Hola de Madrid

Hey There All!

So I've decided to do my vacation trip in a series of three blogs, one for each place I visited, because there is NO way all three could be covered in a single piece of writing.
My first adventure took me to Madrid, Spain. My companions and I arrived around 11a.m. local time (the rest of Europe is an hour ahead of the U.K. and Ireland) and caught a taxi to our hostel (you don't want to know how much that cost, normally we travel by train or underground). The first thing we quickly learned was that majority of Spanish either don't know English, or choose not to speak it, so my four years of Spanish in highschool was strongly tested.
Our hotel/hostel was on the fifth floor (without an elevator) but the owner and his housekeeper were ridiculously nice - though neither spoke English at all really and it was hard to communicate with them. However, the owner, an older gentleman, did manage to give me directions to the Tourist Centre where we could pick up maps, and also in great detail that I couldn't really translate, warned me about pickpocketers.
Our first day in Madrid we went to visit the Almudena Cathedral, which is right next to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). The architecture of the Cathedral was absolutely amazing, and we were able to go up to the top dome and outside on balconies to look over the city. On our way up, the pathway led us out on a balcony that looked out at the Palacio Real, which we went into our next day in Madrid.
Both the cathedral and the palace were incredible works of art, though you couldn't take picture inside the Palace =( My favorite part, however, was the Royal Gardens out back. It looked just like the royal gardens you'd imagine from a fantasy novel.
Our first night in Madrid, I remembered the hard way that Madrid is a night city, and most of its residents are up until 3 or 4 in the morning. We were street side in our hostel, in the very center of the city. Oops!
On our second night, we ate at an absolutely horrible restaurant on the corner up from our hostel. The only reason I mention this is because while we were sitting outside at the "restaurant", a protest came through. It was nothing like the protests in the U.K. or in America. The majority of the marchers were made up of people around our ages (low to high 20's)), protesting facism in the country.
Spain has a pretty violent history on facism, so this protest didn't surprise me much. However, the black flag of Anarchy that they waved did. The protest was followed by six vans of riot police. I don't know if that's protocol in Spain for riots, or if they were concerned about something happening. We certainly were - after our meal we were actually traveling the same way as the protesters, towards the center of the city to see if all the decorations were lit up since it was around 8pm at this point. On the outskirts of the protesters were young Spanish men and women with black clothes and a silver armband on their left arm. Each and every one of them had black cloth over their face below their eyes, most likely to protect their identities should something happen, and many of them wore backpacks.
At one point during our walk, one of the young men in the attire (we guessed that these were probably the leaders of the march) met my eyes as I watched the crowd. He pulled down his mask, nodded at me, then put it back on and continued on.
I wish I knew what that meant. It was the strangest experience. To me, it felt like a symbol of trust and mutual understanding. I was his age and in a dark hoodie and, at least inside, I understand the history of Facism in the country and felt for those in the march today. Maybe he saw that, maybe he didn't. I'll never know, but that's not a memory I'll soon forget.

Our last day in Madrid we spent at the Madrid Zoo! I know, not a very culture-eqsue thing to do, but one of my traveling companions really wanted to go, and we had a blast. The zoo was actually outside of the main parts of the city and our map didn't go that far, so we actually kind of wandered around hoping we would find it - and we did! It was maybe an eight minute walk from the bus stop.

All in all, Madrid was a beautiful city, though it is definitely a better place for night owls. Do I want to go back some day? Definitely. The people were nice, considering my [possibly] horribly broken Spanish.

And lastly - I just wanted to make a quick shout out to my incredible highschool spanish teacher, Amber. Without you, I wouldn't have survived my three days in Madrid! Thank you!

Come back in a day or two for my second Thanksgiving Break Blog - Rome!

~Heather~