Palacio Royal

Visited the Royal palace yesterday. It's massive. Over 2.000 rooms.

I need to locate an Internet cafe in order to post pictures. But it's beautiful.

But the story gets funny after my visit. The weather was all over the place yesterday. From warm to windy and rainy to hot.
Three hours walking around the palace I was tired. I laid down in a garden and took a nap.
When I woke I was attacked by Asians speaking Spanish and flaring a Chinese reflexology picture in my face.

" señora massage. No tenga miedo!

I politely declined. But oh no. That wasn't enough. As I'm walking away she latched arms with me and started to drag me towards her little bench area. I was struggling to lose her grip.no way this lady walked arm and arm with me for a whole long madrileno block.

I finally yelled at her and she moved on to her next victim.

Went to prado museum today. Five hours wasn't enough. I will have to return.

There's a metro strike going on right now. Chances are they will interfere with my plna for Toledo and Segovia.

Visited corte de ingles department store. Elda you and I woul go nuts in here. The clothing is gorgeous!
Bought a nice pair of Spanish leather boots

Madrid

I've been in Madrid two days now. I've accustomed well to the "madrileno" lifestyle. It's 22:30 right now. That's 10:30 pm and the sun has finally gone done. Today included visits to puerta del sol, a large communal square full of street performers, locals and tourists.

My obervations so far.

There is no such thing as day old bread. Madrilenos eat bread and lots of it. With lost of cured meats. I was welcomed to Madrid with cava (champagne) baguette and iberico ham.





Bread gets hard after one day so every morning you walk to the corner for a fresh loaf. There's baguettes on their crispy paper sleeves in many a madrilenos purse, hand, backpack.

Young females here also love their skinny jeans. They'd fit into Hollywood with ease.

There's a plaza at every corner

Plaza del Alcala

Tomorrow I visit the prado museum. A museum which is known to rival paris' Louvre.
The highlite being the dark and disturbing artwork of Goya

I leave for Barcelona on Tuesday.

All packed

I leave in 3 days.

I packed up the backpack and gradually realized " holy shit! I cant carry all this on my back"

I gave the back pack a test run and i literally toppled backwards..

Time to downsize.

Im forgetting my initial minimalistic attitude.

One year's worth of anticipation is coming close to an end, as I am about 2.5 weeks away from my first solo venture out of the country. This is no day trip to Tijuana with family, no weekend in Rosarito with friends This is three months in Europe. Alone.

No itinerary. No reservations. No car. No computer.

Just a backpack, a bike and a pair of hiking boots.