Madrid, Baby!!

Madrid...is pretty cool. Lisa and I had an awesome time wandering around, looking at shops, taking photos, and enjoying the sunshine. Highlights were the cute wine bar with a hot bartender and 1.20 euro glasses of wine, Manolo Blahnik (designer shoe store), and the beautiful Park in the middle of the city. Oh, and the Haagen-Dasz ice cream (vanilla-caramel brownie flavoured). And the starbucks. I miss starbucks and their specialty coffees! I had a dark berry mocha frappuccino. Yum!!

We went up on the Friday and came back saturday night. It was the Fiesta de San Isidro on friday, who is the patron saint of madrid and his day also marks the start of the bullfighting season. We didn't go to see a bullfight, mostly because we hadn't booked, but also I'm not psyched up enough yet. The ones on telly look so...brutal.

So Friday night we went out to see what we could find. There was a free operetta on in the main square but we didn't stay too long, mostly because we couldn't understand what the %^&* was going on. The singing was good though. I enjoyed the songs. So as we were wandering through the older twisty streets we kept coming across all these little restaurants tucked away in corners and stuff. They were so cute. We'd already had dinner at a mexican restaurant sadly (after being told off by the guy behind the desk at the hostel when we asked him where one was, as he thought we should eat spanish food in Spain. We had to explain that we had in fact eaten plenty of spanish food as we live a little under an hour away from Madrid :D). But I'm sure I'll be back!

Something else we did on Friday was have a look around the Parque del Buen Retiro, which is similar to Hagley park I guess, only without the sports fields. And being in madrid and all. It was kinda big...we found a mexican group busking, with one guy singing, about six guitars, and a trumpet. It was sooo cool!!! Also, the guide book said that there's a statue of Lucifer, the Fallen Angel, and that it's one of the world's few statues to the Devil. I thought that was pretty cool so there's a photo on facebook for your viewing pleasure :)

Saturday was not a public holiday, so that was our shopping day. We went to 'The American Store', where I discovered Dr Pepper (it is soooo good), and Manolo Blahnik, where we tried on thousands of euros worth of shoes. I reckon between Lisa and I we covered NZ$20,000. They were a real mixture, some pretty standard, some outrageous designs of hideousness, and some real gems.

When we got back Saturday night I was exhausted so I just crashed. Photos, as per usual, are here on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=123411&id=585155585&l=3dcf1ecf00

:)

Katie