Awesome Day in Western Madrid

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Soo today we slept in until about noon, then we decided to head out to the western part of Madrid. Mary Kate has a travel book that lists all the good places to go, so we thought we would kind of go along with that. We took the metro to the center of the Complutense, the HUGE university that Kali (our housemate) is going to. About 90,000 students attend that university! We really wanted to go up in the Faro, which is a cool look-out tower in the area, but it was closed for renovations or something. We walked around, stopped to get a Coca-cola light in a terraza cafe, then ate sandwiches from home in this really cool shaded park. After walking a little bit more, we found the Arco de la Victoria which is a triumphal arch that marked Franco's entry into Madrid in 1939. A lot of this area was destroyed during his approach, but it was rebuilt and is now military housing. We saw a building for Ejercito del Aire (like air force) but couldn't really get close to it.

We kept walking and found a bunch of little shops which, thankfully, were closed! Past that we came upon Plaza de Espana. This park area is in between two big skycrapers which symbolize different stages in the time of dictatorship in Spain. The plaza has a few really cool fountains and statues. From there we decided to head towards Templo de Debod, which is an Egyptian temple from the 4th century BC. It was given to the Spanish government by Egypt as a thank-you for helping save many Egyptian buildings. Just past that we could look out and see a much more rural part of the city. We also saw the Teleferico, which is a cable car that goes from where we were to Casa de Campo. We decided to take it one way only! It actually wasn't that scary, and we got to see a lot during the ride! The coolest part was that we could see traces of old Civil War Trenches! I have never seen anything like it. When we got off the tram on the other side, there was a playground which we played on for a few minutes, and also another lookout. From the lookout you could see more Civil War trenches, and we decided to walk down the hill to Casa de Campo. In Casa de Campo there is an awesome amusement park, a zoo, and aquarium, some woods, and a youth hostel. The rides at the amusement park look really exhilarating, but we are going to save that for a warmer day.

After wandering around some more, we finally found the metro near the amusement park and headed back home. It turns out we had walked about 5 metro stops away from where we got off the metro in the beginning of the day! We were really tired, and when we got home a dinner of hot dogs, fried eggs, cuban rice, and salsa was waiting for us! Yum!

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Comments

[Jared]

Good thing you are keeping a list of stuff for me to see when i visit!

[Madre Miller]

Thanks for the info!
Thanks for keeping such a Great journal! You got your friend Rachel off the hook! Make her do something nice for you while you're doing all this literary work! Have fun in Sagovia!