Big City Spain
We are in the middle of our 6 hour train to Granada. we've had 5 nights in Spain so far; 6 with the night train from Barcelona to Madrid. Barcelona was a nice stay. We had a marginal room, with what Matt called the "port-a-shower", but it was in a great location at the very beginning of the Eixample near Las Ramblas. We also ate very well at a place near our hotel called La Rita!
We had a bit of "grunt" work to do in Barcelona. May 1st is Labor Day in Spain and had to re-plan a bit of our trip dependent upon hotel and train availability. Kind of crappy, but we still got to see plenty of the city. Thankfully the Easy Internet was cheep!
Our second day in Barcelona started with a few more hours of arranging then we walked to the Sagadra Familia and spend about 3 hours inside and climbing up one of the towers. It really is an immense construction zone, still not slated for completion for about 50 years! It was very interesting. After that we walked to the Gothic church in the Gothic baria, sort of disappointing because the church was literally covered in scaffolding.
Wow, we are really traveling through some pretty tremendously beautiful land now, green hills with short trees, shrubs, wild poppies, and other flowers. Serene!
Our third day in Barcelona was mostly walking around Las Ramblas and the Gothic quarter. We hit the market for some snacks and people watching. Matt spent some time on a gypsy conquest. There are actually some very elaborate costumes on display! I think Matt got a photo of most of them and was very proud of himself for it :) After this we headed to Toledo, which was very beautiful and we decided to spend both days there! Too bad the only damn laundry store in town had closed!! We had to do a load in the shower and then we were good for a couple more days until Madrid. Our hotel in Toledo was very modern and clean; a nice time for it.
Toledo was a really cool city on a hill with lots of up and down walking! We walked around the cathedral, Matt was too cheap to go inside for 5e - ha ha! We mostly walked around and tried to experience the city. I enjoyed some local Santa Tome Marzipan - yum! Delicious! I think the highlight of the stay was going to the wine bar near the Bisjara Gate. The owner was an absolute character and we enjoyed several varieties of the wine over two nights there. The city really is most enjoyable in the evening! Tourists fill the streets during the days and the heat is too much in the afternoon!! SIESTA :)
Yesterday we took the bus into Madrid and enjoyed a tea and coffee before finally getting some laundry done! our hostel was a dive, but good enough for one night and CHEAP! We bought our Zarzuela tickets for later and headed to the Prado (free on Sunday). We enjoyed it, but neither of us are very art educated and Matt was especially tired of religious art. Too many Jesuses and flying babies! We headed to the Respiro Park, which was very huge and a wonderfully laid out city park. Nice and shaded with a little 'lake' to feed the fish and rent a row boat. We spent a couple hours and headed to our show. The show was interesting and I am glad that we did it. A couple of the singers were quite good and it looked like some parts were pretty humorous. I twas a bit hard to follow the Spanish (ok, really hard), but I think we got the gist of it. A love triangle between 2 sailors and a bar owner/maiden, except on of the guys ended up being her father (humm...) and was later arrested for sending her and the other man out to sea in a hurricane? She forgave him and that was the end.
Madrid really is all about the night life; that place was only STARTING at midnight!! We did some walking and hit a few bars for some tapas and beer. Our hostel was facing the street and I think the action only started ending this morning. We passed an open (and full) bar on our way to the metro! I don't know if I could do that every night, but it really was fun to check out all the different places and dash inside on, then another. I really especially liked the slightly less touristy street/area we found south of Plaza Mayor - the streets were FILLED with all kids of people; young, old, couples, singles, gays, etc!!
So now we are en-route to Granada with pretty high expectations!!