Madrid, or THE DAY OF ALL THE TIRED (and the rest of the trip)

So remember how cheerful I was about saying goodbye to Barcelona? Keep that in mind as we progress.

We went to bed that night in Barcelona at 10pm, but it didn't do any good, because it was way too early to fall asleep. Bleary eyed after about 30 minutes total of sleep, we got out of our beds at 2:00am, packed up in the dark, took our 3:00am taxi to our 3:30 bus to our 6:50am flight. It was hellish.  I left IAmNotANugget (my water bottle) at the Barcelona bus station. No. It was hell. RIP.  When we arrived in Madrid, we took the subway to get to our hostel. We were two hours early to check in to our room. Hell. At least the woman let us leave our bags with her until we could put them in our room. Disconsolate, we wandered Madrid aimlessly in the pouring rain. We wandered into a cafe and had a real brunch, which was the first step in bringing our spirits up. Finally we staggered back into the hostel, and were greeted with a welcome sight. When we were booking this hostel, little did we imagine the joy that would be pumping through our veins at the sight of our private three bed room with its own bathroom. Each bed had covers AND sheets (a rarity in hostels) and we had an amazing view of rainy Madrid. Laughing deliriously, we fell into our beds and slept and slept and slept. I was so tired that in my journal all I wrote about our pre-hostel wander was "Oh, we did go to an art museum...something of San Fernando." Then I went on to whine about how wet my shoes were. Look how happy we were in our room!

Looking back, the museum was very nice, and there were Goya and Ruebens paintings which we especially enjoyed staring zombie-like at.

LOOK YOU GUYS TWO DAYS IN ONE BLOG POST

Thanks to the fact that we pooped out all of our first day in Madrid in our hostel room, I have room to tell you about our next day! We found an all you can eat breakfast buffet for 5 euro, so that alone made the day wonderful compared to the previous day. Then we went to the Archeology Museum. It was closed. Thankfully, the National Library happened to be right on the other side, so we had a look in there instead. It was their 300th Anniversary, so, kind of a big deal. There was an exhibit entitled "Biblias del Sefaredad," accompanied by an image of a boat that looked like it had come out of an old manuscript. Well it looked cool, and it was free, so we headed in. The first couple manuscripts on display were really old Torahs, which was so cool! And then...the next were Jewish things too...and I started to wonder. I took out my pamphlet, which was in Spanish, and read enough to understand that wait a minute, this was not an exhibit on old sailors, but one on Sephardic Jews! I enlightened my friends, and the rest of the gallery made a lot more sense. It was actually really cool, and I recognized a lot of the names (Rashi, Maimonides) from Hillel and from Jewish school.

Next stop, THE PRADO. It's in big letters cuz its important, guys. The Prado is one of the most important art galleries in Europe, if not in the world. So naturally, Hannah B. had to be sent home after about an hour. But Hannah C. and I enjoyed ourselves immensely, proving to the world that I was grown-up enough to actually appreciate art! We spent 4 hours there, and still missed about 1 1/2 floors. 4 hours was enough though, and it stopped pouring rain long enough for us to walk back to our hostel! Annnnnd that's about it. We took it a lot easier in Madrid, partially because it was raining almost the entire time, and partially because we had exhausted ourselves running around in Barcelona. Next stop, Toledo!

Edit: This used to be two blog posts, but I am consolidating...I'm learning to be concise...yeah right. 

Alright, we are here to complete (finally) the tale of my spring break.

Skyline

So.  Toledo, a quick high-speed train ride from Madrid. It was absolutely gorgeous. We were promised rain, but luckily for us it was completely dry all day! While there are not too many "tourist" attractions, the place is still filled with tourists because it is just s'darn beautiful. Medieval and Renaissance architecture abounds in this fair city. Sidenote: there is a street called Calle de Toledo, Ohio.

We made a stop at the oldest synagogue in Europe, which was pretty neat, and I have to say, quite a nice change from all of the old churches we have been seeing. The cathedral was actually closed, because it was Good Friday, so we missed out on that. It was more of a Jewish day. We celebrated Passover instead of Easter, you might say.

Jesus in Madrid

Upon returning to Madrid, we stumbled upon another Jesus parade, this time for Good Friday! That makes one in each city! I gotta say, we picked an excellent time of the year to experience Spanish culture.

The next day was our last in Madrid, and boy did we make the most of it. It was definitely our best Madrid day. We started out at this cool little museum that was basically this guy's private art collection. When he died he was like "look, you can have my stuff, but you have to keep it all together in this house." So now its a really cool museum. His chandeliers especially were fantastic, although I suppose the famous artist's paintings were pretty cool too. 

Seriously though...

After the house museum thing, we wandered past the royal palace, which was suitably royal, and then hopped on the metro to la Plaza del Toros. This was definitely my favorite Madrid destination. The bull-fighting arena, still in use today, offers English-language tours as well as Spanish ones. We took an English tour, and it was definitely worth the 7 euro. It was fascinating! Our guide explained in intricate detail the process of raising, training, and killing a bull. Did you know that if the matador fails to kill his bull within the allotted time, he goes to jail for the night and has to pay a heavy fine? They take this stuff really seriously. And it is so dangerous! Imagine fighting a bull with a skinny little sword that you have to place at a certain point in his back, only accessible by an actual leap as he charges at you, in order to kill him correctly. The statue in the courtyard is of the man who invented Penicillin, because of the amount of matadors' lives it has saved. Just sayin'.

Anyway I guess that about wraps it up! Thank god! Now I can move on with my live, and tell you about the present. Spoiler alert Liza: I finally went to Jamuna today! It was sooooo good.