One day in Madrid. When I look at that sentence, or clause, I don't fully process it. This whole trip, I don't think I ever really wrapped my head around where I was and if I were showing someone where I was on a world map I would be pointing to cities in Italy and Spain and Portugal and France. So crazy awesome. It is pretty surreal. Sometimes I would just say to Sana "Dude, we're in [insert awesome European city here]. Even saying it out loud, I couldn't believe it. We were so busy doing things that sometimes it was good to just sit and look around and take it all in.
During the single day we had in Madrid, we visited as many sights as we could. We aimed to start the day at 10am. So at 1pm we reached Real Madrid stadium; it was pretty badass. We found out that Real Madrid was the most successful team in the league overall.I found it relaxing to sit in the stands just looking over the field and watching the maintenance process. The coolest part was the players' bench...leather seats and a sun shade.
As Fauz continues to sleep, I (Sana) will continue this particular post as I now have a new found infatuation with Spain!
We then continued our day with some tapas for lunch and these were easily the most delicious tapas we had ever eaten in Spain- the salmon tartar was to die for! Fauz also saw what she claims to be the hottest guy ever seen on earth. After she started getting a little creepy we decided we had to leave the cafe. We made our way to the palace - we could tell we were in the right area as soon as we saw lots of fountains and greenery. We admired the palace and its surroundings but not for too long because the scorching Madrid heat made us go back to the store and grab some iced tea.
Finally we made it to the Museo del Prado and after waiting in line for some time were not awed by all the religious paintings inside as we had seen more than enough of Jesus and Mary in Italia. Nonetheless, we walked through the galleries and one of the paintings that stood out to me was the 'triumph of death,' which points out that death is inevitable and no one can fight it. Then, just as I was on the brink of moving on to the next museum we began to see paintings of landscapes and beautiful sceneries - just as we had hoped for. Rico y Ortega are absolutely amazing and two of my favorite paintings were La Riva degli Schiavoni and Chubasco en Granada by another painter.
Outside the Prado:
We then moved on to the Reina Sofia but we didn't have too much time so we checked out an exhibit by a Japanese artist who I was sure had some sort of psychological disorder; and I was right. The exhibit was certainly weird but very interesting especially the display with a room full of mirrors and water on the ground with small lights hanging from the ceiling changing colors and reflecting from each surface. It felt like we were in the middle of a galaxy.
After buying some souvenirs from a cute old man near the Thyssen and mistaking a drag queen bar (Gula Gula) for a restaurant, we had dinner at an amazing cafe on the Gran Via and headed back to our hostel and met our roommates. They were an Indian guy and girl who Fauz immediately assumed were married. To no surprise, she awkwardly asked them and turns out they were just university friends traveling together..oops! We had a really early flight the next morning and were only going to get 3 hours of sleep that night so I dared Fauz to wear her pjs during the flight all the way to the hostel in Lisbon. Any other pjs would have been fine but of course she rocked out in her Toronto maple leafs pjs...the only entertaining part of that flight.
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