Madrid (without the whinge)

I actually had a great weekend in Madrid before I got sick. I stayed with a friend from UTS, Monique, who's a little bit crazy but absolutely hysterical. She slept on an air mattress and let me sleep on her bed. The first night though, Breda and I thought we'd splurge and booked into a 2 star hotel where we got our own ensuite and didn't have to share the room with anyone else. No smelly guys for us!

The bear kissing the tree/bush/shrubbery is supposed to be a symbol of Madrid but I don't know what it's symbolising. I expected it to be a lot bigger. We found it by accident, and I thought it was a statue of the real statue that was actually twice the size, but no, that's it.

At night, Breda wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe, but there was a one and a half hour wait, so we went to Chueca instead, which was supposed to have great tapas and cool nightclubs. Some guy followed us down the street attempting to speak to us and it was only five minutes later that I realised he'd said 'Goodbye beautiful' to me in Chinese. Atrocious accent.

I actually got asked for ID at a club! In a country where the youth start drinking at 12 or 13! I must look 10. Unfortunately, I didn't have any because it all got stolen, so we went to another club where there weren't any scruples about age. (Spot the cow in the background of the photo of Breda and me.) We got home at around 3 am, but it was actually 4 am because of daylight saving, which we hadn't realised. I saw a few clocks that were an hour faster than my watch in some shops, but I just assumed the people were being stupid and playing a prank on their customers.

The next morning, we went to El Rastro, supposedly one of the biggest markets in Europe. It was interesting, but as the crowd grew, I became increasingly paranoid about my bag and pickpockets. Breda tripped over a pole sticking out of the ground and banged her knee. She left on Sunday night because she had classes on Monday, but when she got back to Logrono at 4 am, her knee had swollen up so much she went to Emergency to get x-rays. It is now swaddled in bandages for the next ten days.