Don´t Catch The Baby

Or the bag of trash! (Explanation to come later).

We just finished our whirlwind tour of Madrid.  It consisted of three days: Tired Day, Tour Day, Second Tired Day.  Let us review.

Tired Day:

We arrived in Madrid off of a redeye.  We were tired.  Unfortunately, we couldn´t check into our hostel for three more hours, making napping impossible.  We began to wander the streets of Madrid, and in doing so came up with two necessary abbreviations.  The first, ¨PM”, stands for power move.  PEOPLE ON THE SIDEWALK DO NOT WALK AT HUMAN PACES.  Slowest.  The second, “GS”, stands for Green Shirt.  This is our favorite type of traveler. They rarely go out, they do touristy things, they take pictures, and they match their outfits. We ran into a group of GS´s in the Madrid Airport, and since they were wearing green shirts…etc.

In our half asleep daze, we managed to find all the most important things in Madrid. Wow, how did we do that?  We stumbled into the Basilica of San Franscisco (yo suhp), and literally happened upon a tour.  Given in Spanish.  Did we mention we were tired?

The tour was given by the best guy ever.  We don’t know what his name or occupation was, but we later dubbed him Father Roberto.  We loved him so much…the most comforting man.  At the end of the tour, we found the baby we are obsessed with.  IT COPIES FACES!!! Even complicated ones!!! It is the smartest child, we are both still impressed.  Alice´s rendition of the encounter is shown below in Figure 4-1.

Figure 4-1: Most Impressive Baby

We ended the day by eating in the ridiculously overpriced Plaza Mayor, where Alice spotted a kid she TA´d for.  We will never know for sure, but he was wearing a Phillies t-shirt and talked with an American accent.  We´ll count it as a win.

Tour Day:

We were determined to be more productive on our second day.  Our hostel offered a walking tour of Madrid, and since it was gratis, we did it.  It was on this tour that we found our Irish krew (Cormac, Connor, Bart, Joe, Sean, Dan) and our Atlanta/Englishman Jon.  Fun fact about Madrid:  Egypt gifted it a temple way back in the day, and then later made them pay for it. 

Figure 4-2:  EGYPT WTF?!¿?!

After the tour, we went to the Royal Palace of Madrid.  It was hear we discovered that Amanda wants to be a queen.  Like, really.  So badly.  On our way back to the hostel, we walked through a square with a random red box in it.  As we walked by, a man with a painted face and lizard hands jumped out and screamed.  Naturally, Amanda flipped out.  All of the yelling.  See Figure 4-3, again rendered by Alice.



Figure 4-3: It´s upside down. 



We did all the walking that day, and decided to lie down for a bit in the afternoon.  Four hours later, we woke up from our first unexpected nap of the trip.  We grabbed dinner, and went on our bar crawl.  Insanity.  Everyone wanted to be our friend.  Our Irish and English pals made it their personal mission to make sure we were safe (cheers, mates), we had 1 liter cups of Sangria, there was a 19 year old from LOS ALTOS THERE WHO GOES TO MIT (those of you from Los Altos know how RIDICULOUS that is), there was a girl from Penn there, and we played all the games.  It ended at a seven story club, which we arrived at AT 3AM.  Night = success.

Second Tired Day

What?? We were tired?????? No way.

We managed to get to the Prado museum with bffl Jon, and then successfully purchased tickets for Barthelona.  When we made it back to the hostel, the second four hour unexpected nap occurred.  YYY DO WE DOOO THESE THINGS??????  After a failed dinner adventure (advertisements lie), we were ready to head to our next city.

Trip Revelations:

1. Everything is so tiny.  The meal we got for lunch on Second Tired Day would usually be something we ate while we decided what we wanted to eat for real.  Liquids are no different.  The normal size of coke or water is literally one sip.  Even the people are the tiniest.  Europe…get bigger.  Just super size it.  That has never gone wrong.
2. EVERYTHING IS HAM.  All the sandwiches are ham.  All the toppings on pizza are ham.  Want some turkey?  Here´s some ham.  We really aren´t joking.



Figure 4-4: LOL

3. Gypsies. Throwback to the title of the post.  We were warned by Janie never to catch a baby that someone throws at you. They will steal your stuff. This is a problem for Alice, since she´s obsessed with babies and would absolutely catch it. Amanda would let it drop. On our bar crawl, one threw a bag of trash at us while we were walking. Luckily we had our band of merry men to protect us, BUT NEVER CATCH THE TRASH OR THE BABY.  Also, gypsies try to sell you lighters and bracelets while you eat dinner.  So weird.
4. Finally, the clothes.  Zebra woman was first spotted on Second Tired Day.  Imagine our surprise when we saw her again at the train station the next day.  In the same outfit.  Notice the similarities to sasquatch in her mannerisms. 

Figure 4-5: LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Que le vayamos bien.

-Alice and Mandark

OH WAIT!!!! That’s not all.  Look at these fellers we found at the Barcelona station.

Figure 4-6: Outfits make our lives so much better

And that was Madrid.  On to Barcelona.