But first I shall update on the events of yesterday.
Yesterday we went to the Palacio Real (The Royal Palace) aka my new house. It's located close to where I'm going to be staying.
We did the audio tour of the place since it's quite large and there's a lot to look at. It's all very lavishly decorated. It's hard to imagine people actually LIVING there as opposed to it being a museum. But I did learn that the palace is still used by the current monarchs (Spain is like Britain in terms of government) for special functions. It's fun to imagine being a princess or the queen and being able to call a place like that one of your homes. One of the coolest things we saw was the Royal Armory, which we didn't see on our last trip to Spain. It was really awesome. The suits of armor were lavish and ornamental and they had all these old weapons etc. Really cool. After the palace we walked to see the Egyptian temple of Debod, buttt found out it's closed the entire month of August (when most Europeans take their vacations). But the good thing is I'll be able to go back when it reopens. Since that didn't work out, we walked a bit more north and rode the Teleferico! It's a cable car that takes you from the center of Madrid out to the Casa del Campo. It's a really cool ride, and lets you see the city from an entirely different angle. It's only 11 min each way, so we got off at the other end and looked around. It had a lot of trails for biking, hiking, areas for picnics etc. It's still technically in Madrid, but it might as well be in the desert-y/forrest-y type area. Whist riding I discovered mi nuevo novio. He was muy guapo as the Spainards would say. Very muscle-y and such. He waved to us, and it was amor a la primera vista. There's a cool amusement park in the distance. If I can find out how to get there I'll go. We rode the teleferico back, all happy and whatnot. Got some food after that since we were a little hungry. But the place was kind of a rip off. ( In Spain you have to ask for tap water, agua de grifas (from the pipes) or else they'll give you bottled water, and that can be expensive.) After that however, we went to a flamenco show. It was really great. The dancers were fantastic, esp. the male one (mi otro novio). Carolyn liked him too. We decided he could dance for us whenever he wanted :) But it was a really great show overall too. Very intimate setting, drink included, and just overall cozy and fun. It was a nice way to see some other cultural aspects of Spain, besides art.
Today, our one week anniversary in Spain (ish, we left home a week ago and didn't technically arrive in Madrid till Saturday) we planned on picking up our rental car and driving the 1hr and a half trip to visit Segovia. Pero, fue un disastre. We got a late start, it took a million phone calls, and walking all over the freaking train station to find the place where you pick up the rental car. It took legitimately hours to find the rental car place, then dad had to go back and get the passports to pick up the car, then we had to go find the car, like I said disastre! Then it was too late to drive all the way to Segovia so we decided on El Escorial and Valley of the Fallen instead. Then there was traffic on the highway, then Valley of the Fallen was closed due to maintenance and security blah blah blah... SO we ended up just doing El Escorial. It was nice though. It's an old monastery and palace together. We did the audio tour again, but it talked too much about some things so we skipped a few and just looked around instead. Again you couldn't take pictures of the really old things. We were going to get something to eat afterwards in Escorial town, buttt we couldn't find public parking, and we faced life and death situations with our parents driving around hilly streets in stick shift cars. So we convinced them to just go home instead of risking our lives, or them killing each other, neither of which would have been good. We ended up on the scenic route home, but it was really cool (other than being afraid of dying) to drive down the mountains. When we FINALLY arrived home, we decided it was time for our tapas crawl. A tapas crawl is when you go from bar to bar and have a drink and order just little bits to eat. I had three great glasses of wine... make that 4, and some really delicious tapas, some of the best being on C/ Cava Baja. So we made our rounds and enjoyed some gelato in the end. Tomorrow, we're possibly heading our to wine country so more interesting car rides to come. Bueños Noches!
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