Day eight

Woke up this morning bright and early (for Spain… you know, like 9:30) so we could shower and go to breakfast upstairs. The view from the breakfast room was incredible, we could see all the way up one of the main streets of Madrid, and you know, the food was pretty good too.

After breakfast we walked down to the street and waited for Blanca to pick us up and take us to some of the sites of Madrid. We started at a place called The Valley of the Fallen (to which I said “transformers?” and Blanca said “yes, we’re going to see Megatron” [awesomeness is in my genes]) which is a memorial built to honour those who died in the Spanish Civil War. The memorial was absolutely beautiful; it looked a bit like a church but it was entirely carved out of a stone mountain, with ceilings of mosaic tiles. The next stop was an old palace that’s been turned into a sort of exhibition and that was nice, but it got a bit boring… and creepy when there were graves everywhere… and sad when the graves were of children.

Post palace we went and had lunch, and then stumbled upon a fantastic lolly shop where I got a bag of gluten free coke bottles and strawberry lollies and all sorts of good stuff for around $5.

Then we drove to factory outlets and Nikki did her silly shopping and bla di bla we went back to Blanca’s father’s house (his name is Angel). There we watched the soccer, ate glorious Spanish food, introduced Blanca to tim tams, and marvelled at the craziness of people in Madrid when Spain wins a football game. There were seriously fireworks everywhere, cars honking, people singing and dancing in the streets! When Blanca eventually drove us home, most of the streets in the heart of the city were closed due to people partying, so she dropped us a few streets away and we made our way through the crowds to the hotel. Seriously, these guys go all out, even on the drive home people in other cars were screaming and singing and banging on the car roof and honking the horn in tunes. Part of me actually wants to move here to join these crazy loons…

Anyway it’s after 1 again, so off to bed now!