Spent the last few days in Madrid, Spain and unfortunately have not been to impressed with the city. Since my last major city was Rome I catch myself comparing it to Madrid, which would be like Usain Bolt running in the special Olympics. Okay maybe not that bad, It just doesn't have the beauty of Rome or Paris, mainly due to old style politics, or the Spanish Inquisition.
Back in the day, no building in eyesight of the royal palace could look fancier than the royal palace, and as such many major building look plain, or may only look nice on the side facing away from the palace. When the Spanish Inquisition happened, one of the sins you could get burned at the stake for was pride. Having a fancy looking house on the outside was an indication of pride and thus most old houses are plain on the outside.
Madrid itself is exceptionally difficult to navigate, with the central area being a mish-mash of one way streets that are easy to get lost on. I've been here four days and I've only just been able to find my way from the hostel to the main square and back without a map today.
The day after arriving I did the walking tour, four hostels team up every day to do a walking tour, usually they get about 30 people each day, today they had 80+, so many they had to call in another tour guide and split the group up. Our tour guide, Harriet, asks who's from where. A couple of Americans, a couple of Canadians, Dutch, Germans, a Mexican guy.. And about twenty Australians. The tour itself it quite good and is how I learned why Madrid looks the way it does.
The next day I went to the Prado museum, it's the main museum and the second largest in Europe. It was good, but it was 80% art, and while I like old art, I got bored because they all had the same subject matter: Jesus. When I arrived in Madrid I bought one if those museum passes that gets you into all the museums and past all the lines, however I've realised that such passes are only worth if if you smash out museum after museum for three days. There are apparently fifty museums in the city, but only a handful are actually worth going to.
That night the same four hostels from the walking tour get people together for Tapas and a pub crawl. Night time on a Friday in Madrid is pretty hectic and, as before there are 80+ people going. For safety they want everybody to stick together but they don't have any sort of flag or marker to follow, so the find the next best thing, since I'm possibly the tallest person in Madrid right now I'm chosen as the person everyone follows. This happened on the walking tour in Florence too, but this time 80 people know my name and its either follow me or get lost and possibly mugged.
Anyway, Tapas. Tapas is essentially finger food served to you with drinks. Originally served with alcohol back in the day because people could either afford food or alcohol for lunch but not both. People of the time made poor choices and would return to work smash drunk after drinking on the empty stomach. Thus a law was made where food must be served with alcohol, solving the problem. The tapas was good and unlimited, the guides warned us the wait staff arn't known for being the friendliest and I can see why, when 80 tourist rock up to a mostly full tapas joint things get crazy. The wait staff would move flat out up and down this long and thin resteraunt, carrying huge amounts of food with a single hand. At one point, one guy was carrying a tray with six pints of sangria, on top of that was another tray with 6 pints of beer, on top of that was balanced three plates of Tapas.
Today I went to the Royal Palace as I heard from during the day tour that it has the biggest medieval armory in Europe. It was pretty good and while your not able to take photos in many of the museums here I took of sneaky shots of the armor.
I head to Barcelona tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to, one because of the beach and two, because the hostel I'm staying at is another Hostel One, the same place I stayed at in Prague.
