For our surprise, during the trip one lady came to talk to us in English (that as been rare here) and she ask from where we are and what we are doing here in Spain. It felt good to speak English because many times I have to survive with my 'portunhol' the mix of Portuguese and Spanish. The lady was so kind and when we arrived to Madrid she kindly warn us about the thefts in Madrid specially because we were arring to a big station. Day before I went to by a smaller sholder bag to control it better and it helped me a lot.
Well, its easy to know when a tourist arrives because they don't know were to go. We wanted to buy tickts to get to our hostel where we didn't know yet the area. The lady who we met in the train came again to help us, she was really kind and luckily she met one friend or colleague of her that helped us to buy tickets using the same train tickets from the trip Bilbao to Madrid, that was good because we wouldn't do that alone, we defenetly would buy new tickets.
Puerta del Sol was the area where our our hostel was located, in the center of Madrid, close to Gran Via and close to everything, we just use train once during the all trip because we were really tired. We got to the hostel, we quickly made the check in and we head off to to have lunch. After lunch we went for a walk in Grand Via getting crazy for the last 'rebajas' = sales.
Before we came to Madrid I talked to Neidy, an old friend from my childhood who is living in Madrid, actually we are not really friends (maybe we will become now), but we grew up in the same area and in Africa everyboby is friend of everybody. We agreed to meet at 10pm at Praza del Sol as her boyfriend was living at 9 from work. We couldn't avoind the warm and long hug, it felt really good. Neidy and Diego planned to take us to a typical Spanish restaurant which was a great choise and we would never go there by ourself. The waiting time was nothing more than an hour and 15 min, yes, that long! It was crowd but the good thing is that the starter is for free and we got two small plates of chorizo and small breads, Neidy told me a little story about those little breads but better not write it here because it involves politicians.
We got our table and it was time to choose our dishes. Neidy and Diego recomended us to take small plates so that we could tast many things and that was an awesome idea. The only thing that was missing between our choices was the famous rabo de toro that I though I would taste it in Madrid but they didn't have.
Between our choices there was something I couldn't forget the name because I have seen many times here in Bilbao, jamón. The jamón is quite famous in Spain and they also have Jamón museums around the city. its like a butchery but there they sell Jamón which is a meat from pig's leg. They cover the meat with salt for almost 8 months and after that its ready to slice it and eat. Its so tasty that I would take a leg home if it would't be so expensive. Its about 200€ to get one leg of jamón and you can have a better quality if you want but it could cost 500€. I got interested about that and ask from Neidy and Diego what makes it have better quality. Well, it's about how they grow and what they eat. When they grow freely and eat acorn the tast of the Jamón is different, wow, interesting!
To accompany our dinner we decided to order sangria, nothing better, once in Spain why not to drink the real sangria? It was also tasty! To finalize it we had cheese cake which is also different than the ones I have eaten, huum, nami nami. We closed the dinner with some licors, one was baileys and the other one was something different, can't remember the name but its similar to Port wine.
The talking with Neidy made me get back a little bit to my childhood, we laugh a lot and from time to time I felt bad because we were speaking Portuguese and nobody else could follow us.
After the great dinner Neidy wanted to take all of us to see Madrid by night, the girls were already tired but I decided to go to enjoy a little bit more Neidy's company. We went to La Latina. Is an area where mostly of the bars and discos are located and our hostel was at the same area. Just some minutes walking and we were there.
It was already six o'clock when I got back to the hostel and the girls where complaining that they could't sleep because of the noise. That was a minus point to Equity point hostel or maybe to many of them as they are all in the middle of this city that ever sleeps.
El Rastro was our first visit on Sunday. The Sunday market is bigger than what I could imagine. All what you can imagine and also what you can't imagine is available there. Art, clothes, antiques even electronics are available there. I think we have been walking for almost 3 hours. Neene found a huge scissors, she loved it but she coud't explect what was coming. The first price was bit high and I tried to deal with my portunhol to lower it and the final deal wasn't bad. krista also got a funny and small motorcicle and we also made a good deal for that, getting professional in dealing in Spanish, ha ha...
We met Neidy in the afternood and she took us for a walk by Grand Via to Praza de España and also to Temple of Depod, we took some pictures in front of the Palacio Real and after this we went to Principe Pio the shopping mall which was built in an old train station. We stayed there for almost two hours and we had dinner there. My feet were so sore that I could't walk long distance and I think the girls were also as tired as me and we decided to go to hostel by metro.
The night was quite ok, not that bad to sleep. At 4 o'clock I heard some people talking and some of them were Finns, I think they were at the same hostel. The bad thing was that before seven there was some people having a conversation outside and we could hear it so well. After that was difficult to sleep.
The rain didn't prevent our visit to El Retito, the huge park close to Plaza da Indepencia. We could appreciate the Cristal Palace inside the park, amaizing.
After that we went to make our las shopping, me and Jenna to shoos shop and Krista and Neene to their favourite shop, yes, fabric stop.
We still had sometime and we went to eat in MacDonalds and after we went quickly to Mercado del San Miguel (San Mighuel's market), its an indoors market where they use to sell vegetables and fruits in the past and in nowadays they made it a bit more mordern, they have pintxos (the Spanish scacks), small bars... Pity we didnt have time to stay there and enjoy.
It was Tim to go Back home.
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