Madrid

---

June 18
It was really hard to wake up this morning since we only got 4 hours of sleep. Our train to Madrid was departing from the Seville train station at 6:45 am and we planned to leave the hotel at 6 am to have enough time to walk there. When we got down to the lobby and checked out, Carson and Jenny were still nowhere to be seen, so Molly went to knock on their door and tell them to hurry up. It turned out they were still sleeping. Molly told them they had 5 minutes to meet us downstairs. We were all downstairs at 6:20 and ready to go, so now we only had about 25 minutes to catch the train. We made it to the train station at the last minute and were able to hop on the train, but we were all pretty exhausted. It was a very close call.
We said goodbye to Carson and Jenny who were meeting their study abroad program people at the airport and took a metro to our hotel. Unfortunately it was too early to check in, but we were able to leave our luggage there. We needed some place to relax. We walked to Parque del Retiro, which is a huge park in the center of Madrid. There is a lake in the middle with many places around it to sit down to have a drink. We found a good spot to sit down, got a drink, and watched people. The lake is more like a small pond, but people still rent row boats to go out on the water. It didn't seem like there was much room to paddle around in there to us.
We checked into our hotel early afternoon and took a long nap. When we woke up at 5:30 pm, we made a reservation at Isla del Tesoro vegetarian restaurant for 9 pm, which is when they open for dinner. I got a falafel sandwich beforehand, I was too hungry to wait until 9 pm. Molly bought a nice bag. Now she can shop and have somewhere to pack things. The dinner was great. It was a good thing we made a reservation, which we did by suggestion from the many reviews online. They opened at 9pm, and by 9:20 the entire place was full. After dinner, we walked around and came back to our area of town by way of a main shopping street. Here we saw what we'll call some provocatively dressed ladies looking for company.

June 19
We planned a side trip to Toledo today. It is only 30 minute train ride from Madrid and costs 18 euros round trip per person. We started the day by researching attractions in Toledo and found a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. It was hard to find the right ticket office at Atocha train station. They have multiple ticket offices and each serves a different destination. It took us some time to figure it out, but we eventually found the right one. We got to Toledo at 1 pm. The town is on a steep hill with big walls around it. At one point, Toledo was three times the size of Madrid. Now Madrid is 30 times the size of Toledo. Most buildings in the town have been there for hundreds of years. The streets were narrow and crooked, which made it challenging to find the vegetarian restaurant, but we found it. It also didn't help that google had plotted it in an entirely different spot than where it is actually located and our map wasn't detailed enough to show the street it was located on. It was a really nice place with tasty food. We got out of there at 3 pm and went to the cathedral, which had a lot of El Greco paintings. We had to pay 7 euro per person to go in and I don’t think it was worth it. There are better cathedrals for free elsewhere.
After the cathedral excursion, we visited tourist office to see if there is a place with a good view. It was on a hill on the opposite side of the river. It would take at least one hour to walk there and Molly was feeling sick still and exhausted, so we decided to head back toward the station with a stop at Museo de Santa Cruz located in a palace with a small courtyard, which was free and had a nice exhibition of ceramics and tapestries.
We arrived at the train station 1 hour early, but didn't have enough time to get our tickets switched to the earlier return train. So we waited at a bistro, having some drinks and writing postcards. We got back to Madrid at 7 pm and walked back to our hotel.
We went to the falafel place again for some dinner.

June 20
Molly woke up even more sick, now with nausea, and I wasn’t feeling very good either. We spent the day in bed until about 7pm. I wrote the journal. Molly slept most of the day.
I went out from about 4-7 to check the bus schedule to Segovia, where we plan to go tomorrow. I walked by the river, which is really small by the way. I walked around different neighborhoods of Madrid and found a couple vegetarian restaurants. At the bus station, I ran into some guys heading back to Segovia that were doing their study abroad there. I told them about Carson and Jenny, but these guys were from Wisconsin and had been in Segovia already for 4 weeks, so they didn’t know them.
We went to try one of the vegetarian restaurants I had found. It was called Viva La Vida, it had a buffet style self service area and you pay for your food by weight. You can get exactly what you want and how much you want of it, and they had vegan foods clearly marked. The restaurant is in a very nice neighborhood called La Latina. I think that was my favorite part of Madrid.

June 21
Molly woke up not feeling any nausea anymore, just the cold. Fortunately we had realized the day before that it was the cough syrup that was causing the nausea, so as soon as that was out of her system she started to feel better, but still have a cold. I had something bothering my throat more, seems like it might be the same cold with different symptoms.
We did laundry in the morning. It was more expensive here, 5 Euro for wash, 1 Euro for 6 minutes of drying.
After noon, we took a bus to Segovia, which took about 90 minutes and cost 13 euros roundtrip per person. We went to the tourist information center located next to the Roman aqueduct. The aqueduct was built by Romans 2000 years ago and is still standing. It is an impressive structure. We walked to the Alcazar and stopped in the Mayor Plaza at a café for some lunch. They had a big screen set up in front of the Cathedral there, seems like it might be for the world cup game.
The Alcazar was nice and we went up to the tower to get a good view of the city. It had quite a bit of armor and weapons used for battle, and even had a bit of a history museum about weaponry. The Disneyworld castle is supposed to be a model of this castle.
We walked back through the Plaza Mayor, by the Cathedral, went to the post office to send out some postcards, and then went back to the aqueduct. Then back to the bus station to catch the next bus back to Madrid.
We made reservations at Isla del Tesoro again for 9pm. It wasn’t so busy tonight, but it’s Monday, and there is a Spain soccer game on right now. Molly and I each tried new things tonight. I liked mine, but Molly didn’t like hers. Her meal had too many leeks. We were pretty tired at this point so we just walked back to the hotel.

June 22
We leave Madrid today for Tours, but our train doesn’t leave until 7pm. We had a slow morning. Filip went out to get some breakfast, then we packed things up and checked out of our hotel around 11:30. They allowed us to leave our luggage there so we don’t have to drag it around all day, which was nice. We stopped at the store and I got some things to snack on in the park on our way to Museo del Prado.
When we first got to the museum it seemed that there was a very long line to buy tickets and we weren’t sure how long we’d have to wait, but the line went fast and we didn’t wait more than 20-30 minutes. They even had umbrellas set up to shade some of the line, which was nice as it was starting to get quite warm. The weather is changing, apparently it was a bit cooler than normal, which actually felt nice, but now it is getting warmer and closer to the normal weather this time of year.
We walked around Prado for at least 2 hours as there is so much to see there. What was nice about Prado is that there were finally a lot of paintings and sculptures that weren’t all religious. Some paintings were landscape, some were portraits. There were some religious, but also some that were about events. Another nice thing was that most paintings had a description that was also in English so you could read about the painting and what it was about, or who the people were.
After Prado we went to Maoz for a quick lunch/early dinner since we don’t know what there will be on the train. Then we walked around so I could shop a bit, but I never found anything, and Filip wasn’t in a shopping mood so that didn’t help.
We picked up our luggage from the hotel and took the metro to the train station. We didn’t expect the train to have too many people riding as the tickets are so expensive, but there were a lot of people riding, and most of them paid much more than we did to have the nice private rooms with actual beds. We were in an open car with all the other budget riders and just had reclining chairs.
Filip got a few hours sleep and I got even less, it just wasn’t comfortable. I would fall asleep for a little bit and wake up with my legs feeling numb from the angle I had been sleeping at. It was more comfortable than what you have sleeping on a plane because you have much more leg room and the seats recline quite a bit more, but it’s still not ideal. Given the situation to do it again, I would prefer to pay to fly that distance and pay for the extra night in a hotel. The man who had taken our tickets and passports came back to make sure we were awake about 20 minutes before our stop as we weren’t traveling to the final destination of the trip.


- Filip and Molly

---

Photos

Glass House
in Parque del Retiro

Isla del Tesoro 1
I loved the lamp at our table so much. It looked like it was made from recycled glass, how awesome is that.

Isla del Tesoro 2
Fancy looking vegan food. All I know is, it tasted really good.

Toledo 1
Entrance at the top of the hill.

Toledo 3
View across the river from where the old town is located.

Viva la Vida
Vegetarian buffet

Alcazar 6
I'm guessing they used to have a drawbridge here.

Alcazar 2
So was it actually children doing the fighting? This armor is pretty small.

Alcazar 5
Weapons collection

Alcazar Tower
Yet more proof that Filip would just not have fit into society many centuries ago. All the doors are much too short for him.