A weekend in Madrid

Evening, everyone! Its Monday, Nov. 18th and I finally get to tell you about my weekend in Europe's 3rd biggest city, capital city of Spain: Madrid. The reason for my stay initially was a concert of my favourite band, Alter Bridge (♡) on friday evening; at some point earlier I had also decided to make saturday a sightseeing-day, so I'd return on Sunday.

Madrid is about 500 km from Sevilla, the easiest and fastest way might be the speed-train between the cities, but it's definetly not the cheap one. So I decided to take the bus, which was very cheap (38 Euro there and back) and quite comfortable.. If you dont have problems with investigating 6 to 7 hours into a busride, it's the best option in my opinion. My bus on friday left at 8:00 am sharp ( I got up at 6 and almost diiieeed) and I think at some point we stopped in Córdoba to give some people a lift... 6 and a half hours might be a long busride but it was completely unexpected how fast the weather changed... 200 km before madrid it started raining (yaaaay), that was the first rain I had seen for weeks... and it got extremely cold, so when i arrived at 2:30 pm, it was 5°C raining :/

From the bus station I took the metro into the city and took a 5 min walk to the hostel... Bad luck for me, google maps doesnt tell you how to avoid dubious districts... Really strange to walk through, people talking to theirselfes or speaking to you, besides, garbage in every corner (dustmen were striking since a few weeks, so instead of cleaning streets and collecting trash, they put even more on public places like bus stations or crossroads... I was very happy when I finally found the hostel, that was basic, but ok....

After I had enjoyed the awesome concert of the evening, I spent some time in the hostel's living room and talked to folks from all over the world, tourists, students, other AB fans that had been to the concert.

After getting up on Saturday, I started my sightseeing tour by strictly avoiding the aforesaid district by taking the metro to the Reina Sofia to see the mighty GUERNÍCA by Pablo Picasso, one of my all time favourite paintings (eventhough I'm not such into arts n stuff), and other Picasso's, Dalís and Mirós... As a student I had free entrance, even though the walk through the museum would have been worth paying, too.

I spent about 2 hours there, then went on because I wouldn't want to miss anything of the city-centre's tourist attractions. I took a walk through the big city park - which, even though I have never been to NYC, reminded me of the central park - that was the first time I really got to feel autumn (Sevilla knows exactly ONE season; )) and I could really enjoy it... I intended to visit the even more known Museo del Prado after that, but when I saw the queue, standing in the cold just to get tickets, I quickly lost the desire to continue my "interlectual further education"!

That kind of ruined my time shedule and let to me walking aimless through the city centre, which in the end even was a good thing, because it led me to corners i'd never discover with a plan. After I had squeezed myself through the crowd of tourists, inhabitants and whatever dubious creepy people, I decided to take a break from my 5 hours of walking and looked for a nice café, which was a lucky coincidence, because that was exactly the point where it started to piss down. I found a cute one called chocolate & churros, which means nothing more than the traditional speciality of Madrid. Some kind of pastries with hot chocolate - It was heaven!

Due to the fact that the weather-god hated me, I didnt see any need of hurrying or even thinking about leaving that place, so I spent some time whatching the rain and the people on the street, looking for shelter and failing slightly :D

When I decided to return to the hostel it already was 3 PM and i was exhausted, so I spent the rest of the day playing pingpong together with other people from the hostel and talking a bit, drinking tea and so on... That evening I had decided to stay at the hostel for dinner because paella was served for 2 euros each portion, the taste was huge! Common mussel and prawns.. yummy

I got to bed early that day - still exhausted from the longtime walk through the city. On sunday I quickly visited a flea market, but as it was raining, it was no fun and I cut the whole thing quite short. At 11 am I took the metro to the bus station once again, not to miss my bus back to sevilla... At 7 PM back in Sevilla I finaly could enjoy 15°C without wind or rain.. that is not to much I have to admit, but It is still 10°C more than in Madrid, and most importantly it's dry. I had already missed good weather after 2 days of rain so I was glad to be back "home" again.

Here are some more pictures of the weekend

And a screamin donut

Saludos

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Photo gallery