A new day, a new city. Today we took the 10:00 train to Madrid. I was a bit uneasy, knowing that the 2004 terrorist bombing happened in Madrid´s train station, but what can you do. The train ride was around 4.5 hours, but went really fast. The AVE trains here in Spain are quite nice, with the comfiest seats yet, and movies to watch on board.
Once in Madrid, we took the Metro to our hostel, which was centrally located right off of Madrid´s main square, Puerta del Sol. We didn´t stay there long, but set out to find tickets to Sunday´s bullfight at a booking office nearby. We actually used mostly Spanish (and a bit of charades of acting out ¨bullfight¨) to get the tickets. It was pretty hilarious...just ask Katie for her "bull" impression. :)
Sidebar - Once again, it rocks actually understanding some of the language here...we´re attempting to speak it whenever we can. I think the only thing really tripping me up though is the word for "thanks" - gracias. We always learned to pronounce it "Grah-see-ahs, but here it´s "grah-thee-uhs." It feels like you have a lisp if you say it that way!
Anyways, next we headed for the Reina Sofia art museum, since it was free on Saturday afternoons. We realized that we totally picked the perfect days to come to Madrid, since everything we want to see is free on the weekends, or only held on the weekends (like the bullfight).
The Reina Sofia was a modern art museum, which meant we got to play our made-up game of "art or not art?" to decide which artworks counted as legit. Many of the canvases with just scribbles or paint thrown on them didn´t pass our test. :) The best part of the museum though, besides the room of art by Dali and a very disturbing surrealistic black and white film, was Picasso´s masterpiece, Guernica. It´s a huge, black and white painting showing the horrors of war, in a very graphic, emotional way. It was very moving to see and understand in person.
After the museum, we did something a little crazy...ok I'll start at the beginning of the story. So as you should know from reading the blog, we have become a tad bit obsessed with Mika and his song "Grace Kelly" during the trip...what with seeing the video on MTV Italia repeatedly, hearing the playing song EVERYWHERE we go, going to Grace Kelly's home in Monaco, etc etc. So, while in Barcelona, we found out that Mika was performing in Madrid, today. Craziness! So of course, we decided we had to go, even though it was sold out, to try to find some scalped tickets. :) It would just make the whole Mika saga complete. Well, we take the subway there and finally find the club it's at, which was way outside the city center in the more modern, suburban part of town. There was a huge line of people with tickets waiting to get in, but no scalpers... So, we just hung out, waiting to see what would happen. We did see three girls buy two tickets from someone, and then watched a soap-opera like drama unfold before our eyes as they tried to get a third by asking everybody around if they could get another ticket. It was pretty funny, but we definitely weren't that desperate.
We were there for quite awhile, hoping to at least hear Mika when he got onstage, but eventually gave up on that too since it was getting late. So, we took the subway back to Puerta del Sol and found the restaurant we wanted to go to, called "The Real Paella Restaurante." Paella (saffron rice with meat or seafood mixed in) is really big here in Spain, but apparently this place cooks it the proper way so it's even better. It was a really fancy restaurant too, so we got all these "interesting" extras with our meal...including some cold shrimp as an appetizer - with the head, antennas, legs, and tail still attached. Again, interesting. The paella was excellent though - they dish it out right in front of you from a big pan, and it was sooo much food. :) Then, for a dessert I guess, they gave us a little jar of some drink, which we think was some type of liqueur...again, not sure, but we tried a little at least. Overall, a very fun experience :)
This was our latest dinner yet, from 10:00 until like 11:30, so after that we just went to bed at our hostel. We're in a 4 person dorm here so we talked to our roommates a bit, they're both American so it was cool to chat with them.
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