Our trip started off by taking a 6 hour bus ride from Sevilla to Madrid. I had gone out the night before and had only an hour of sleep so I slept like a dream on the bus. Carolina, Jordyn, and myself grabbed a cab and found our way to the City Center where our hostel was located. After looking around for a few minutes, we finally found our hostel behind a big brown door, which we needed to buzz up to like any other normal apartment building. We hiked a few stairs, and with rave reviews of this place, we were a little nervous to really see how it was. You know how it goes; you can really never trust any one else’s opinion besides your own. We opened the door and were greeted by a group of young workers, smiling faces, and really loud Bob Marley that filled every inch of the apartment floor.
This hippie girl took down our information and showed us around. The hostel took up the entire floor of the apartment building. There was a big kitchen, lots of bathrooms, a living room with an assortment of DVDs, 8 computers with free internet use, and of course, lots of rooms. Our room: It had eight beds (bunk bed style), about 12 x 12 ft, and the room was completely empty except for one woman. This woman had a long gray pony tail down to her ass crack, glasses, and was medium height. Supposedly she had been “living” there for a while so her shit took up all of the shelf space, the corner of the room, and blocked our way towards the little terrace that we had. So, we put our things down in our little area and asked the nice girl helping us before where the Royal Palace was on the map and all of the other places we wanted to see. Right before we left, Jordyn and I went back to our room to freshen up and lock everything away in our locker to head out. Jordyn asked the woman, “Would you like us to lock the door behind us when we leave?” and with much surprise she answered, “What I really would like is for you to stop talking to me and leave me to my work!” Wow, oh wow. We slowly back out of there, closed the door, and realized we were in for a very, very interesting stay in Madrid.
crazy lady, back there, in her corner...
After the palace we went to the Cathedral across the street, but of course that was closed too so instead we headed across down in the opposite direction to find a building where you can pay 2 Euro, go to the top, and see the entire city. The girl at our hostel told us about it. We made it just in time for sunset. It was perfect.
Tapa numero uno: avocado and shrimp, tartar style (for me)
Tapa numero dos: sirloin with brie (for me)
Tapa numero tres: sirloin with caramelized onions (for her)
Tapa numero cuatro: crepes with mushrooms (for her)
Tapa numero cinco: huge baked potato stuffed with Spanish ham with a quail egg on top
Tapa numero seis: goat cheese on toast with fresh roasted pepper.
Each tapa served on toast.
She gets what she wants, I get what I want, and then we share. Match made in Heaven. What I like about food here in Spain, especially tapas, is that the food isn’t all that different from things we eat in America. Besides the quail egg, there’s nothing really crazy different than what we eat at home. The way it’s prepared, served, and enjoyed though, that’s a different story. Eating here is meant to be enjoyed. We eat, we drink, we laugh, we talk, and we enjoy each other’s company over a few appetizers and coffee. A meal isn’t rushed; it’s relaxed and appreciated. It’s truly a wonderful lifestyle.
We returned to the hostel to find many more people in our room. There was a German couple, a boy our age from the US traveling on his own for graduation, and two other sleeping bodies. Our shit and the Germans shit were all meshed into one so I began shoving our stuff under our bed a little because the last thing I wanted was for our things to be mixed in with theirs. So, this was our first shared hostel, and honestly, I was a little nervous about the crazy lady in the corner. The workers assured us that she is just fine, and she just keeps to herself. So we went to bed. And when I say bed I mean, I laid there for the next 40 minutes watching her because I was too scared to sleep. I called the bottom bunk and didn’t hear Jordyn rolling around so I figured she had passed out quickly. Me on the other hand, I wasn’t sleeping until I knew she wasn’t paying any attention to us. From my bed, I could see her, but she couldn’t see me. I then proceeded to watch her get up from her bed (she has her own little lamp) face the window, put her hands together near her chest, put her hands up, and kneel down to the floor and stretch her arms out. Then up, hands up, and down. And up, hands up, and down. There was some serious praying going on in this room! She was mumbling to herself, reading a lot, and let me just say… it. was. weird. Was she praying for God to forgive her right before she killed us in our sleep? No. Because she really wasn’t paying attention to us, we were just paranoid freaks.
I woke up to the weird Germans laying in bed together practically naked and whispering. I rolled over to give them a nasty look and pleasantly was blinded by a crotch shot. I rolled back over. Whispering is bullshit in my world. Whispering is talking. I can hear you talking peopleee!!! Thankfully the alarm was going off a few minutes later so we just got up early and headed out of there quickly. Jordyn then told me that right before bed, she saw crazy lady in the kitchen making 6 little grains of rice. 6 you might ask? Well, it wasn’t for her. She opened the balcony and put it outside. Oh lordy lord lord. She left it for small rodents or gerbils. What a night….
First stop of the day, The Prado Museum. At this point, we’ve seen a few, and here was another, but unfortunately, I didn’t find much variety. Same time period, same Jesus, same thing. I wasn’t too impressed. We were in and out rather quickly. Oh and some bitch woman wouldn’t give us a student discount and we had to fight for it because it didn’t say our age on our University Pablo de Olavide ID cards. The word university is key there… some people just don’t use their brain and common sense. We got the discount though, thankfully.
Next, we moved on to Parque del Buen Retiro, which had a huge lake, lots of open ground, soccer fields, a stream, beautiful trees and gardens. But before that we went to see Caixaforum, which we don’t really know what it is, BUT there’s a wall with all different types of shrubbery running up it so we had to take a picture of that!
The only thing good about that museum was the Picasso exhibit on the 4th floor. As an adult I really can appreciate it so much more than when I was in fifth grade being forced to understand it in some way. Until you experience pain and suffering it’s hard to easily see pain and suffering immediately when you look at abstract art. I definitely appreciated it much more than I ever had. Also, on the next floor up, was a September 11th exhibit of different newspapers from all around the world on September 12th, 2001. It was interesting to see how besides the language, they all looked quite similar. From the Middle East to South America, the world stood still in shock of what had just happened, and the reactions from all of the other nations were really interesting to see how the media chose to spread the news that day.
After the museum, we headed to the other side of town again back to the Cathedral. Me, Map Lady, totally understood the subway system by this point and we got there much quicker than the day before with all of that walking. We paid 2 Euros to see nothing and after 10 minutes left.
We passed a place with a huge salad bar and we knew our minds were set on that for dinner. We don’t really get too many salads in our homestay so we knew we had to take advantage of that place. It was pretty good, did what it needed to do, and then we went back to the hostel to get ready for the night. The manager of the hostel, a young guy named FeFe and two of his other friends were drinking in the kitchen so we joined them. We were going to an awesome club called Kapital, which has 7 floors. It’s supposed to be one of the best clubs in the world. When we told the guys we were going there, we knew they weren’t the type to go, but hey, why not go. So we went to a bar before hand because the drinks at Kapital are ridiculously expensive and the club itself is 20 Euro. We knew that going into it. This bar that we went to first was called “My Mama’s Groupies.” When I went downstairs to the bathroom, I legitimiately felt like I was in a time warp back to 1970. The bathroom walls, the lights, everything about it were really 70s. There was a machine in the bathroom that also sold vibrators… go figure. I felt like I was in the movie Frequency, like somehow time warped and couldn’t get back. That’s a strange fear I have, I don’t know if anyone else in existence actually has that fear, but I certainly do. I think that’s why thrift stores freak me out so much. Like somehow I’m going to end up back in time and can never get out. I sound like a freak. I’m going to stop talking….
After the bar we headed to Kapital, which wasn’t too far away. It was extremely crowded, but really awesome. The first floor was house music and there were lots of performers on the balconies, crazy fog machines, and great music. We ditched the guys and went upstairs to check out the rest of the place. Somehow we ended up on the third floor, just a lounge, and started talking to these 2 old guys. Why!? WE DON’T KNOW. But, I must say, with a little alcohol, my Spanish is pretty damn good. We were talking about some nonsense and then moved on from the 50 year old ginger man, and the 50 year old bald guy.
We danced for awhile, had a great time, pissed in the men’s bathroom, got bitched at by a Spanish boy telling me I was boring, told off a Spanish boy for being a bastard to me, and told some 16 year old looking kid to not lay a hand on my friend. These horny, little, aggressive Spanish boys! I put them in their place though.
It was really late and we found our friends so we headed “home” to the hostel. Jordyn and I were smart and knew we would be hungry when we got home so we bought ourselves a microwavable-ish pizza earlier in the day…soon to realize we needed an oven and we didn’t have one. FeFe opened up a can of black olives. 5:30 AM, drunk, eating pizza with 1 Spaniard and 2 Argentinians, and yet still, we do as Spaniards do, and were eating olives as an appetizer. I thought it was just so cute and so cultural.
6 AM, went to bed. FeFe told the other guy in charge in the morning that we can check out late ;) It’s nice to have friends in high places. So we slept in until 10ish and headed out to a huge flee market. With our hands in our pockets, while having a death grip on our purses, we walked around and found some interesting little stands. Socks, shoelaces, underwear, bird cages… you name it, they had it. I bought myself a really cute hat for Prague. I knew it would be freezing cold, so it was a well worth it. Then we grabbed our stuff at the hostel and went to the bus station, home to Sevilla.
at the market
The bus ride home was not nearly as easy as the way there. The woman next to me had her arm on the arm rest. I had to sit slightly angled into the aisle with my legs stretched out awkwardly. My head was bobbing, my hip was broken, it was just awful. How did I get revenge on this lady? At the rest stop I got a big bag of salt and vinegar chips, took off my smelly boots, AND talked on the phone with both of my parents for a combined time of 45 minutes. You just don’t mess with Sara Mintzer and her nap….Madrid was great, but still doesn’t compare to Sevilla. The buildings, the center, the language, all quite the same, but the feeling of closeness, comfort, and warmth wasn’t there. Of course if I spent more than 3 days I might say something different, but I was so glad to see my happy orange trees when I arrived home. Sevilla, where my heart is….
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