Madrid, Spain!! (Part III)

Sunday was once again rainy, but not in a horribly uncomfortable way.  We decided to head back to the Palacio Real and see if we could actually get in this time.  On the way there we walked through this park and decided to take a cute umbrella picture in front of the fountain and the horse statue (like I said, they're everywhere!)

This time, we were actually able to get into the palace.  The only thing of it that I have any pictures of is the courtyard because they wouldn't let us take picture inside.

I really liked the palace.  Basically we followed a little path that wove us around through some of the rooms.  Everything was very ornate.  My favorite part was the ceiling artwork.  At one point, we tagged along with a french tour group to hear what their tour guide had to say.
After that, we hopped on the metro to head to the market.  I haven't really said anything about it so far but we had weekend metro passes to get around and they were really handy.  Here are some of my metro pictures:
Inside the station

Waiting on these odd standing bench type things that Ali was fascinated with

Inside the metro

A ramp-alator its like a flat escalator that goes up-hill.  I'd never seen one before, but Ali said she'd seen them in Dubai.

Anyway, enough with the metro.  We were headed to a market called El Rastro that I read about in my tour book.  It was kind of cool at first, and Ali bought some cheap earrings, but it started to get really crowded, so crowded that you couldn't even really look at the booths, you just had to follow the herd, and it seemed like it went on forever.

So after the crowd got to be too much, we decided to head towards the Parque del Retiro and find some lunch in that area.  We ended up eating delicious paninis at a Café & Té, a chain of restaurants that was everywhere and that promised on all of its signs to have at least one employee who spoke English.  After that we headed to the park, but on the way there we saw the Puerta de Alcalá which is the original gateway into Madrid, so we decided to take a few pictures.

After our small stop there to take pictures, we finally got to the Parque del Retiro.  I'd have to say that it is probably my favorite place in the city.  It's huge.  We walked in and there is this big pretty fountain with flowers all around:

Farther in, there was a path that is bordered on one side by a large pond/lake type of thing with boats everywhere.

Across the pond was the colonnade with a statue apparently of Alfonso XII.

On the other side of the path, there were street vendors and performers.  We saw this puppet show, more of the people statues, and a dog that did tricks.

We headed over to the other side of the park by the colonnade.

And we climbed up on the colonnade.

Then we got ourselves some ice cream and sat down to rest for a bit since we'd been up and about for most of the day already.

After that, we headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit and have dinner.  We were hanging out in the lobby when this guy handed us a flyer and told us about how the hostel had social events planned every night of the week.  Sunday night's event was seeing a flamenco dancer so we decided to go check it out. Probably about ten people from our hostel went and we met up with some people from another hostel as well.  This is a picture of Ali and me at the flamenco place:

Because blogger apparently no longer lets you upload videos onto it, I don't have anything to show you of the flamenco dancer, but it was cool.  It's a very interesting style of dance.  Anyway, that's all for day three!

Madrid, Spain!! (Part II)

On Saturday morning, Ali and I changed hostels to one that was dormitory-style and a bit cheaper than our friday night hostel.  After we found our way there, we decided to head out in search of breakfast.  Of course it took us a really long time to find anything, because that's the way it goes when you're hungry, but eventually we had our first (and only, really) actually-Spanish food encounter: churros con chocolate

When we ordered, it was done by a lot of pointing and gesturing and we weren't really sure that we'd gotten the right thing.  Ali wondered if maybe we had ordered churros and hot chocolate instead of churros and dipping chocolate.  When we got it though, it turned out that we got exactly what we wanted.  It was delicious! (I mean how can you beat fried bread dipped in chocolate, right?)  

After that, we decided to head over to the Museo del Prado which was the main draw to Madrid for me.  I was hoping to see some works that I'd learned about in my art history class.

Here I am imitating one of the statues outside of it:

It was really cool!  We saw artwork by Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Rubens, Bosch, Raphael, Titian, and Tintoretto.  I was the most excited to see The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch and Las Meninas  by Valesquez.  Ali really liked the tables inlaid with different stones and the sculptures.  We had a hard time finding/ recognizing some of the works because the names were changed to Spanish so Bosch was known as El Bosco and Titain as Tiziano.  The wouldn't let us take pictures inside so I don't have any from it.

After the art museums we wandered around the Paseo del Prado, which the a cute little park-like area surrounding the Prado.  We saw the Plaza de Cibeles which has a famous fountain, but I'm not sure what it's famous for...

Standing up for hours on end in an art museum doesn't really sound that tiring but I was completely exhausted by the time we were done there.  

We headed back to the hostel and relaxed for a bit.  This hostel was very cool.  It used fancy watch-like devices to open the doors and luggage storage.  It had a kitchen and computer room with a TV.  There were also organized social events each night.

Ali and I got a room with a little wrought-iron balcony that looked out over the street:

For dinner that night, we headed back out towards the Paseo del Prado, which wasn't too far from the hostel.  We bought delicious corn on the cob off of a street vendor and then got some ice cream for dessert.  It was quite a beautiful and lively area at night.  We decided to just kind of wander and see what we could find.  Here is me with a pretty fountain in front of the Museo del Prado again.  We also saw a plant wall which was strange:

And, there was a giant elephant statue standing on its trunk. 

I thought it was really cool so I waited in line with all of the little kids to have Ali take my picture next to it.

When we were walking away, we found that it was a statue by Miquel Barcolo called "Gran elefante erguido" (large upright elephant).

After that, we decided that we really didn't have that much else to do and headed back to the hostel for the night.

Madrid, Spain!! (Part I)

As everyone probably knows, this past week my friend from home, Ali, came to visit me.  The first weekend she was here, we went to Madrid, Spain together.  It was very cool.  The weather was a bit cloudy but it was nothing that stopped us from getting around and the temperature was perfect, staying in the 60s for the most-part. 

I'm a little burnt-out on writing so I will probably try to keep the commentary to a minimum.
After we got to Madrid on Friday morning, spent several lost hours in the rain trying to find our hostel (all the while being just a block away from it), and ordered something we didn't know off a Spanish menu (I ended up with a tuna sandwich :-(  ), we finally got settled in and headed out in search of attractions.  
The first place we went was the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) which is the official residence of the Spanish royal family, but I don't think that anybody actually lives there.  Here's the view as we walked up to it:

Ali and I stopped to take pictures in front of it:

We wandered over to the visitor entrance to find that it was already closed for the day so we peered through the gates in an attempt to see what we could of the courtyard and view from it.  Here I am in front of it:

Across from the Palacio Real was a church called Santa María la Real de La Almudena.  It was pretty, but we didn't go inside:

After that, we wandered around for a bit and then headed to Plaza Mayor to see what was going on there.  I thought that Plaza Mayor was a really fun atmosphere.  The square is very cute and colorful and there are people and restaurants and street entertainers everywhere.

It should also be noted that there are statues of men on horseback everywhere in Madrid:

The sun finally came out and it made Ali and me very happy!

This is the start of my street entertainment section.  Street entertainment was huge in Madrid.  People did all sorts of crazy things and other people pay to watch:
This is a man posing as a statue, you can see that he moved between the two pictures; Ali even got a picture of him taking a water break.  People posing as statues was probably the most common form of street entertainment that we saw.  Imagine getting paid to sit very very still...

photo courtesy of Ali:

Pietà!

A big spiderman guy who was kind of creepy but amused me:

A guy who was making giant bubbles:

After a bit, we ventured out of Plaza Mayor back towards our hostel in order to find dinner.  On the way there, we found ourselves at the Puerta del Sol:

As you can see in some of our pictures, the sun really draws people out.  All of a sudden, there were people everywhere:

On the way back to our hostel, we saw even more street entertainment:

As I said, this was all on our way to find dinner.  It should be noted, and I alluded to it earlier, that being in Madrid and not knowing any Spanish (except hola, uno, dos, and tres) is somewhat problematic, especially when it comes to ordering food.  Surprisingly, there are not many people that speak English, not even in areas that could be considered more touristy.  The other important note about food on our trip:  When you are hungry, there is no good food to be found, whereas after you've just eaten, delicious, well-priced food is everywhere; that is the way it seemed for the entirety of our trip unfortunately.

Well that is the end of our first day in Madrid.  Check back later for more posts.

Also, for another perspective on these events check out Ali's blog at http://aliontheloose.blogspot.com/ I don't think she has anything much posted yet but keep checking back and you'll find something :)