Madrid y Barcelona

Wednesday, August 24, 2011 We woke up at 9 AM to make the most of our last day in Madrid. It was decided we would take the metro to green space, Parque del Buen Retiro, which was actually its own metro stop. Breakfast was more of a brunch in the middle of el parque, across from a huge pond, where you could rent boats for a certain amount of time. I got a napoletano and café (gotta have my coffee), and everyone else got an assortment of things. Molly is a Celiac, which means she can’t consume gluten. So she has these awesome travel cards that explain her eating condition in different languages. The usual sequence of events is that we look at a resturant menu and make sure she has options, and then she’ll pull out her card and talk to the waiter or the chef will come out and talk to her. People have been really great about it, and for the record, she is amazing about it. She never complains or anything. She’ll just thank us for dealing with it, when, in actuality, we are doing nothing. We are usually just insensitive and stuffing our faces with bread or gluten filled foods. After eating breakfast, we went boating on the pond/lake/body of water , and it was perfect! The rental of the whole boat was 4.55 euro, so a little more than 1 euro per person. When our time was up, we walked to this monument that overlooks the body of water and is beautiful, and we took pictures like nobody’s business. We ran into an American family (the husband is from Madrid, but they live in New York), and we did the “will you take a picture of us, if we take a picture of you?” trade-off. Always keeping an eye on our watches, we took the metro back, got our bags, headed to the Atocha station to catch a train to Barcelona. At the Madrid train station, we epically failed with making reservations for Barcelona because we didn’t understand the system of tickets and numbers, etc. But it was kind of a blessing in disguise because we ended up just sitting down for 30 minutes and considering how HEAVY our backpacks are getting, it was awesome. We love sitting down. The train to Barcelona was swank. I got a solid nap in. Upon leaving the train station, it was clear that Barcelona was a much popular city than Madrid. And our hostel was in an awesome location! We checked in and had nice roommates (we didn’t know what to expect with an 8 person room…and we were dreading dealing with people who go to sleep at 10 PM like the roomies in Lisbon). Dinner was served in La Plaça Real – DELICIOUS tapas. Best yet. Though the salad was a little too olive oily. In a city with so much activity, we actually wanted to experience nightlife, since we weren’t able to in the prior cities for whatever reason. Within minutes of walking down La Rambla (a central street in the city), we got a free admission pass to Club BLVD, which was really close to us and didn’t seem sketchy (AND FREE), so we decided to check it out. It was a total blast. They played a ton of American music and did cool mixing. There was an arrangement of Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack” that was killer. And there was a perfect moment where the entire club was singing together “Hello” – some new pop song that I am a huge fan of now. I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called, but the lyrics are along the lines of “I just came to say hello”. Precious. There was a fair share of creepers – after all, it is a club, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Luckily, our hostel was very close, so it was a quick walk home at the end of the night. Win.