Madrid

I stayed in bed all night, the first step to conquering my jet lag. I went to bed at about 11pm and stayed in bed until 7am. Staying in bed is different than sleeping though. I woke up quite a bit through the night but forced myself to stay in bed and try to get back to sleep. Baby steps.

I had two things on my agenda to do today; the world famous Sunday El Rastro Open Air Market and a walking tour of Madrid.

The market is literally 10 metres from my hostel so just had to fall out of bed for that one. It opened at 9am so I was a bit early so popped into a local bakery and had a ham and cheese quiche sort of thing and some pig’s ears . The Spanish call them Palmeras / Palmiers, but as soon as I saw them, I knew I had to have a Schweinsoerchen for Jörg.

I then ventured into the market at 9am where quite a few were still setting up. I wandered and thought, oh yeah, this is big, but only a little bigger than the Duncan Farmers Market, but then I wandered a little further and saw that there were branches off on each block. I read on Wiki there are hundreds of vendors. It had all the typical flea market stuff like clothes, bags, art, jewellery etc. There were quite a few vendors that had tables of clothes that were just in a heap for 1-5 Euros. I would have loved to dig through the piles but I was too scared I would find something (and add weight to my already heavy backpack).

As I was wandering the market, I started to not feel so good, like I wanted to throw up. I headed back to the hostel and slept for 45 mins before getting up for the walking tour starting at 11am. I felt better, was it the pig’s ear?

The walking tour was good, not great, but good. There was more standing than walking for the 3 hours. We went to some of the same places I already wandered to yesterday but I did hear about some of the history. One place I didn’t get to yesterday was the palace and cathedral and they were quite nice. There was a lookout in between looking over part of the city. I just realized today how much more I like nature over architecture. I do like both of them, but I felt a type of excitement bubble inside me as soon as I saw a hint of green at the distant lookout. The view it self wasn’t any more spectacular than I have seen in other parts of the world, but the joy inside was clear. I assume that is why I am so drawn to hiking and living in BC.

After the tour I decided I would just go back to the hostel, do some laundry and spend some me time, reading, stretching, rubbing my feet with cream etc. At 4:30pm I finished my laundry and starting to pack away the clothes when ... zzzzzzzzzzzz. I woke up at 7:30pm with clothes all around me.

I really wanted to go back to sleep but I needed to finish packing up my backpack tonight as I will be getting up early in the morning to leave. Well, really not early, 8am, but to people in Madrid, that is early. They have their afternoon siesta so they stay up into the early morning. I just want to minimize the disturbance in the morning.

Ok, well, it is 10:00pm now and I am going to try and get back to sleep, I have a 3 hour train ride tomorrow to Pamplona. Two days until take off!

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