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Published: December 14th 2015
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Despite my weariness, I was awake sparrow-fart and tossed and turned until finally giving up the dream of sleeping like a normal person around 5:30am. Kohen managed to sleep longer (ahh…the blessed ability to sleep through anything that we seem to lose with adulthood).
Anyway, we were all soon up and about and looking forward to checking out the Spanish capital. The apartment was nice and spacious, with everything we could want and views forever. Best of all, Kohen had his own room and a real bed (not always the case with some apartments we’ve had before). We were told at the airport that our luggage would be delivered between 2-6pm, and we would need to be at the apartment to take delivery. Major bummer – this would put a big hole in our opportunity to see much on day 1 in Madrid. With no guarantee of our bags arriving, and only the clothes on our backs we headed out to buy some essentials (spare shirts/jocks/toiletries). Now, as any self-respecting Aussie male knows, there is a technique to get at least two wears out of a pair of jocks. However, it turns out that convincing your wife of the validity
of this technique is slightly more difficult than I expected. Juan offered us a spare pair of his jocks, but I think we all know this is a major faux pas in any situation.
Thankfully, our local train station was also a major shopping mall, and we managed to get everything we needed, before dumping them at the apartment and heading back out. We managed to have a nice walk through a couple of the nearby parks, and had a picnic lunch in one of them. Our walk took us up past the Catedral de la Almudena. The cathedral was impressive, and certainly had a commanding spot on top of the hill. It’s relatively new from a European perspective (building began 1879), but it’s size and grandeur made up for what it lacked in historical cred. Of interest, the entrance (at least the one we came upon) had an excavation of the original Moorish walls and a gate. The cathedral stands on the site of a much more ancient medieval mosque from the time of the Arab occupation of the city. Before long, it was time to head back to the apartment, so Kohen and Natalie headed back, whilst
I headed down Calle Mayor (one of the main drags in Madrid) to grab some more groceries to keep us going. One the way, I came across the Viaducto de Segovia (OK – it’s really a grand name for an overpass – but given my love of bridges, I couldn’t help but mention this one). The viaduct was really quite impressive with a height of 23 metres. Anyway, there was not much more we could do on day one, and ended up waiting at the apartment until our bags DID finally arrive around 6:30pm. By that stage, we were all ready for dinner and bed, and forced ourselves to stay awake until at least 9:00. A reasonably quiet first day (and some wasted time) but at least we now had our gear, and needn’t worry about anything other than enjoying the rest of the trip.
Juan
Juan accompanied us clothes shopping (and grabbed a new jacket), and helped with translation and paying in the stores. He then left us when we returned to wait at the apartment and headed to a local tapa/bar. The bar was typical for Madrid, and was a small, noisy,
friendly establishment where most of the patrons knew each other. As he was still a bit jet-lagged he didn’t stay too long, and got back to the apartment around the same time as we were heading for bed. I was tired out, but Juan insisted on telling me all about Juanita (I know – the name similarities are uncanny!!) whom he had met at the bar. He had known her for all of 3 hours, but was already smitten. I put his over-zealousness down to his Latin blood, and the fact he was able to chat to a girl in Spanish after having been in Australia for so long, but eventually I had to excuse myself from our conversation to get some rest.
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