This time we wandered into the Plaze de la Sol. Madrid is made up of lots of plazas or town squares interlinked by a matrix of narrow cobbled streets. Imagine an old town square about 100 metres across lined on all sides by wonderful old buildings, all paved, buskers, cafes, street artists etc all around, some stairs descending to a metro station in the middle and anywhere up to 6 or 8 streets leading into the space. You walk down any one of those streets a few hundred meters (picture back street car chase in a Bond movie) to another square, similar but different in its own way from the last one. I LOVE EUROPE. Anyway we went to Plaza del Sol to find a Vodafone store.
What you will notice, if you are one of the four people paying attention to my blogging, is that all of my first few blogs in Europe all got dumped on the web at the same time. You see up until this date we had not yet sorted out our mobile phone/wifi issues. We are basically relying on free wifi hotspots to jump online and post stuff or check email. Once we got sorted in Madrid we wanted to get ourselves a Spanish Sim to be able to use our mobiles and get online on the iphones etc whenever we needed without paying a gazillion dollars to do so with global roaming. Anyway, we found a vodafone store, procured a sim and got our communications a bit more up to speed in Plaza del Sol. There are still a few glitches to overcome. It was reasonably easy except for the fact that the texts that Vodafone sent me once the Sim was in are all in Spanish, you try working out how to verify your number etc in Spanish. That's not the worst of it either, every time I go to use my mobile to make a call all I get is a 2 minute message in Spanish about what I need to do to make it work properly. Sounds like this ... 'Podriamuchachoqueirivaladellaiastescondaranos' and on it goes. I am still to sort that part of my communications out:)
Anyway after we got our vodafone sim sorted we wandered through one of those cobbled back streets to Plaza Mayor. Magnificent. If you want to know what it is like just go to google images and type in Plaza Mayor Madrid. I am still working out how to get images uploaded otherwise I would whack one in here. The sights and sounds, the smells, the Spanish people with the superfast way of speaking, it was just brilliant. Having only been here for a day or so I am falling in love with this town and its lively inhabitants, they are all beautiful with their jet black hair, their olive skin, their ebony eyes. They exude a love of life, of simple things, food, family, rest. Like the French not many speak English but unlike the French you feel life and joy flow freely from them, they are open, welcoming. The French speak French to protect their dying language, they are proud of it and don't want it to disappear on a globalised stage. The Spanish speak Spanish because it is beautiful, a gazillion people all over the world speak their language, it is in no fear of being overwhelmed by English, it is lyrical, melodic, magical and it flows from these Spaniards like light from the sun, like laughter from happiness, like tears from joy. Spend a summer's morning in Plaza Mayor, sit with a cafe con leche in the company of someone you love, let it all soak in and you'll see what I mean.
After leaving Plaza Mayor we made the short walk to the Palacio Real, aka the Royal Palace. It was stunning, sort of a cross between Buckingham Palace and Versailles. We paid our 10 euros and spent an hour or two wandering through this opulent masterpiece. Huge tapestries hung from cathedral like walls, chandeliers beyond reckoning, all gold and crystal sat suspended in mid air above bedchambers, state rooms, banquet halls and the like. Our kids were blown away by the sheer scale of the place. A highlight for me of course was the armory, or the Ameria Real. It was chokka block with suits of armour, life sized models of horses with their full armour on and knights seated upon them, swords, ancient pistolas, cross bows, the lot. I love that stuff, I am a big fan of what I like to call 'acoustic weapons' and Spain were the masters of that art for centuries.
Our afternoon and evening finished like most have. We had a late siesta, woke to go out for tapas and mojitos (still awaiting our first Sangria, I asked the fella in Spanish for one and when he answered 'vino tinto or vino blanco' I thought he meant they only had red or white wine so I moved onto a mojito. What he was asking was did I want it based on red or white wine. Never knew you had a choice until now). It is interesting trying to keep the kids awake at that hour of the night. Even after an hour or more siesta they still struggle to get up and going in the evening. I have found that coca cola works well. We order, 'dos cervesa and dos coca cola per favor' and it seems to work. As the bottles are only 200ml Harry has tried to convince us that they should get 3 to our one as in Australia the cokes come in 600ml bottles, the logic seems to escape his mother but as a Coca Cola aficionado I understand his point.
We made our way back to our hotel for our last night in Madrid, put the kids off to bed, did some washing in the sink and settled in to watch a bit of TV before sleep. To give you some context of when this occurred we were alarmed to see that a Boeing 777 had just crash landed within the hour at San Francisco in the states, the very model that we had flown all the way to Europe on.
We had enjoyed our time in Madrid, it was quickly drawing to a close. Tomorrow the train to Leon and after that the Camino!
Buen Camino Peregrinos
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