All that and a bag of trail mix

Day 38
I was a little tired in the morning, maybe I was out later than I had thought. Still, I got myself up and moved one block over to a new hostel. I didn´t book places so close on purpose, just got lucky.

I was excited, a friend was meeting me, and I was early, of course. I tried to wait out by the metro station, but after about 45 minutes I had already checked out all of the stores and it was too cold to sit outside. I headed back to the hostel and sat at reception (I wasn´t able to check in yet) watching ANTM on my Ipod.

Then Al, with his big red bag and more stuff than he really needed walked in. In seconds I jumped up to give him a hug, I didn´t even let him get his pack off. Soon we were checked in and had set out to explore Madrid and to keep moving to keep Al awake.

The first place I took him to was Plaza Mayor. I wanted him to go somewhere where he would feel like he was in Europe, and I thought that this place, close to our hostel, would be it. We had lunch overlooking the square and then headed to the Royal Palace.

The palace was much like the others I have seen, loud and ornate. Still, I loved it. I don´t know what it is about palaces and castles, I just can´t get enough of them. The rooms had been refurbished to look like they had in the 1830´s. Everything was quite grand. The throne room had some pretty spectacular lion statues. The dinning room table had more place settings than people that I know.

After and hours break we set out to visit the St. Isidro Cathedral to see his body, but we couldn´t find it. This was mostly because I had forgotten the name of where we were going. We had to go all the way back to the hostel to look it up. When we did find it, we ended up at the museum of St. Isidro, not the cathedral. Apparently that was somewhere else, far away. The museum was free so we checked it out. Most of it was about Madrid and the history of the small area that the museum was set on. There was a really interesting section on paintings that are in the Prado. It told you how to pick out what type of a person it is a picture of by studying the clothing.

We may have gone through the museum backwards because it wasn´t until we go to the end that we learned anything about St. Isidro. It turns out that while he was away one day his wife dropped their baby in the well. Instead of trying to get the baby out they decided to pray. God answered their prayers and the water rose up with the baby safely on top. One of the highlights of the museum was seeing the well itself. I guess if I can´t have a mummy that a well will do.

It was getting late and Al was pretty jet lagged. We stopped by the Lidl to pick up some food for dinner to eat in our room, even though this was against hostel rules. We are such rebels. When we got back to the room Al showed me all of the cool travel sized and convertible things that he had brought with him. Also in his pack was about 10 pounds of trail mix. I can always count on Al to be over prepared.