Wednesday 16 September 2015

Hola Madrid !!

Note : This is more like an Entry Log than a post ....

Madrid ! in-between everything of one’s expectation but truly a city worth visiting. Madrid is a big city but then again like any other city suburbs the same residential/industrial and so on repeats outside. Most travellers stay within the city walking zone to see the sights and museum.
First day and I could not check in till 2pm naturally so I just stroll around wandering and stumble upon a building that has some exhibition for free. “Palacio en Comunicacion” = The Palace of Communication. The building was a beauty by
Palacio en Communicacion
itself and they also had a very cheap observation deck to view the city of Madrid from above at the top for just 2 euro. View was not the best for the building is not really that high up but still a pretty decent and nice view for 2 euro.


Madrid

When in Spain = Siesta like a Local ….
Siesta …. I fall into the siesta pace on the first day itself and went to sleep after lunch only to wake up at 6pm and headed for the museum. In fact I love Spain if only for the Siesta ….. Beauty culture, language, food …. But nothing beats the siesta.

Museum Hack
Museum de Prado which was the 3rd largest museum portraying old art and sculpture (1st is the lurve in Paris) was free after 6pm. So most tourist just spend the time from 6pm to 8pm in the museum instead of paying to enter. I don’t blame them and I guess I also became one of them.

3rd place is a hard place to be for although they had quite a number of masterpiece in the museum it was not a famous as the Sistine chapel or the Mona Lisa. Still it was pretty impressive and the first day I could only see maybe 20% of the whole museum.
Walking Tours

Next day I joined the free walking tour of Madrid at 11am which gave a great brief history lesson of Spain as it is. The city gems and wonder opening up little by little from the tour which was 3 hours yet one could tell it was barely the scratch of Madrid. I also found out then during the tour that Cuecha the neighbourhood the hostel I was staying at was located at was a gay neighbourhood. It was labels as a fun neighbourhood J
Making Friends

Back in the hostel and the second siesta but this time I did not get to sleep as I met PJ and KT which was from India. They and their very young cousin of 19 years old was travelling around for a bit before eventually heading for Portugal to attend KT sister destination wedding. A destination wedding where one hold the wedding other than the place of the bride or groom. Portugal was just a destination for all their family around the world to gather for the wedding. Interesting I thought.
3 of us ended up going together (for me again) to the Museum de Prado to soak in more old classic art goodness. Then we headed back to the hostel while they prep up to go for a pub crawl. I cooked my cheap dinner and decline the pub crawl. They did not make it to the starting point at 10 pm and I saw them again at 1030pm. I introduced KT to the all great goodness of Europe which was the 1 euro packet wine.

I became good friends with KT and PJ …. Only to later visit them and crash at their home for a week in India a few months later …

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