Country: Spain Date: 08.01.09 We get off in Madrid, at this point I am a little bit disorientated, haven’t woken up properly and we need to keep moving, Charly very helpfully offer for us to leave the bags at his place, but that will only make things more complicated, so we say bye to him and head off to the ticket office to sort out our next overnight train, Oops I can’t find my cash passport card… its time to sit down and run through everything in my bag, Nop its no where to be found. After getting a little pass to get into the trains we decide to make our toilet invasion, I really enjoy putting my stuff everywhere and having a very dirty cleaning, though we really want, we can’t have a shower in these toilets. We both realise later I left my cash card in the cable car ticket machine, I feel relieved at least I know where it is and no one is going to get it, it must have been all the excitement and the amazing landscape… I might of gotten a bit distracted with my poetic thoughts there, whilst looking through the window, not to worry I will sort it out later. Now its time to find the train that will take us to El Escorial, we can’t really find easily what train it is, and we keep going up and down the stairs, for some reason feels like there is a train screen missing in this train station… we get on train but as we are not sure if it actually will stop there we stop at Piti. We do know we are in the right direction, but we can’t get a timetable that will give us the information and the one we find it was only up to last year… right,… we try to get help but seems that the Spanish guy knows as much as we do, which is not much really. Alice is not overly impressed with the trains here, and to be fair the train system in England is pretty good. After looking very very lost and thinking about getting the next train and maybe leaving in another train station nearer to our destination, a random guy approaches us, speaking English and tell us that the next train is actually the right one#, and so we head off to El Escorial. We stare amazed at the cold landscape and pay a lot of attention to the temperature, that keeps going up and down but strangely never going above 0!!! When we finally arrive we sort of decide to follow the bus route, probably would be cheap enough to get it, but we walk for the adventure sake, we are on a budget, so we need to carry our bags up the hill. There are some funky houses contrasting with the traditional “vivendas” that could be either here or in Portugal. As we walk up with me not so excited and trying not to moan, we realise there’s not even a café, restaurant or shop near by, really is not as I had imagined it, I m pretty sure this would be a lot busier in the summer, who the hell would come this far in January to see a 500 year old building… Where are the little houses matching El Escorial? Where is that feeling of being in somewhere else, every turn I hope I can see it there, I get a bit excited as we approach. I love the mountains in the background!! But still think that “O Palacio de Mafra” is better looking. I’m going to try to contain my patriotism and see it for what is it, this one is 200 years older than its Portuguese twin, as I found out recently, has a bit more history, and I’m going to try to learn something from being here. Hey, at least its sunny!! We walk up to it get in, I finish my cigarette, we get in, seat down, open our shopping bags and rudely eat a snack while we look at the prices, it’s a bit more expensive than I thought but Its important to me to see it inside, would of love to be here 3 years ago, so now I have the chance and I’m determined to do it, even knowing I’m not that excited it just has to be done. I m pretty sure they will not let us in with the bags, but then the guards are kind enough to give us a massive Cage for us to leave them there, for free, after scanning them on the Bags X-Ray machine… We decide to miss a room or two to make it cheaper and not to go on a tour as the really don’t have the time anyway. We go around trying to peak into all those little places that we are really not allowed to go, hoping we cant actually see some hidden amazing room. Alice is trying to take a few pictures as I m checking where the guards are, there’s one hidden talking on the phone… had to be a woman… we walk around I’m pretty sure we missed a room, there’s disappointment in my face as the Cathedral is closed for the winter, my favourite part is all the tombs from the Bourbon Family, its cool. Still haven’t learned that much from being here but at least I have seen it. We leave through a different door, this one should have been the main entrance during the four centuries it was actually used, in front of us there are stone buildings actually matching the El Escorial, still not very impressed. As we go back in through the initial door, we see a passage way between the buildings, we both agree to through it as soon as we get our bags. So after another snack sitting inside the cages, we head off there, and we find some sweet tiny roads, and a massive nativity thingy, there’s little Jesus in the river, Mary and Joseph all the animals and much more, there’s fishermen and women picking up the fruits in the trees and they’re all shorter than me!! There is a little imitation of Belem, I greet the nearly human sized muslims,(I know they‘re not Muslims but I really want them to be Muslims), this is obviously comparing with me, which means they might not be that human sized after all, but hey, I’m my world, apart from the fact that I’m not religious and… that they are fake, and woman wear far too many clothes and …what a hell is Jesus doing in the River? Nativity is not really what it was in those old days, oh the sweet old days!! This nativity set was definitely the highlight of our trip to the El Escorial, but I do think it might be because I have studied and guided tours in Mafra, and possibly had to the opportunity to spend 1000 hours more there learning and seeing some of those rooms filled with crap and dust, where the maids used to live, sat on top of the Palace and heard thousand little magic stories about it. Thinking about this, we walk down a different path, would be really cool if Alice had the chance to see both of them and give me her opinion, because I’m clearly still in love with that place. Its time to put our feet up in the train, another snack, my foot thingy on and back to Chamartin here we go. Once we get to the station I try to sort out the card thing but its pointless, I will do it tomorrow, Alice has been looking at the map and she knows where to go, thanks God that someone does, lets go to Atoucha now. Its impressive how many little train stations there are in Madrid. We both really like the way this station looks like, but we soon forget about it as we see some little stools with some funky hats, scarves, boxes among all sort of things, so we get distracted by doing some old good shopping, course we can’t spend much money, so we see it as therapy, need to forget the fact I lost my cash card!! Doesn’t take long for us to carry on walking, we get warned on the way to be careful with burglars, guess two girls carry around bags might give away the fact that we are not really from around here. There’s loads of the museums, churches, basilicas, parks, squares, and my favourite one El Palacio Real de Madrid to look at, with a quick stop to eat some more of those awesome sandwiches made of all types of pork. Madrid looks darker than I thought it would, and somehow its not really that impressive, it is a nice city, maybe that is the problem, looks too perfect and nice. After being in Barcelona which is so “in you face”, Madrid doesn’t really mean a lot, perhaps we should of done the other way around, maybe we should of seen the Spanish capital first and go around the Catalan capital later… The streets are getting very crowded, we go around looking at all sizes and kinds of shops, there’s some cool shoe shops around. I can’t really be bothered with looking at stuff anymore, however Alice is all excited looking at the sweet souvenirs shops, especially the Chinese shops. On the way to find the only hypermarket there is, in the centre of Madrid (El Corte Ingles), we stop at another Chinese shop, I confirm with the shopkeeper that we are on the right way. While I try some hats Alice finds some weird bright blue trousers with no sides to it just some strings keeping it together, she wonders who would wear it, as I say I would, we have a little dare, but there’s only one changing room, and we are both starving. I can’t help feeling some amusement because the poor sales assistant keeps looking at us suspiciously. Right around the corner is El Corte Ingles, we buy some supplies after carefully deciding what to buy, Alice doesn’t seem to convinced with my choices, but I m determined not to back down, she soon changes her mind. And as we are in such a massive department store we go around every floor… I m literally dragging myself now, every chance I get I sit on my bag, my faithful bag, probably the wheels wont survive till the end of this trip, but its alright. My plain boring lifeless black bag has been around for the last 5 years and has served me well! As soon as we get out of El Corte Ingles, Alice keeps dragging me around, there’s loads of people everywhere, the city is starting to get exciting and bright but I m using the reserve energies and there’s not much left in the fuel tank. All these stores remind me so much of Portugal, there’s Pimkie and I can see Fnac in the distance, between others. I actually get a bit excited to see Fnac as I had already mention it to Alice, so we head off there, we will hopefully be able to sit down somewhere and pretend we are interested in the books, DVDs, computers, sound systems, cameras, etc… Amazingly enough this Fnac doesn’t have a café, or a concert area, we look around for somewhere to seat but all the chairs are hidden, and the place where people can seat down and have a read is so crowded that is actually a bit claustrophobic just looking at it, can’t believe how many people read in Madrid. We seat in the stairs briefly and try to decide what’s the best way to get to Chamartin, the train is free, however Atoucha is too far to walk back, so we simply walk to the nearest metro station. The Castellano subway doesn’t look quite as cool, as the Catalan, but doesn’t really matter its good enough to have our little pick-nick, Now we look and we feel like real travellers, sleeping on trains, eating when we can, and having our daily washes in the big old main train stations, its like we are homeless people really, but at least we get to travel around. Here we are back to Chamartin again, we go around the shops, and sort all the sandwiches for what’s left of today and tomorrow till we get to my mums and then we can get seriously fed. We get to the train, boots off, feet up. We are not in a little cabin tonight so we’ll be antisocial like everyone else and sleep, we are pretty exhausted from Madrid anyway. See you in Portugal Alice.
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