayors house – stop for lunch in a pub on way – Spanish omelette, square with string quartet, metal busker, slow meander back to hotel, look in a few shops. Siesta, hotter by night, train station, works, no Eurail, next train station, home to bed.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
