As much as I’m a city girl, I’ve found that the biggest cities (or capitol cities) are not always my favorite, just because there is more of everything… more to do, more commercialism, more traffic, more slums, more expenses, etc.  I am glad to report that this was not the case in Madrid.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the city. It had some beautiful architecture (although I must say that Barcelona still takes the cake on that), lots of interesting sites, and really friendly people.

One thing I really loved about Madrid, is that people let me try to speak Spanish to them.  Even if they could tell that I’m American, and they know how to speak English, they still humored me and allowed me to butcher their language.  One guy at a café even tried to help me by correcting my pronunciation, which I think is way cool, except that to my ears it all sounded the same.  Jamón.  Jamón.  Yeah, that’s what I said.

A few of my favorite sites/activities in Madrid were:

Finding Scott’s Twin
We were walking down the street, when I noticed a guy walking the other direction that was dressed EXACTLY like Scott.  I suggested taking a picture of the two of them together.  Of course Scott disagreed, but after a few minutes of my mad persuasion skills (aka, bossiness), he gave in.  We were walking in opposite directions, so by this time Scott’s twin was a good distance away from us, so we took off in a sprint.  At the moment we caught up to him, my thoughts finally caught up to Scott’s hesitation, as I wondered how I was going to approach a stranger and ask him to pose for a photo with a random person who was dressed like him, without looking like a weirdo.  So, I employed my acting skills and used the surprised technique of, “Oops, I’m sorry I just bumped into you… Oh…  Hey!  Well, wouldya look at that!  What are the odds of running into someone dressed exactly like my husband?!  Hey Scott, look! This man is dressed just like you!  Come on over here and smile…”  Click.  The guy was actually really cool (how could he not be with such a great sense of style), and we all got a good laugh out of it.  Even though he didn’t speak any English and couldn’t understand my whole routine anyway.

Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and gardens
This is the “official” residence of the King of Spain, although he doesn’t really live there. However, it’s still used for some occasions.  Beeeaaauuutiful.  We didn’t even go into the largest section of the Oriental Gardens, but the palace is surrounded by smaller gardens, fountains, courtyards, etc., which are all free to enter… Unlike the palace itself, but it was worth the price.

Parque del Buen Retiro (Park of the Pleasant Retreat)
The place lives up to its name.  I don’t even know how much time we spent here, but it was a good long while.  It’s a huge park with a beautiful lake right in the middle, as well as a few smaller lakes/ponds throughout the grounds.  Normally you can rent little boats on the lake, but for some reason the boat rental booth decided to close this particular day.  There was just a hand-written sign posted over the normal business hours, so I guess the owner decided it was too nice a day to spend it in a little booth.  Gotta love Spain.

Free Museum Sundays
In Barcelona several of the museums are open for free on the first Sunday of the month (same in a few other cities around Europe), but in Madrid, there are free hours EVERY Sunday.  They are typically just in the afternoon or evening, for example, the famous Museo del Prado is free 6:00-8:00pm.  You can imagine that the line gets very long, so get there early, but it does go pretty fast.

Picnic
We spent our last evening in Madrid doing one of my favorite travel activities – picnic in a square.  We picked the beautiful Plaza Mayor.  This plaza has a long history of being used for anything from markets to bull fights to executions, but these days, it’s used for sitting.  Overpriced restaurants line the plaza, and in the middle, people sit.  There are no benches, but that doesn’t stop people from congregating in little groups on the ground.  I love it.  It’s beautiful, social, perfect for people watching, and the only thing the people in the restaurants had that we didn’t was the fat bill… and chairs, which are so overrated anyway.

Grand Exit
There’s a pretty new AVE highspeed train system that connects some of the major cities in Spain, so we were excited to travel from Madrid to Sevilla in style.  We’ve been on our fair share of trains, some nicer than others.  Some of you might remember the one with the bottomless toilet where you could see the tracks wizzing by as you wizzed…  This was NOT like that.  The bathrooms were civilized, and the seats were like first class on an airplane (or at least how my Coach status would imagine first class to be).  At a speed of about 170 mph, we got to Sevilla in no time… but honestly, I wouldn’t have minded spending a little more time on the train.  Of course it costs a little more than taking the slower train, but I justified it as the cost of entertainment, as we headed into Andalucía.

Just a quick update about some of the things we’ve been up to in and around Barcelona…

Bon Jovi: The Lost Road Leads to Spain
C’mon, you know your jealous.   I’ve been a Bon Jovi fan for the last couple of decades (more last decade than this decade), so when we found out they were coming to Barcelona we couldn’t resist.  I convinced myself that the 56€ tickets were an early birthday present.

The concert was at the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic, and I was surprised to see how full it was.  I tried making friends with people around me, none of whom spoke English, but all of whom knew every word to the songs, so we all sang together.

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Sorry we’ve been kinda quiet lately… just taking a break and staying put in Barcelona for a while! The weather has been weird - beautiful for a few weeks, then rain moving back in. Even so, it’s good to be “home” for a bit. I love traveling, but also like being able to put my clothes in a drawer, and know where the nearest market is. It’s peaceful here, despite the noisy bar down the alley.

More excitement to come though! Scott’s mom and step-father are coming to visit soon, and we’ll be doing a bit of traveling with them, so stay tuned…

Adam & Nicki spent most of their trip doing slow-paced tourism with us in Barcelona, with the exception of a brief getaway to San Sebastián. I figured out that an over night bus would be cost-effective and give us more time in the city than flying. Adam & Nicki, being the troopers that they are – and having taken their fair share of janky buses and trains around the world – were game.

Luckily several passengers got off at some of the earlier stops on the route, giving us the opportunity to spread out in separate rows for part of the night. Scott, Nicki & I all got a little sleep – about as good as you can expect on an over night bus where you have to consciously hold your body onto the seat to prevent yourself from rolling off when our Formula One bus driver would stop, go or turn. Adam got about 20 minutes max. His row was across from mine, and every time I would wake up (about every 10 minutes I think), all I saw was him sitting straight up with a slight look of panic on his face as he stared directly forward.

I was absolutely right – taking a bus gave us significantly more time in the city! In fact, thanks to our bus driver, we arrived way ahead of schedule, and a couple hours before the sun.

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So our good friends Adam & Nicki from CA came to visit us here in the pickpocket capital of the world. They both studied in Germany for a while and have done their fair share of traveling, so they already knew the basics. For example…

• Men, keep your wallet in your front pocket.
• Women, if you must carry a purse, make sure it has a zipper (and preferably a flap over the zipper), and a long strap so you can wrap it around your neck/shoulder.
• Don’t carry your passports on you unless you’re actually traveling
  Note: most places in Spain will accept a photo copy of your passport or your U.S. drivers license as ID, so hide the passports somewhere safe and leave them in your hotel. (I don’t know if this is true in other countries, but it flies in Spain)
• Be extra alert when on crowded public transit
• When seated, make sure your purse/backpack is in your lap or somewhere that you can see and feel it (don’t just put it under your chair).
• Get one of those cheap carabiner things to hook the two zippers on your backpack together. It’s not a lock, but it’s hard enough to open that it will annoy you when you need to get into your own bag.

Scott is actually working on a resource for safety tips, so more to come on that later. To sum it up for now, there are plenty of targets out there, so do whatever you can to make yourself a difficult one, to encourage the thieves to move on to someone else. We are certainly not experts, but we see people making themselves easy targets all the time, and if we can see it, the thieves can see it.

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You just never know what you’re going to find in Barcelona. I’m pretty sure that every night we stay in, we miss something. For example, we spent most of the day today inside, preparing for our upcoming trip, doing chores, etc. So about 6:00pm we were ready to get out. We had nowhere to go, so we just started wandering.

Walking down one of the main streets that we take pretty regularly, we heard some music, so we followed our ears. We wound up in the Plaza de la Constitución, where a band was playing and people were dancing the Sardana. Sardana is a traditional Catalan dance that represents unity. People gather in circles, holding hands up high, and step in unison. Coats and bags are usually placed in the center of the circle for safe keeping.

We’ve witnessed this before, usually with groups of senior citizens outside of the Barcelona Cathedral on a Sunday afternoon. We still don’t know the reason for this particular celebration, but we enjoyed watching it for a while.

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As you may recall, the flat where we originally landed in Barcelona was only temporary. For that period of time, we couldn’t have asked for anything better. We loved the flat, it was in a beautiful neighborhood, and we had a wonderful (and helpful) flat mate.

I was honestly a little concerned that we wouldn’t be able to find another place that we loved so much that was within our price range. The first few (of many) flats we looked at only proved my point.

One in particular was priced at less than half of what we budgeted, the reason being that it could only be rented from month-to-month, as the building was scheduled to be renovated. Since the owner wasn’t sure when the renovations would begin (after all, this is Spain… mañana, mañana, mañana…), he would benefit from having at least some income from an otherwise empty flat, and we would benefit from the price break under the condition that we could move with very little notice.

Knowing that the building was in need of renovation, we weren’t expecting much, but at this price, we figured we would have to HATE it in order to pass up saving that much money for a month or two. Well, we hated it. Actually, we were afraid of it.

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