Apologies for the delay (Madrid Continued)

All right, where was I?

Right-o. Siesta time was over.

Scott and I regrouped, and we headed out for dinner. The details aren't important, but we didn't actually sit down and have dinner until 10:00. Dinner was expensive, too. A bit of a sour note in the whole proceedings.

But fortunately, after we escaped from the restaurant, we headed straight back downtown. Once again hopping on the Metro, we hurtled towards El Paseo del Prado. The Paseo del Prado was the place to be. It seemed that by 11:00 (relatively early by Spanish standards), the entire city had jammed up the Plaza del Cibeles, one of the biggest interchanges in downtown. We got off the Metro at Banco de Espana, and upon emerging from the underground, I was greeted by one of the cooler images I saw that night: The Palacio de las Communicaciones. Its a huge (and surprisingly graceful) stone and concrete edifice on the Paseo del Prado, which turns into the main North-South artery of Madrid, and not far from the museum itself. The facade had been turned into a gigantic movie projector. Check out the video:



Scott and I started down the Paseo towards the Prado itself. The neat thing about the Prado is that it is located in the same plaza as all of the other art museums of Madrid. You can't beat that kind of convenience with a two-by-four. Unfortunantly, half of Madrid had the same idea. Scott and I never did find the end of the line for the Thyssen Museum.

So, deciding to give the crowd some time to bottom out (and it only being 11:30, early by Spanish standards), we wandered back towards the Royal Palace, hoping to get into the Teatro Real (Royal Theater). The end of that line we DID manage to find, after about 10 minutes of walking.

This effectively ended all of our attempts to try to get into the most famous of the sites. So instead, we checked out the street displays. This was just as much fun, I would imagine. We stumbled across a gigantic outdoor karaoke contest (you can see it in the photo album from the previous post), and coolest of all, the Army had opened its private garden to the public and had allowed a local artist to redecorate the place as a garden of the future. I also took video of that too. Unfortunately, Blogger isn't letting me upload it right now, but hopefully I'll be able to do it later.

At this point, Scott was getting really tired, and granted, it was about 3 am. The first people were just beginning to leave. So I got him to agree to stop by the Prado once last time, but alas, it was completely closed. I resigned myself to heading home.

And then we ran into trouble.

Somehow in the process of coming to Madrid, Scott and I had fallen under the false impression that the Metro would be open that entire night. Considering that there were over a million people in the street (according to the newspaper the next morning), it didn't seem that unreasonable of an assumption. The truth was more that the there was 24-hour bus transportation, but Scott and I had almost no knowledge of how the bus system worked.

So, after getting pissed for about 15 minutes at the idiocy of labor unions, lazy municipal governments, and the general Spanish way of doing things, I dragged a very sleepy Scott to the Palacio de las Comunicaciones. (At this point, allow me to commend Spanish coffee. That stuff kicks a powerful punch. I wasn't feeling the fatigue at all. I had thought to grab some while we were watching the crowd in front of the Royal Theater earlier, while Scott had gotten a beer. Hence our different states of alertness.) After studying maps of the city for about 20 minutes, and keeping a beady eye on the destinations of the infrequent bus, I realized we had to go to a Plaza further north, and then transfer to a different bus route that would take us within walking distance of our hotel. (By walking distance, I mean a 20 minute walk).

Fortunately, I had cobbled together the bus routes more or less correctly, because we were able to get home, around 5 am. Needless to say, Scott was only awake through sheer force of his own will and I was beginning to droop myself. We crashed.

By mutual agreement the next morning, we ate a brief lunch near the hotel, and decided to get the hell out of town. We went back to the bus station, got on the next bus to Granada, and split.
As a final note, I did stay awake for the last leg of the trip, so I got to see the mountains that separate Castille from Andalusia. Those make up the last few pics in my album and are among the most beautiful mountain vistas I've ever seen. Scott and I pulled into Granada around 7:45 and I managed to get home by 8 to a warm pizza dinner.

Thus concludes my adventure to Madrid. I will talk about Italy on Sunday; tomorrow, I'm going on a class field trip to Cordoba.