Madrid

We have made it to madrid and are spending our last few days in spain trying to appreciate that we can somewhat decipher signs and menus before heading off to counties with languages very foreign to us.

we arrived in madrid this morning after taking our first night train of the trip in from lisbon. our accommodations were surprisingly ideal! we had our own private sleeper car for two with bunk beds that could fold up and convert into lounge chairs and a table, as well as our own sink in the room for brushing our teeth and washing our faces.
as we were waiting on the platform before boarding we could see these rooms through the windows and were saying to each other "oooh, look how nice those rooms are, thinking they were definitely not for us since we had chosen the least expensive type of sleeper car." so, it was a nice surprise that those were indeed the economy rooms!

as soon as we arrived in madrid this morning at the train station we booked our next train for tomorrow night from madrid to paris. its another night train and this time we were not so lucky! they had to split us up in´to two separate rooms with 4 beds each. we are really hoping at least one of us will have a single traveler in one of our rooms that will trade with us so we can stay together! : (

today in madrid it started out a bit dreary (as blair warned), but has since cleared up. it sprinkled just a little early on, but not even enough to bother with rain jackets.
this morning we walked around el rastro, the big flea market that appears each sunday. there were tons of makeshift stalls selling everything you could think of! there were some tables with nothing but nails and screws and others selling colorful socks and jeans. some people´s stuff they were selling looked like it was just a buch of junk they had pickpocketed or stolen (and we are pretty sure thats what it was)!

after walking the length of the market, we stopped for coffee, toast and orange juice (all over spain they make their oj with these weird machines where you put in the orange completely whole and out comes orange juice) at the plaza mayor near the puerta del sol.

after breakfast we spent the last couple hours at the museo nacional centro de arte reina sofia, as recommended by uncle luis, it is one of madrid 3 acclaimed museums. plus, it was free today as it is every sunday.
it was a great museum and michael had to drag me out because apparently i take, "waaaay to look looking at each piece and insist on listening to every explanation provided on the automated tour."

we are now at an internet cafe and michael is next to me trying to make sure we have a place to sleep in paris our first night there (if you havent noticed, we are a day ahead of our original schedule and hence, our hostel isnt expecting us until the day after we will arrive).

we are now going to head over to the bullring to attempt to find tickets for tonight´s bullfight.... although its not looking very promising. apparently its not very easy to buy tickets day of, and since you can only buy tickets on friday and saturday and in person, we werent able to figure out how to get tickets ahead of time.

if we cant go to the bullfight though, we are going to head to parque del buen retiro, a big park here that has a huge drum circle (with over 100 percussionists) that gathers every sunday night from 5pm to midnight.

hope everyone liked the pictures we were able to post! we have more recent ones, but we havent been able to transfer any pictures for the last week, so those will come later!