Madrid, Spain

Today, we discovered something that we will be partaking in rather frequently throughout the rest of our journey : free walking tours. We met our tour guide (and about 20 other tourists) in Madrid´s Plaza Mayor at 11 am to start our 3 hour trek through the city. Fiona, our little Irish tour guide, was great--she shared gems of knowledge such as the popular suicide spots in Madrid and facts about King Carlos the Useless. But seriously, we learned a lot. We saw the oldest restaurant in the world, some restaurants that Hemmingway ate in (that would be all of them), and statues explaining how Inquisition victims were strangled. We also ate one euro ¨bocadillo de jamon¨ at the ham museum for lunch. I had two. I could have had more. Trip highlight for sure.

After our tour we went to check out the Cathedral de la Almudena and Palacio Real. The cathedral was awesome. It was very brightly colored on the inside, unlike most of the cathedrals we´ve seen at home and abroad, and it was huge. We spent about an hour inside exploring and praying. Palacio Real is supposedly the largest palace in Western Europe. After having seen Chambord and Versailles, I refuse to believe this. Admittedly, it was very cool. Again, the inside was very brightly colored, which was very different than the chateaux of France. We spent about an hour here as well poking around the bedrooms, dining rooms, and hallways of Spanish royalty.

Currently, Tim is asleep and Maria and I are taking a bit of a breather as well. Tonight we will do a little bit of souvenir shopping, check out the Museo Reina Sophia, and eat some tapas. We have an 8am train to Lourdes tomorrow morning so we will either be waking up at 6am or not going to sleep, and I REFUSE to wake up at 6am... but we´ll see if Tim and Maria can´t talk some sense into me (translation : Maria will later tonight talk some sense into Tim and I, and we will all be in bed early and well rested for our travels tomorrow. This is exactly how it will happen.)

Again, pictures to come in a bit! The Spanish don´t like tourists taking pictures so we weren´t able to get them everywhere today, but we will post what we have!

I still miss cheeseburgers,
Daniel