the travels blog

Europe 2011/12 - Day 48 - Madrid & Barcelona

with pub crawl the night before, and an 8am train out of Madrid, it was planned to be a slow and recuperation day. with only 1.5 hours sleep for all of us, that was the most sensible haha.

But - Barcelona here we come! the land of the Catalans!

barcelonaaaaa - the spanish trains are awesome - they was so much space for luggage, seats were spacious and they gave out earphones!

turns out the earphones was to watch kung fu panda 2, in spanish!

some weird but epic views during the train ride

first order of business in Barcelona was to rest. and then it was lunch. what was lunch you ask? tapa!

who can get sick of tapa!

we did a bit of grocery shopping - and we found Barça chips!

and a giant lollypop..

HAHA we only ended up buying chips and lots and lots of water haha

we met up with ST who came from her flight from Krakow, and immediately took her to dinner for more tapas (for us anyway)

order too much? neverrrrr

Las ramblas - the street to be in Barcelona

down near the water - such a pretty bridge

reminded me of home!

and we ended the night writing postcards :)

Europe 2011/12 - Day 47 - Madrid

another sunny day in Madrid!

for breakfast, it was back to the awesome baguette place we had for lunch yesterday - the infamous “number 88”

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Europe 2011/12 - Day 46 - Madrid

we decided to take a tour of Madrid - a free walking tour

breakfast before tour at a chain called Museo del Jamon, where Jamon is dry cured ham. awesome stuff. cheap-as too!

dolls in the various regional traditional dresses

Plaza Mayor - where the tour started

Sobrino de Botín - world’s OLDEST restaurant - even Goya worked here as a kitchen hand

top left apartment - where they attempted to assassinate the King

side entrance to the Royal Palace in Madrid

Opera House

a nice little baguette place. number 88 is vintage!

Puerta del Sol!

the house of Miguel de Cervantes - Spanish’s Shakespeare

the Spanish parliament. the Golden door on the front is reserved ONLY for the king, Juan Carlos

that was where the tour ended. once it ended, we decided to head down to the Prado museum

it has the most extensive collection of art in spain, famously housing stuff by Goya and Velasquez

after some art for the day, we decided to venture to the park in Madrid, that is supposed to be really beautiful. it happened to be a sunny day too!

Retiro Park!

it was indeed such a pretty park!

after a taxing day - we decided to rest back to the hostal a bit, then it was for our tapas tour!

our first stop

pepper and fries

scallops with eel

second tapas bar - we got mushrooms with bacon and sweetbreads! sooooo good!

JG and I couldnt make it to the third bar on the tapas tour. why you ask? because we were attending El Clasico at the Santiago Bernabeu!

at the Bernabeu station, trying to exit the station. SO many people, and this was 1.5 hours before kick off!

the Santiago Bernabeu at night!

the atmosphere before kick off!

Real Madrid and Barcelona players lining up

kick off!

the two managers - pep and jose in their technical area

CR7 scores! on our end of the pitch as well!

but Barcelona prevailed - Puyol and Abidal scoring on our end of the pitch as well!

the final score. a bit lame that the home team lost, but whatever - i was a neutral and it was a good game and exquisite atmosphere!

after somehow getting home via the metro from El Clasico, we find that JL is home from the tapas tour, and then proposed food. she agreed :) So we went out for more food!

baguettes with meat yum!

we moved to ANOTHER restaurant - this time getting paella

and we decided to end the night at the Chocolateria San Gines. YAY churros!

and the girls ordered milk. i still dont quite understand why!

Europe 2011/12 - Day 45 - Lisboa & Madrid

and it is time to leave Portugal for 8 days in Spain!

waiting for the aerobus at Restauradores. Bye Lisboa!

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