Madrid

Aug 4th (5th stop)

We're nearing the end of a 2 hour flight from Stuttgart to Madrid and although the AC is on I can smell the heat. We each have a bottle of sunscreen, we have 2 litres of water carrying capacity and we've paid 10 extra euros for AC in the hostel but I am still terrified that we won't make it to Lisbon in 3 days. Looking out the window the landscape has gradually gone from snowy mountains tops to dead brown desert. Sure it's been 40 degrees C in Ottawa before but that happens every day in this wasteland. The chances of us 3 cold blooded Canadians making it through this are slim. If I do survive that's the last time I let Jamie book our trip.

Jamie: Spain is comparable to me (Jamie), as it is extremely hot.
Richard: The plane just landed, I have heat stroke just thinking about this place.
J: I have sunburns all over my body.
R: Tonight I rinsed my mouth with uncomfortably hot water and the faucet was on the coldest setting. Only in Madrid.
J: It's 42 C outside right now (day 2). Enough said.
R:
But enough of that. For all except Jamie or "Iceman", who doesn't take heat that well, it wasn't that bad. We found that as long as you play it smart and don't mess around you'll survive spain or at least central Madrid where there's lots of shade. As for language this was the first time in 4 countries that none of us spoke the national language. I had the most background with 2 spanish courses taken in the last 4 years and I failed both midterms in the 2nd one. "Banos" was one of the words I remembered and they aren't even called that here. But that's alright, europeans in major cities always speak some english right? Wrong.
But at least things will be labeled in english too....wrong again. Spain for those of you who haven't been (and thanks for the heads up to everyone else) is very spanish. I think the only times english was helpful in 3 days was at the hostel and at tourist information. The rest of the time at meals, asking for directions or buying tickets we relied on sign language, intuition and Richard's spanish. It definitely added to the experience though and made even the duller parts of the day more exciting. Madrid I thought was a great city, stange, but nice. We walked around the Plaza Mayor which was right nearby, the beautiful Almudena Cathedral and the aligned Royal Palace. The royal gardens were worth walking around and we encountered a live peacock, just strolling around, not in a zoo.

One thing that made the local Spaniards less foreign is the fact that they too walk on the sidewalk on the shaded side of the road, leaving many sidewalks deserted. Walking around at night there are lots of street performers such as the statue people, the robot, the silver man who drops his suit case and slips for laughs. And some good ones like the man playing spanish guitar with his lady partner doing a flamenco dance or the man who played some stringed xylophone creating sweet melodies in the main square. One of the strange phenonmenon we encountered were the popular 'ham bars' in Madrid. Picture butcher shop and bar in one; large sections of meat on display and hanging from the ceiling with a bartender werving drinks from a bar in the middle.
We also met up with 2 of Jamie's friends and the 5 of us saw the great el retiro park while sharing stories of our journey's before finding a restaurant and tasting some 'tapas' consisting of assorted meats and cheeses served on bread. And of course like every other eurocity we ate delicious donair kebab. The last day we saw a transported egyption temple, the Del Prado art museum with the most christian art I've ever seen and we took a nice long swim in a public pool.
In case the language barrier wasn't clear enough before, we ordered a sandwich and burger after the swim from a bar without a printed menu and they didn't know any of the numbers between 0 and 10 in english. Luckily 'sandwich' is the same, and just as glorious, in both languages.