Madrid

Let's just say Florence to Madrid isn't a hop skip and a jump away. The scenery, however, was grand. The Pyrenees are beautiful mountains along the border of France and Spain. The weaving roads were a blast to drive through as the sun set with a beautiful array of colors. We passed through Andora without realizing it was a country. Its a small city with French exit border patrol on one side and Spain entrance border patrol on the other. Its greatest boast is its gas prices - the cheapest we've seen in Europe by far. After 11 hours or so of driving we crashed (not literally) inside the border near the autostrasse.

At 6 in the morning it was time to go. Jordan's plane was due to arrive around noon and we were excited to greet him. We joked as we drove about how we half expected him to depart the plane with his guitar and nothing else. We also had a vague hope that Luke would be standing behind him to join us last minute.

We spent the evening settling down in our hotel, a quaint little place on the fourth floor. That is, the entire hotel was on the fourth floor. After walking around to see some of the sights in the neighborhood we returned for a siesta, something Asa had been looking forward to since the beginning of the trip. At 11pm I awoke to Matt asking if our siesta was over. As unusual as it might sound, it would not have been outrageous for us to arise and spend a few hours in town at that time of day. Everyone, including the older generation takes a few hour siesta in the early afternoon and then stays up until the early hours of the morning. A few moans from us, however, indicated that we would be going straight from our siesta nap to bed.

As usual, we flew through Madrid. We began with a few hours at the Prado where I saw a few works that were studied in Art History class at Wheaton. Paintings by the great Spanish artists such as Goya and Velazquez were along side others such as Rubens. It was a feast for the eyes. After checking out a few churches and the Plaza Mayor, we spent the bulk of the rest of our time at the Palace Real, the official residence of the King of Spain. The palace was complete with an armory which displayed dozens of sets of armor for horses, knights, and jousters.

Our day was complete with a trip to the bull fights. The offices in the center of Madrid were out of tickets so we went to see if we could find a few for sale outside the building. Our hopes were low since it is currently a festival time of bull fighting and Spaniards scramble to see the show. Nevertheless, we did find some surprisingly cheap tickets in the colloseum-like arena. The experience was a must-see for any travelers to Madrid. We saw three matadors fight against 2 bulls a piece. The second bull fought so bravely that within minutes the crowd was cheering to set him free, which was granted. Rumor has it that such hardly happens and the bull would be off to spend a happy life grazing with no worries. The whole event is quite exciting - the matadors, the capes, the spearers on horses. One can easily see how it developed out of the days of the colloseum when animals would fight men bringing about very different results.