Hey everyone! So this morning we got up around 10am (overslept our alarms of course) and headed out to see the sights of Madrid. We started the day at Museum de Prado which was a really big art exhibit. It reminded me of the high school days sitting in art history class trying to memorize titles and authors names. We spent about an hour and half in the museum and then headed out to one of the big local parks. It was a really pretty park with lots of things going on. We ate lunch at one of the terrace places in the middle of the park next to a pond. We actually ate inside because it was cheaper (it’s about an extra 1.5 Euros to eat on the terrace). After lunch we decided to head across town and see some other sites. On our walk to the metro we passed a pretty cool archway and the building which we figured to be the capital building. We took the metro across town and hung out in another park for awhile; threw the Frisbee for a few minutes and just spent about an hour relaxing in the sun. After that we headed down the street to a Palace and a church; both were really big and extravagant. It was about 5 so we headed back to the hostel for a bit to get ready to go out to dinner.
We decided we wanted to head out to the edge of town for dinner, and ended up asking the Hostel front desk where we should look to head. We ended up taking the metro out to Playa de Castilla where we had no luck finding any good restaurants. We ended up walking around a residential area and didn’t find the type of terrace type of eating we really wanted (or found anything that sounded appealing). So we took the metro back into town and got off at “Sol” where we had been the day before just walking around. We walked back to Playa de Mayor where we had been earlier that afternoon and found a nice little restaurant where we ate dinner on the terrace. I had spaghetti and some of the other guys had pizza. There were street musicians performing while we had dinner which was nice, but the service was really slow. My meal got to the table 10 minutes after everyone one else. But I of course ate quickly as I always do, and the waiter commented on my “muy rapido” eating.
While we were eating dinner, we heard a lot of sirens in the area and saw police cars and fire trucks racing in the direction in which we had been earlier (near Sol where we got off the metro). Earlier this afternoon when we got off the metro, we saw a student protest which we found to be something about a lack of student jobs because of the recession. When I first saw this I thought of all the riots I had seen on tv and didn’t really want to walk into it, but the other guys wanted to scout it out so we hung around for 5-10 minutes as we tried to learn what was going on. Anyway, an hour and a half after having been at this area, we find out that some sort of riot had broken out between the students and the police. We saw policeman in riot gear with shields you would find in Call of Duty video games. They had guns drawn across their chest, with silencer type things (I think they were fitted with rubber bullets). But we didn’t really see anything go on, just the last bit of it when policeman were escorting some people away from one of the side streets (shoving and yelling at them). We saw some trash cans melting from having been on fire and walked close enough to see and smell smoke in the air. It was all dying down as we approached but it’s crazy to think there was a riot of some sort where we had been an hour and a half previously. But we’re back at the hostel now, about to go out for an hour or two before we catch our 9am train tomorrow to Sevilla. I’ll update everyone again tomorrow.
Jonathan
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