I love that quote because it’s so true, not just for Madrid,
though, all of Spain. All right ladies and gents, you might want to grab a coffee and get comfortable because this is a long one! So I haven’t left
the country yet, but my roommate Mary and I took our first trip to spend the
weekend in Madrid. We had a GREAT
time. So, Thursday morning we caught the
train at 8am to arrive in Madrid around 2:30.
Since I have the uncanny ability to sleep just about anywhere, I managed
to sleep almost the whole bus ride there, which is good because we had a busy
weekend ahead of us…or so we thought. We
arrived at the train station, hopped on the metro, and made it to our hostel
with no problems. When we went to check
in, the girl kept typing in my info and kind of frowning at the computer. I was thinking, oh great we don’t actually have
a booking and we’re going to be looking for another hostel last minute. After a few more minutes of scowling at the
computer screen, she looks up and says “Ok so due to overbooking, your
reservation was changed from an 8 person room to a 10 person room…but we’ll
give you a discount.” Ehhh we were OK
with that. Sure, 10 people is a lot per room, but I was more concerned about
the discount. We carried our bags up,
and discovered a pretty big really clean room.
I was relieved. We got settled,
changed, and went to eat some kebab for lunch.
For those of you who don’t already know, I’m obsessed with kebab. And if you don’t know what kebab is, it’s
kind of like a gyro, but with different bread.
Every time we travel, we eat kebab, and I have a running list of the
best ones I’ve eaten. This one was
pretty good, but not the best I’ve had.
Our plan for the night was to walk around, see the sights, and kill some
time until going to dinner at El Botin, the world’s oldest restaurant
(according to the Guinness Book of World Records). So, we walked around, did some shopping, and
ended up at the Cathedral at the perfect time.
The lighting in the sky was so cool and we got some great pictures.
Next we moseyed around Plaza Mayor waiting to go to dinner
at a semi-appropriate time…around 8.
There was this really bizarre, kind of gothic guy playing the harp. Pretty cool, but mostly creepy. We still had some time to kill so we stopped
at a bar called Tragatapas because they, like many other bars in Spain, had a
deal for a bucket of 5 beers for 3 euros.
They’re little beers, but it’s still a ridiculous deal. Since it happened to be Thursday, they had an
additional deal, which was 6 euros for the bucket and a plate of ham. Ummm yes please! Even though we were going to eat after, we
couldn’t turn that down. Turns out that
we got a bit drunk off those five beers and had some good laughs at the strange
British music videos they were showing on the TV.
A little later we
made our way to El Botin. Since it was
my third time eating there, I remembered the way. We walked in, said table for two, and the
host told us it was all booked.
Crap. So I asked him if we could
come back Friday or Saturday, and he said, no we’re booked all weekend for
dinner. Double crap. He explained that
we could come back any time for lunch.
Well, this was a problem because we had two day drips planned and
weren’t planning on being in Madrid for lunch.
We told him we would think about it and we left. Ok…so now what? With our dinner plans
squashed we decided to do the next logical thing…drink more! We popped into a small Irish pub and ordered
some massive Paulaner’s, then some smaller ones, and enjoyed ourselves.
They played “Call Me Maybe” and of course we
started singing, so Mary said “Well, if they didn’t already know we were
American, they do now…” After a while
we headed back to El Botin to make a reservation for lunch the next day. From what we heard, Toledo was pretty small
and we could see it in half a day. So
our tentative plan was to do lunch at El Botin and go to Toledo on Friday, then
to Segovia on Saturday. After that, still rocking the beer buzz, we decided it
would be a good idea to eat a little something before bed so we stopped at one
of the many “Museo del Jamon” stores which is a chain where they sell lots of meats
and cheeses, but they also make cheap sandwiches. We saw the sign for a ham or cheese sandwich
for 1 euro. Sweet. We walked in and had to wait a little while
this group of French people ordered like 80 euros worth of meat and cheese.
Must be nice to throw money around like that!
Anyways, it was our turn to order, and Mary asked if we could have
sandwiches with ham AND cheese even though the menu said ham OR cheese. The guy behind the corner looked kind of
hesitant and then said, “well…yes but it will cost 2 euros.” Oh boy, hold the phones! I would pay 1 euro for a sandwich but not
2! Just kidding, of course. We told him that was fine, and ordered two. We made it back to our hostel and munched on
our sandwiches while we looked up details for the train to Toledo for the next day. Shortly after, we went to sleep.
Friday morning, we woke up, had a quick breakfast at the
hostel and went to the bank. Both of us needed to take money out for the rest
of the weekend. I had to go inside the bank because for some reason my debit card
wasn’t working. As I was waiting in
line, I saw the funniest thing. An older
woman was sitting on a bench next to a young kid, probably about 9 years old. I
couldn’t tell if they were grandma and grandson or just two people sitting on a
bench, but all of a sudden the little boy starts teaching the woman how to play
Pokemon cards! First of all, I haven’t
even seen Pokemon cards in years, second of all she was actually getting into
it. I wish it wouldn’t have been totally
creepy to take a picture of them because I sure wanted to. Anyways, after the bank we headed to El
Parque del Buen Retiro which is this massive park in Madrid. It was soooo beautiful. In Sevilla we don’t have a lot of trees that
change color, so I really miss the fall from home. Walking through the park
felt being back in Chicago or walking through the Morton Arboretum. We made our way through, enjoying the crisp
weather and taking pictures of course. I was delighted because the weather was
supposed to be really crappy that weekend, but it had been holding out pretty
nicely. We also stumbled upon what I can
only imagine was the world’s largest gathering of elderly people doing
exercise. There was one personal trainer
shouting instructions to at least 80 people doing stretches. It was pretty
funny. 
After a while, it was time to head to El Botin for our lunch
reservation. I was really excited because
I knew already how good the food was, but I was even more excited for Mary because
she had never eaten there, but her grandpa had over 60 years ago when he was in
the air force and talked about how great the suckling pig or “cochinillo”
was. That’s their specialty, by the
way. I was really excited because they
seated us in the basement which is basically this old dungeon like wine
cellar. Really cool. As we were looking through the menu adding
things up in our heads, we both just kind of laughed. Neither of us are the type to splurge on
anything, but we had totally accepted the fate of this lunch…which was that it
was going to be expensive. We ordered a
pitcher of sangria to share and some fried eggplant with sal morejo for an appetizer. The sangria was great, a little strong, but
really tasty. The fried eggplant was
phenomenal. We seriously never wanted
the plate to end. Next, Mary ordered the
suckling pig, since well, you kind of have to.
I, however, ordered the roast lamb because I had already eaten the
suckling pig twice and wanted to try something else. I was not disappointed. It was absolutely amazing, one of the best
things I’ve ever eaten. Mary
also pointed out that while the two of us had our meal, at the table next to
us, a couple came and left and another man came and at a whole four course meal
and still finished before us. What can I
say? We were really enjoying
ourselves. We asked for the check, fully
aware of the damage we had done. It was
easily the most expensive lunch I’ve eaten, but it was definitely worth
it! 
Now because we took our sweet ass time, we were cutting it
close to make the train. I don’t know
what it is with us, but we are always running late, always just late enough to
stress ourselves out. Although, Mary put
it best when she said that if she was going to miss the train to Toledo because
she was eating at El Botin, she wouldn’t be that disappointed. We picked up that pace walking to the train
station, and this means that Mary was walking fast, and I was essentially
trotting to keep up with her. We arrived
at Atocha station a little sweaty, but on time.
However, what I didn’t mention earlier was that we hadn’t actually
bought tickets yet. Big mistake. They were all sold out. Oops. Ok so bad news, we weren’t going to Toledo.
On the bright side, we could spend the rest of the afternoon in Madrid and do
whatever we want. We decided to head
back to the hostel and make some plans. First
on the list, go check out Ernest Hemingway’s old stomping ground, a bar called Cerveceria Alemana. Hemingway spent a lot of
time in Madrid watching bull fights and getting drunk. The bar was only a
couple blocks away from our hostel so we went and had a drink. It wasn’t really
the coolest place so we only stayed for one drink. After that we had a whole night to kill and
not much to do. We did some more shopping,
but since neither of us had money to buy anything, that got old fast. We walked around for a while, and all of a
sudden we ended up at the same bar as the night before ordering another bucket
of beer. When you’re on a budget and
want a drink, there’s really no better deal.
We also ordered this meal that was called the “oferta quitahambre” which
roughly translates to “shit ton of food.” Well, that’s how I’m translating it
at least. It seemed like a good idea at
the time, but the food was mediocre at best and I’m pretty sure it took a few
years off our lives eating it.
We had our day trip to Segovia ahead of us, so we decided to
call it a night. In a stroke of fate, on
our way home we passed the Ice Bar. I
had obviously heard of ice bars, but had never been to one, and I didn’t know there
was one in Madrid. We both got super
pumped and decided that we were for sure going there tomorrow night. We made it back to the hostel and went to
sleep.
Saturday morning we woke up, but not as well rested as I had
hoped. Even though we had lots of hours
of sleep, it was interrupted by some obnoxious snoring at 4:30am. One of the many joys of staying in hostels:
no matter what, there is always a snorer, and if you’re really lucky there’s
more than one. In this case, it was the
person sleeping in the bed right next to me, so he might as well have been
snoring right in my ear. And honestly
snoring is putting it politely. It
really sounded like he was choking. Anyways,
we had our quick breakfast and headed out to catch our train to Segovia. This time we had tickets already, but we also
had a long metro ride ahead of us because we had to go to the other train
station. We made it there with just
enough time and not having had to rush.
The train ride was only a half hour long, but of course I managed to
fall asleep. When we got to Segovia, we
had to take a bus to get into the city center – another close call. We barely made it on to one bus, which was
really lucky because we could have had to wait up to an hour for the next
one. I won’t get too detailed about
Segovia because I’ve already written a novel about this weekend. One thing I
will make note of is that we had to pay 20 cents to use the bathroom in the
tourist office. Ok, sure I could find 20
cents in the couch cushions, so it’s really not a big deal. And we also could
have waited and gone in a bar or something. But it’s the principle! No one should have to pay to use a
bathroom! At least they had toilet seats
and toilet paper, two things that public bathrooms in Europe are often
lacking. Overall, though, Segovia took
my breath away. It’s such a beautiful
city. It reminded me a lot of Sienna,
which I also loved.
We
caught the train back to Madrid around 6:30, took the metro back to our hostel
and started to prepare for the night. We
decided to cook dinner at the hostel to save some money, so we made some pasta
with zucchini and red peppers. Hostel kitchens
are always an interesting environment.
There was this kid in there who made a HUGE skillet of pasta, and when
we came in he asked us if we wanted some because he made too much. We said no thanks, so he proceeded to eat the
entire thing himself, chewing with his mouth open the whole time. I’m not sure why this is such a pet peeve of
mine, but I really can’t stand it. Anyways,
we made our food, ate, cleaned up, and went back to our room. We were both pretty beat already, but our night
had only just begun. Next on the agenda: chill for a little bit, get ready, Ice Bar,
Kapital. Kapital is a huge, awesome club
that I went to last time I was in Madrid.
It’s got multiple floors, weird people dancing, smoke machines, confetti,
the whole shebang. Mary and I aren’t
particularly the clubbing type, but tonight we were making an exception, just
for Kapital. We headed to the Ice Bar
around 11:30ish. It was soo cool! It really was cold in there, but you don’t
notice it at first because of the giant parka they give you to wear. We had a couple of drinks, took a bunch of
pictures, and had a blast walking around like penguins in our parkas. I’m really glad we stumbled upon it because it
really is a unique experience. When we
really started to feel the cold, especially in our feet, we decided to head
out. 
We
stopped back at the hostel, just to shed a few layers into our clubbing outfits
and we were ready to go. Unfortunately,
that’s when it decided to start raining, and on top of that we had to wait in
line! It’s OK, that’s what umbrellas and raincoats are for. Fast forward to inside the club; it was just
as crazy as I remembered. We checked our coats, went to the bar to get our
drinks that came with the cover at the door, and headed to the dance floor. After a while, we decided to get another
drink so I squeezed up to the bar and ordered two rum and Cokes. The girl says “Ok 24 euros.” I just stare at her. She repeats it, and I still just stare at
her. So she says it in English thinking
I don’t understand her. And so I say,
umm yeah I heard you, I just can’t believe the drinks are 12 euros!! Eh, you
only live once I guess. Needless to say,
we didn’t buy any more drinks after that.
We danced the night away until about 4:30 and decided to call it a night. On our way home we saw a bunch of people
outside the kebab restaurant ordering food.
So of course, we had to too! We
got a kebab to share. When we got back
to the hostel, though, the common room was closed, and we didn’t want to wake
the people up in our room, so we ate it on the stairs. Super classy and equally hilarious.
The next morning, three things told me I had a great
night: 1. I had slept with my pajama pants
on inside out. 2. When I took off said pants to put them on
right, a few pieces of confetti flew everywhere.
3. No hangover!! Luckily, we had packed up all our stuff the
night before so all we had to do was grab everything and go. We ate breakfast, checked out, and left the
hostel with a lot of time to spare just in case. It’s a good thing, too, because neither of us
was moving very fast that morning. Next,
we were on the bus back to Sevilla. I
was pretty nervous on the bus because it was raining really hard, but
everything went fine and we made it back in one piece…exhausted, but in one
piece!
No comments:
Post a Comment