We woke up at 7AM to be able to make it to the market we had left early from the day before. It was supposed to be open at 8, but after we groggily got ready and finished packing, we arrived to find it closed. Ang didn't want another Dunkin' Coffee, so we set off on some side streets to try and find the sandwich place that I had found the day Tracey broke. We failed to find that, but found a little coffee shop instead. I walked in and ordered what I thought was an iced coffee, "cafe con hielo" and what I got was a tiny little cup and a glass of ice. Ang had ordered the same thing, and we looked at our cups and glasses in confusion before shrugging and dumping the coffee onto the ice and pouring a packet of sugar on top of it. I took a sip of it, and it was like someone had walked up and slapped my face. The drink was then dubbed "the defibrilator" and we bounced our way out of the coffee shop back to the hotel.
We stopped by the front desk after grabbing our luggage, and the wonderful Mateo showed us that the train station was actually just in front of the market. Sweet! We went down into the metro and were completely blown away by how clean it was. Absolutely could-eat-off-the-floor perfect. We had no idea how to use the metro system, and we managed to tell the metro lady that spoke no english were we were going and she printed tickets for us. Stairs suck, by the way. Lots and lots of stairs. YOu have luggage? fuck you. Have 10 more stairs. We finally arrived at barcelona-sants train station, super early for our train. We milled around a bit, and they finally opened up a platform. We actually had to go through security, which is strange. Want to enter the country? Sure! go righ ahead. Want to take a train from one city to another? Put your shit on the scanner, bitch. We sat there nodding off for another hour or so, and finally our train was open for boarding. Tracey immediately passed out and I snuck her phone away to take pictures of the countryside.
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As we got closer to Madrid, I got hungry and went on a scouting mission for food. I got a sandwich and came back to tell everyone the food was good, but Ang yelled at me for being a shitty scout and not coming back with a detailed account of the chocolate they had. I shared my sandwich, and Ang and Tracey eventually got up to get their own food.
We arrived in Madrid, and it was noticeably cooler than Barcelona. Unless you crossed the line into sunlight, of course. Then you burst into flames and melted. We figured out our route to Santo Domingo and went up a million flights of stairs and got on the train. We got off the train, and went up a million more flights of stairs. On the final flight of stairs, I threw my luggage to the top and stumbled to a bench, covered in sweat and out of breath. Unfortunately, Tracey broke her luggage on the stairs and angie ninja repaired it with a bit of necklace material. Forunately, the train station had let us out immediately in front of our hotel.
When we had booked the room for this hotel, we had requested "The Jellyfish Room", which as we had seen from pictures, was a room entirely covered in ethereal avatar-like murals of jellyfish and lagoons. When we reached the room, we opened it, and started running arround in sheer joy because we had, indeed, gotten the jellyfish room. It was better that we had even imagined, because it had a bidet, a private little courtyard you could climb out of the window to get to, a jet tub, and THE ROOM WAS LIT BY BLACKLIGHT.
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We unpacked a bit, freshened up, and headed out to explore Madrid. The way we had planned it, today was the only day that we had to see Madrid, so we had to cowboy up and take off the bitch hats despite how tired we were. We walked across from the hotel with no particular plan in mind, and soon discovered the single best thing about Madrid: all the restaurants had misting awnings. It took the edge off the heat beautifully, and America really needs to get their shit together and have these things.
We sat at prettymuch the first restaurant we found, and ordered various mojitos. The dude never came back to take our food order. We were used to the long waits to get our food ordered, but this was ridiculous. I finally got tired of waiting and went inside to tell someone we wanted to order croquetas. They came, and they were not amazing, and we left. We really had to get shopping done, so we walked towards some shops and began the ping-pong shopping routine of fail. I think the only thing anyone got was Ang, and even then, it was from one of the people selling pocketbooks off the street from a blanket. Spain, seriously, what the hell is wrong with your shopping?
I was on a mission to get shoes, and we stopped in a place that looke promising. I saw an adorable pair, and asked the guy for what I guessed was my european size. As I waited, I put my foot in a different shoe, and looked at my feet in a mirror. Then, it suddenly made sense why my feet were in such bad shape - they had ballooned to twice their size. I looked down, yelled "what the fuck?!" and Tracey looked down and was like, "what the fuck!" and then Ang looked down and was like, "holy shit!"
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Great. Shoe shopping was out. I left the store dejectedly and passed by shoe store after shoe store after shoe store as if the city was mocking me.
We found our way to the Placa del Sol, which I think is the main square in Madrid. It was packed, and there were living statues around with crowds of people. We picked a sidestreet, and passed by one that was dressed as a fucked up golden glittery goat that freaked us out as it shuddered its jaw open and closed and pawed at us. We probably should have given it money and taken a picture, but it looked like a chupacabra and fuck that.
Ang swung her head to the left and yelled, "chocolate!" and we went towared the Chocolateria Gines, which we quickly figured out was a famous place that sold churros and liquid chocolate. We walked away because...I don't know why, but we did, and Tracey was really upset about it. I continued walking, and saw one of the misting awnings and made a beeline for it. I barely noticed this guy trying to get me into his restaurant during my mission, and stopped when Ang and Tracey yelled for me to come back. They pointed to the restaurant with the guy outside trying to get people to go in, and I yelled "but the awning doesn't mist!" and right then, the awning went ssssst as the mist came down. "Well then!" and there we sat.
Apparently I was way more exhausted than I realized, because Angie asked me to take a picture of the buildings behind me, and just to be a dick, I did it as a selfie. Angie yelled, "no! not a selfie!" and I snapped a picture with what I thought was my "oh really? then what is this?" face.
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I was sober, I swear. The sangria arrived and it was the best we had ever had. Either that or we were exhausted and it was like a man in the desert finding an oasis. We took a picture of the bottle so that we could try to find it in liquor stores because it was 20 euro at the restaurant. We looked in a liquor store or two, but we came up dry. Ang picked up a bottle of red wine and some salt for a foot-soak session back at the hotel, and off we went to our rave room.
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