Madrid - 5/2/11

Pictures!

Tricia’s alarm woke us at 9. Once again, I wanted to scrunch my eyes closed and go back to sleep. It took a few minutes, but I managed to drag myself up. I didn’t bother to get dressed, but just threw a jacket over my pajamas. The guy at the desk did a double take and then laughed - I was wearing a bright pink terry cloth jacket and bright orange pj pants with little black cats on them. “I wanted to make an entrance!” He laughed some more as I passed him and went into the kitchen.

Between Tricia and I, we sampled everything they had to offer, from the toast with Nutella, to the corn flakes, to the oatmeal and raisins. We both made the now traditional coffee/milk/hot chocolate mixture. It was marginally better than the coffee at the previous hostel. Ironically, after breakfast we had nothing to do until 11:45, when we were planning to take a free 3 hour tour, again with the patrons of the nearby hostels. This gave us amble time to shower, blow dry the hair, blog a bit, and re-organize our bags into easy-to-find sections. This is important when you’re literally living out of a suitcase.

At 11:45 we met up with our guide who had already picked up some interested tourists. By the time we got to the beginning of the tour, we had gathered 50 people. Our guide was Harriett, a Londoner who had moved to Madrid and was teaching English and giving guided tours. In addition to the normal problems inherent to speaking loudly enough to be heard by a group of 50 outdoors in a bustling city, May 2 is another holiday in Madrid and the Plaza del Sol was completely packed with people and the street was closed for a parade. They had even set up bleachers along the road for the onlookers. Harriett gave up on talking to us in the Plaza once the band started to play, and we moved on.

Once we were away from the bands and the throngs of people, Harriett told us about the Plaza del Sol. It means “gate of the sun,” and the plaza had once held the gate to the entrance of Madrid. However, once the king began expanding the borders of Madrid, the city walls and the gate were knocked down. So it’s been centuries since there was a gate there, but it is still called the Plaza del Sol.

There is a statue in the plaza that is the icon for Madrid. It is a bear reaching up into a tree to eat its fruit. It turns out that the tree bears fruit that actually ferments on the tree itself, so the bear is eating the fruit to get drunk. And this is the symbol for Madrid. J

Also in the plaza is a clock tower that is the official time keeper for all of Spain. This means that on New Year’s Eve, all of Spain watches on television as this clock count down to midnight. The Plaza del Sol also plays an important part in protests in Spain. In 2005 over a million people gathered to protest the impending legalization of gay marriage. And in one of the biggest protests, 2.2 million people gathered to protest the government joining in the invasion of Iraq. The population of Madrid is only 4 million, so this was an impressive feat. In both these instances, the government ignored the protestors, and Spain became the fourth nation to legalize gay marriage, and only the second to end all legal discriminations as well (such as adoption, etc). Spain also had the third largest number of troops in Iraq at one point in the war.

We went over to the Royal Palace next, which was built in the 1700’s after the new king of Spain arrived from France and found out that he was expected to live in a fortress left over from the Moors centuries earlier. The people, however, loved the fortress, and didn’t want him to tear it down. Soon after the king arrived, the fortress “mysteriously” burned to the ground, and he began construction on a new palace in the more traditional European style popular at the time.

Right next to the palace is the austere Almudena Cathedral, which is the closest religious institution to a political institution in the world. It’s front is plain and simple - since it is right next to the palace, they needed to make sure not to try to outdo the royal architecture. However, if you walk to the other side of the valley and look at the back of the cathedral, it sits on a hillside and you cannot see the palace, so the back is ornate with columns and statues and looks very beautiful.

At one point in Madrid’s history, the capitol city was moved overnight from Toledo to Madrid. No one knows why, but they weren’t prepared for all the nobles who came with the royalty, and they had no housing for any of them. To deal with this, they imposed a tax on all the locals in Madrid that was so high, no one would be able to pay. But, if they had an extra room in their house, they could move their family into the room and let a noble family take over the rest of the house. This tax lasted for 200 years. Some of the buildings built around this time are called “malicious houses” because they were built to disguise the number of rooms inside. People were sent to count the windows on houses to see if there was room for a noble family, so builders put windows between floors and left out windows to make the house look smaller. The house in the picture actually has 5 stories.

Finally, we stopped at the Plaza Mayor. In Madrid, everyone drank wine instead of water, so the people who owned the wineries were becoming very wealthy, which made the nobles angry. So the king imposed a 75% tax on the income made from selling wine. He had so much extra money coming in from this tax that he gave some to the people to build a community center - the Plaza Mayor. It actually was built from wood, and apparently burnt to the ground and was rebuilt several times before the king insisted it be built out of stone. Now, it is a tourist center - one of the buildings is a tourism office and it is full of restaurants and souvenir shops.

By the time the tour ended, we were getting hungry, so we headed back to the Plaza Mayor to try some paella. We sat outside in the sun and shared a 5 Euro plate of paella, and managed to get the waiter to give us tap water - one of the benefits of eating in a tourist trap. At local places they won’t give you tap water. The paella was very good, and we decided to head back to the hostel afterwards for siesta. We had jelly beans and a bottle of wine Tricia had from her flight on AirFrance, so we had a little party while we blogged about the day. Then we had a little nap. J

After siesta, we hurried to the Reina Sofia for the free evening from 7 to 9 pm. We got a little turned around and lost, but with Tricia’s handy iPhone app and some directions from passersby we eventually made it. It is the modern art museum in Madrid, and we were particularly interested in Salvidor Dali and Picasso. After an hour in the museum, we’d had our fill of modernism and meandered back to the hostel. On the way, we grabbed another couple of ham and cheese sandwiches from the museum of ham. It’s keeping us fed while we’re in Madrid.

The hostels in the area were hosting a “drinking game” social, so we headed there next. There we found a bucket of Sangria (poured from a box) and 12 or so other travelers playing Kings. If you haven’t ever played - you draw a card from the deck, and each card corresponds to a rule. You also make rules up as you go along. At one point, Tricia and I stood on our chairs and drank our Sangria without touching the glass to our lips (we ended up as “mates”, so we each had to do whatever the other did), somehow managing not to spill all over ourselves. The goal of the game is to eventually draw all 4 kings from the deck. Whoever drew the fourth king would get to go out for free that night. Between Tricia and I, we drew the first 4 kings, but didn’t manage to get the last.

At about 11:30 we went out on a pub crawl. This cost us 10 Euros, but we got to have a drink at each of the four bars for free. At the first bar, I had a beer and Tricia had another Sangria, and we danced and talked to the people we’d met (many from Canada, and some from Ohio as well). At the second bar we got a shot of Tequila. At the third I didn’t get the name of the shot. As we spent an hour at each place, it was around 3:30 when we finally dragged ourselves home to our hostel. Somewhere along the way I lost one of my brand new earrings, as per usual. This is why I only spend one dollar on my jewelry. We again used our flashlights to find our toothbrushes and pajamas, as none of the other 6 girls had stayed out so late and were asleep. It was a great second day in Madrid!