Viva Madrid!

So at 8 in the morning we got off our bus which left at 1am and we were pretty tired from sorta sleeping on the bus but we had to make due. We took the metro into downtown as usual and then once finding a really sweet hostel we set off. But this hostel wasn’t any hostel. It has a sweet old elevator with the double doors and then the actual hostel area was all secured by finger print sensors. It was so bizarre. We all had to scan our fingers so we could get it. It was as nice as a regular hotel and it even had a bidet. For only 20 euro. What a deal.

 

Anyways we decided to hit up the Del Prado Museum first since it had a lot of sweet works including Bosch, El Greco and Carravagio. So awesome! I saw Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and a bunch of other sweet works. I only took a few pictures in there since, unlike the Louvre, they don’t let you take pictures. So lame. It was really cool though. But after that since we were so gosh darn tired we sat on this hill outside of the museum and took a little afternoon nap.   It was wonderful and terribly refreshing. Which was good since we needed all the energy we could get for the next adventure.

 

Boats! 5 euro and you can rent a boat for half an hour in the Parque Retiro pond. It reminded me a lot of Forest Park in St. Louis. But ya. Paddle boats. Which did give me a couple blisters but it was totally worth it and it was awesome. Patty and I were rowing like beasts and we didn’t even crash into anyone else although we definitely had some close calls for sure.

After that we just did some sightseeing and walking around town. We checked out this one huge palace as well as the Real Madrid stadium although we managed to get to both merely minutes after each of them closed. Sooo dumb. Then we headed back to the hostel for a night of relaxation before our plane back home the next day.

 

In the morning we got some chocolate milk and pastries and hung  out in the Plaza Mayor which was really beautiful. And we got sung to by an old man. Great stuff. And after having some troubles with our metro/train tickets not working and also our gate getting switched at the last minute, we finally made it to our second home in Ireland. Phew. Quite an adventure we had ourselves. Now it’s a 70+ hour work week during the Galway Races and then it’s off to our big European road trip. So pumped!!