Posted 4:33 AM by MelanieandSteve
3-5-03

All is still great. Have enjoyed some very positive emails from many of you. Thanks.
We are still in Madrid, still enjoying the hospitality of our very generous local friends Hugo and Fatima. Rafael, who´s room we´re using returns home on 3-10 so we have to be out by then, but we think we´ll leave a day or two earlier for some other adventures in the South.

Thoughts and Happenings in MadridÑ
=Food: Food is very good and more affordable than Paris. But it´s been difficult to find authentic Spanish food. It´s easier to find good Italian. We have a goal to get a really good traditional Madrid meal before we move on. We still enjoy getting most of our food by grocery shopping and cooking for ourselves. Not only does it save money, but it feels more genuine. Only tourists eat out every day.
=Madrid is the most modern of the cities we´ve visited yet in Europe. The architecure is 20th century office building style for the most part, but many of the buildings are very clever and creatively made, so it´s still interesting. Old palaces and government buildings are still interspersed to remind us we´re in Europe. Madrid feels like a big city, and it is, but physically it´s quite small. We find that we end up walking Everywyere. Even totally across town. This is great because we see a ton, but the draw back is we won´t likely use up our full subway pass.
=We went to a ¨´Spanish Class´last night , this was an evening at a cerveceria where we met with about 5 people and just practiced talking Spanish. There was a ´teacher´there, but he spoke with us for about a minute and then when we ´students´were OK talking with each other, he found his way to places of more interesting conversation (perhaps that of higher caliber than a 5 yr old, like Steve and I speak.) But we enjoyed meeting a few people and spending an evening talking exclusively spanish with people from England, Germany, and Canada.
=We have made a choice to spend most of our time in non-touristy ways. So far we have missed the famous Museum del Prado, and we´ve taken no tours. We do learn a lot however, because we walk around with our host Hugo, and he tells us so much about history, and buildings and locations. Instead of touristy things, we walk a lot, go out, and try to talk with people. Yesterday we had such an enjoyable time sitting in a park where there were lots of benches and lots of poeple to watch. Steve read a Madrid news paper in spanish and I worked on my journal in the sun. It was great.
=Went to movie Gangs of New York with our host, since he´s a big film fan. It was in VOSE, version original (English). Found that people in Madrid take film going much more serious than Americans do, they stay for credits, and they don´t even care about consessions. Hugo says this is because it was a VOSE theater and it attracts serious film lovers.

Posted 8:14 AM by MelanieandSteve
3-3-03
All is well in Madrid.
We took the 16 hour over night trains from Paris to Madrid on 2-28 to 3-1.
On our last day in the hostel of Paris, we met a couple new friends who lived in Spain but were traveling in Europe for a while. One of them, Rafael, found out we were going to Madrid and offered to let us stay at his flat in Madrid while he was gone.
One of Rafael´s roommates, Hugo, met us and has showed us around a little.
In two days, we have:
-Gone to the Sunday morning street market called Raztro (spelling unsure).
Fun for shopping but more fun for people-watching. Locals sit near the market and play drums and other music.
It was fun to stop and sit and listen.
-After Raztro, everyone continues to stay and play in town - some of them until wee hours of the morning.
-It seems every day is a good day for people-watching- we haven´t found a time yet when people
weren´t out partying and enjoying themselves.
-We were lucky to find ourselves in Madrid on the week of Carnaval.
This is a tradition with the same roots as Martigras in New Orleans.
While it´s crowded with people in costume (mostly witches, clowns, and bright wigs),
and it sponsors nightly concerts at the nearby palace square, it´s not as big of a celebration
as Carnaval in Brazil or Martigras in New Orleans. But it was great fun.
- Huge, who we are staying with, is a big movie fan, and we will all go to the movies tonight.
-To thank our hosts, we will cook for Hugo and the other roommate, Fatima, tomorrow night.
-We learned that parcel post is very expensive. Ouch, as we mailed some birthday gifts home today.
We also lightened our load by sending some unneeded things home. Travelling light gets more important than having things.
From now on, we think small and light.

Also, we got an email response from Rude Dog to our 2-22 blog asking for more details on the French swindling- Well, a guy at the metro in the train station where we had just arrived in Paris offered to help us buy tickets. He flashed us a badge so as to convince us that he worked for the metro, told us he worked for the metro, and then "assisted" us in buying our first tickets. Later we learned that he got us to pay more than they actually cost. We lost only a little, but perhaps gained a lot through a cheap lesson learned.