Hello and Goodbye to Madrid!

Our last day in Europe was our only day in Madrid! We had heard that Madrid was a great town to go to if you wanted to go drinking and clubbing, but otherwise was not the most interesting destination. Since our plane was leaving from Madrid and we needed to go there, we decided to spend one day there, largely to make sure we got there in time for our early morning flight.

Our one day in Madrid made us disappointed that we had spent so much time in Barcelona in comparison to less than 24 hours in Madrid! The city is beautiful and friendly, and struck us all as much cleaner and more put together than Barcelona. Since we had only the one day (half of which was spent on the train), we did another quick "highlights" walking tour.

We started by walking to the palace, which was pretty from the outside but closed on Saturdays. We instead wandered through the gardens outside the palace and then walked through the city to see the river and bridges. Along the way we saw a few street performers, some of who were pretty impressive! One guy even played the entire Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies from the Nutcracker -- on the rims of water glasses.

We stopped by one of the larger grocery and department stores on our way back to change for dinner to pick up a few things -- and when we came out, found ourselves in the middle of a huge crowd of people protesting. We couldn't tell what they were protesting, and made our way to the side of the square where we noticed van after van of incoming military and riot police. At this point we decided it was time to leave and took off as quickly as we could for our B&B. After eventually making our way through the police cordon surrounding our B&B (which was across the street from an apparently important government building), the streets went from incredibly crowded to eerily silent, with groups of police on every corner and the sound of helicopters overhead every few minutes. Patrick and I went to dinner at the restaurant next door to our B&B -- which was luckily open! -- and figured out that our one day in Madrid was apparently the day that 50,000 people from all over Europe had gathered to protest recent decisions by the UN. By the time we had sat down for dinner, 13 people had already been detailed. Needless to say, the rest of our night in Madrid was very quiet!

This certainly wasn't how we had imagined our last evening in Europe, but we did enjoy a last quiet dinner over a carafe of good Spanish wine and a few plates of unique vegetarian food. I think we would both be happy to go back to Madrid some day -- a day when the city was quieter! -- but I also don't think it is on the top of our to-go list. It was a beautiful city with a lot that we didn't get to see, but I'm afraid by our last day we were both getting a little worn out, which may have colored our perspective.

We are so thankful that we had the opportunity to take this trip, which we enjoyed thoroughly! We've gotten to see, taste, hear and experience so many amazing things. Thank you for sticking with us through this journey!