June 25-26, Madrid

Madrid is not quite a city for regular people, but not quite a tourist city. Because they're trying to bid for the Olympics, there was construction everywhere. I've gotta say, I love Spain in general, but their food is not all that amazing. Greasy and too salty...

Madrid did have some gorgeous architecture and beautiful blue skies. The gorgeous, cloudless blue skies resulted in 40+ degree C weather. Very very hot. It was almost unbearable in the sun . We walked around the town, seeing some of the most famous buildings. We saw these creepy Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Winnie the Pooh people walking around in Plaza Mayor trying to sell balloon animals. They must've been exhaustingly hot in the 40 degree weather (that's something like 120F) in full body costumes and the funny heads.

There's also a popular "fast food" place called the Museum of Ham in Madrid. It's a shop full of prosciutto crudo type ham legs hanging from the walls. The walls are covered in it. It looked like we entered some sort of weird 15th century butchery.

The Royal Palace was a little underwhelming from the outside. Supposedly one of the most grand in Europe, we didn't want to bother waiting in the hour long line under the sweltering sun to pay 11 euro to see a lavishly furnished house. Instead, we went to a park where I got swindled by some ladies pretending they were from Unicef. Not much better, I suppose. I guess I have a soft spot for people who get stuck asking for donations.

The next stop was Reina Sophia art museum, which was again, underwhelming. It was contemporary/modern art museum and I've gotta say... I know nothing about modern art. It's so boring. We saw Picasso's famous painting, Guernica, which I really didn't' find that interesting. Again, modern art just confuses me.

Madrid nightlife is really lively and actually quite a bit of fun. This is another place, I think, where having a local would've been useful to show us where the more lively places were. We went to a few which were interesting, but not very lively. More just people chillin' and chatting. Where'd all these crazy Spanish parties I've heard about happen?

The next day, we went to Las Ventas bullfighting stadium and wanted to take a tour, but it was all closed. How unfortunate. Go figure they're only open till noon on Sunday. Instead we walked around it and took some pictures, then went to Reito Park. This relaxing park reminded me faintly of Huntington Park in LA, but with far more people, far less greenery and much much hotter.

Oh, on a side note, via travelzoo, I did manage to get an amazing deal on a hotel for the night we were there. It was a 5 star hotel not quite in downtown, but close to a metro station which was $100 per night. We slept lavishly that night.... Much better than the last few months of Arcate's pull down bed.