Madrid

Note: It's been a while since I was able to get internet access on my laptop. The next few entries are being written after the fact.

Location: Madrid, Spain

Its about 11pm here in Madrid. The sun is just going down here-Spain is on the same longitude, give or take, with Greenwhich, but it's time zone is two hours ahead. I guess that fits with the Spanish lifestyle, which was especially apparent in Madrid. People generally start their days at around 10pm, break for a siesta from 1-4pm, and then stay out quite late.

We had a hotel on the Gran Via, the main throughfare of Madrid. We were able to get around pretty easily, as the Madrid Metro is very efficient, clean, and easy to understand. We did not get to see any museums, because Monday is the day that they are all closed. Still, we saw some neat stuff. We walked through the Retiro Park, which is the equivalent of New York's central park. Here's some photos of that:

The second picture shows the Palacio de Cristal, inspired by London's Crystal Palace. Overall, the park was very nice, and definitely had a Central Park feel to it, in terms of the way people spent the day there.

On Monday, we saw some neat things, including the Templo de Debod, an Egyptian temple rebuilt in a small park. We also stopped by the Palacio Real, the official residence of the King of Spain, and the Plaza Mayor. We also went to see Ocean's 13, but unfortunately it was dubbed into Spanish, not subtitled. My Spanish was not good enough to pick up what was going on, so that made for an interesting viewing experience. Anyway, some pictures of the above stops:

We did not get to meet up with the Ralu, from Romania. She had work to do for classes, and we had to leave early on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, we woke up at 6am, and made our way to the train station, for a long day of travel to Fes, Morocco.