Madrid...ups and downs

Hi everyone,
Well we´ve been in Madrid for 2 days now...
we were really tired when we arrived but now we´re ok...kinda
the palce that we´re staying at ended up being really great and close to the metro station...it took us a while to get there from the airport and there was lots of stairs which was good for my arms but it was pretty hassle free...
Except for my dumb sense of direction the first time we jumped on the metro i took us to the wrong stop and then i had to pull a ttc move and get off and go to the other platform...i even do that in Toronto so its ok...gimme a break.

When we got here Laurie was really pooped and her stomach was kinda bugging her from the bad plane food but my mom sent us some homeopathic pills that cure everything you have and your grandmother too...and they did the trick! Thanks Mami!

The first day we did a lot of walking and getting lost. We were trying to find major sighst and saw others along the way that really caught our attention so we would get distracted and then lost. We found this little plaza with these huge letter monuments that spelled LOVE and AMOR and we had a blast taking pictures there. Then we found this HUGE climbable one that said ART and had the brilliant idea to climb up on it to take a picture. So I climbed first and posed ... then i looked down...it wasn´t climbable after all(aka. it was a far jump down). Then some nice lady came and said would you both like to be in the picture and since we don´t get that offer too often Laurie climbed up too. So we posed and smiled for the camera but inside we were tormented about how to get down. The best part was that my purse with all our stuff was at the bottom of the sculpture. Finally I decided to be brave and jump and almost lost the use of both my ankles...and then i caught Laurie as she jumped down. So much for foto-ops for us.

Later in the afternoon we were walking trying to find Puerta del Sol (a major intersection where 6 of Madrids highways converge and stopped at a place called el Museo del Jamon to grab a bite. Then we went back to the hostel cuz we were exhausted from all that walking and both passed out for a couple of hours.

In the evening we did some more walking. As a side note, it is gay pride weekend in Madrid this weekend so we´ve seen lots of ummm unconventional couples....and one of the major road was blocked off for the parade...
This did not help my navagating impairments at all. As we were trying to make out way to Puerta del Sol, I was saying a lot of "Oh wait...this is the wrong street...let´s turn around" and Laurie was doing a lot of sighing. Anyways, we finally found it and I wanted to see this monument to the Spanish coat of arms (the bear and oak tree) and guess what we didn´t find it...
but we found a place to cash our travellers cheques for free...and this major shopping area...
So we did what all young girls who are saddened by the lack of a monument to take pictures of would do... we went SHOPPING!!
We saw some great examples of Madrid fashion which is interesting and we kinda like it. We found a Sears/Bay type store called El Corte Ingles...that had like a million floors (translation 9) and discovered that even in Spain everyone loves a sale since they had like 50% off everything.
After we went to look in Zara and found Laurie a cute jean skirt...very euro...

We left the shopping and started waling again as I was determined to see the monument to Cervantes (famous Spanish novelist...Don Quijote). I lost us again, but we ended up in another plaza, Del Oriente which had a tango singer and dancers as part of Madrid´s Veranos en la Villa. We sat onthe floor and listened to some old tango and watched these beautiful dancers.

After that we found the monument and took some pictures there. We were far from home and since the nearest metro stop was under constrcution we had to walk far to next one. We ended up going in this pedestrian tunnel that was underground and looked like a parking lot because of the trafffic gridlock.

Today has been a long day too... we left the hostel early in the morning and went to the train station which is super nice.We had to wait in line a bit to reserve out train tickets for tomorrow. Then we took the metro to the Rastro which is the Sunday market...I love markets...it was huge it has a main street and all these other little side streets off of it. We found some good deals and it reminded us alot of the markets we´ve seen in South America and there was even woven stuff like in Ecuador which is probably because there is a lot of Ecuadorians here. After that we walked to the Plaza Mayor which is good example of Hapsburg Madrid. It was the middle of the day and we were hot and hungry so we stopped to have lunch in a little restaurant there. We sat in their patio and it was fun to people watch and eat like europeans. We got to eat paella too which was a major goal accomplished for me and I had some wine which combined with the sun made me kinda tipsy that was funny for Laurie. After some sitting we walked all that food off on our way to the Prado musuem. We went inside for free cuz its Sunday and got to admire some beautiful art work. We´re definitely not connoiseurs so we learned alot. It was interesting too because I had seen a lot of slides of the pieces in the museum in my seventeenth century lit. class which I found so boring at the time but now I appreciate that profs. effort to educate us a little. After that we wanted to go the Parque del Retiro because we read that there was some all night drumming there or something...but we got distracted along on the way and walked the botanical gardens. They were nice nothing spectacular alot of the flowers get dried up under the really hot sun....but there was a beautiful fountain with some staues and palms trees. With the light from sun and the sprinklers taht came on it was a "heavenly" looking foto-op. As Laurie was posing for the camera the sprinkeler changed directions and the picture turned into an action shot and Laurie was a little wet. Since we saw a sign outside the gardens for another museum (Reina Sofia) we went there. It was closed and we just took some pictures of the two beuatiful galss elevators that frame the stone building. Then we saw a churro place and had some coffee and churros.

There is some sad news to report which is that our memory card is stupid and has done something retarded and reformatted itself so all those pictures I described are gone. The guy who sold it to me (in TO) told me that the camera didn´t take more than 1 GB but then we tried it and it worked. After a certain number of pics it said error and then there was no images. Laurie and I had some sad moments over coffee and churros but we´re better now. On a happier note I learned to use the compass I brought and we´ve been lost a lot less today. In fact, we´re really getting the hang of this city. Yay for us!

We´re gonna do our best to get some pictures of Madrid for you tonight...
either way this city has been good to us and we´re glad that we were able to see everything we had planned to...although all of u might not....I guess its all part of the fun.
We leave EARLY tomorrow morning for Barcelona....

Love and Miss you all....sorry about the fotos...keep praying for us...its helping!


Danie and Laurie!