We were quickly adjusting to the pace of the Madrileno day. We woke up at around 10am, and gradually made our way to brunch the Burger King near our first stop for the day, Museo del Prado. Mench wanted authentic Spanish food for our brunch, but my stomach was just telling me to get food, any food, and finally I won out. Mench was hungry too, and didn’t put up much of a fight.

The Museo del Prado is one of Spain’s most important museums and houses the country’s most important pieces of artwork up to the 19^th century. It houses paintings by the famous painters Francisco de Goya as well as Raphael, Murillo, El Greco, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and many more. Unfortunately, photos weren’t allowed in the museum, so we have to rely on souvenirs and memory to serve as a recollection of the Prado Museum.

From the Prado, we made our way to the Retiro Park, which was right beside it. The Retiro is a huge park with beautiful landscapes and jogging paths, and is also a major tourist attraction in itself. Of course, after taking pictures we just had to have ice cream before leaving the park.

We then did our typical wandering about the city streets and checked out a few more of the sights to see on our list: Real Palazia, the famous Opera house, and then Plaza Mayor where we had our tapas at around 6pm. The weather in Madrid was great – it was a bit cold but not too much, where you could easily enjoy being outside in the streets.

After our tapas, we walked off our food again and wandered around the city a bit more. We also checked out the bus station and bought tickets for our trip to Sevilla on Thursday, so we wouldn’t have to worry about it. At a little past 9PM, we met up with Mons, a friend of our friend Ysa who is currently living in Madrid.

Now, Madrid isn’t really that famous for its sights – but it is very well known for a few things: its paella rice dish, bullfighting, flamenco, and its legendary nightlife. We had already tried paella the day before, and now Mons was about to show us something about the nightlife.

The Madrid noches (evening) starts at around 9 or 10PM – this is usually dinner accompanied by light drinking (read: beer or sangria). So this is how we started, just casually exchanging stories, eating our dinner and drinking a bit until midnight. At around midnight, the bars start to come alive – and it’s time for some serious partying!

Mons led us to the Monnalisa bar near Calle de las Huertas – and if the name of the bar rings a bell to you, it’s because the Mona Lisa (2 copies, yes, fake, and even larger than the original! And you can touch it, too.) is featured prominently at the bar. Now it was time for more serious drinks: rum coke, shots of whatever the bartender served up, and harder partying. The bars in Madrid usually offer you a free drink to lure you inside, so after a short while we left and entered another bar, where the bounty was free shots for the three of us. The evening started getting more interesting – pictures with random partying Spaniards, being talked up by friendly bargoers, more drinks, and writing on their graffiti wall – and more drinks! All this time, we were being treated to what seems like a random selection of bar music – 80s, 90s dance and R&B, to modern pop and Spanish songs randomly thrown one after another. The evening was getting crazier by the minute, and we learned during the party hours in Madrid, they don’t drink water or eat food (pica-pica); they just consume all the alcohol they can. And if they’re hungry, they wait for the restaurants serving breakfast to open at 8am! All three of us were starting to get really tipsy through the night.

After a good amount of alcohol, we decided to pack up and go home at around 4AM as the bar was closing. As we were walking down the street towards home, Mons suddenly suggested that we check out the bar that was still open. We tried to resist, but it was futile – so it was more of the same at yet another bar, dancing, posing for pictures with random Spaniards, and plenty more drinking! We were really in a daze as this bar opened its lights at 5:30AM to close down, and we hazily walked to our hotel which was 10 minutes away.

And that is how we really got to know the Madrileno way of life, ending at close to 6AM.

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As Gabby mentioned in the previous post, we had to take a train to Irun (border of Spain and France) to get to Madrid. We arrived at around 7:30am in Irun, had a quick breakfast of chorizo sandwich and chocolate croissant and boarded the Renfe train to Madrid at 8:15am.

We noticed that the Spanish trains were way nicer than the one we took from Paris. For instance, the toilet in the Paris train had no flush system so everything that people did in the toilet went straight to the tracks (that’s why the train station had a weird smell!). On the other hand, the train to Madrid had toilets similar to that of an airplane. Also, the Spanish trains are newer and cleaner. They have wider leg rooms and reclinable seats. I just happened to once again get a window seat without much of a view because of a panel right by our window.

After 6 hours, that’s now a total of 14 hours traveling by train, we finally made it to Madrid! We immediately asked the tourist information officer how to get to our hotel and headed to get metro tickets.The Madrid metro system was also way nicer than that of Paris. It was well-maintained, had newer trains and easier to figure out. We got a ten-ticket pass from the ticketing machine and headed to the hotel.

Our hotel was booked by Gabby online. What we usually do is sort search by pricing and then look at some of the reviews. We were a bit anxious since this is the cheapest hotel we booked so far (45euros for a double room). But we were pleasantly surprised that the hotel was just a five-minute walk to the Metro and is close to the city center (and the shopping district!). We had a big bed, a big bathroom and tv with cable. It was the best hotel we’ve had so far. By the way, name of the hotel is Hostal Ballesta.

After freshening up a bit we headed out to have our first taste of paella. We noticed that the restos were just opening up for the afternoon (this was already around 430pm). At the resto we picked, we were the only ones having paella and everyone else was already drinking and having tapas.

After paella, we just decided to wander around the area. From Gran Via, the artery closest to our hotel, we headed to Puerta del Sol where the international shops are. It seemed that everyone was at Sol at around 6pm because the place was just really packed. People were shopping, watching street artists perform or just hanging out in the many terrazas (alfresco seating areas) in the area. Others were just rushing towards the nearby Metro.

As we wandered around we got to Plaza Sta. Ana where we had our first Madrid Sangria and Cerveza. This was already close to 9pm but people were still not having dinner. We explored the nearby areas and passed Calle Huertas and other streets in the nearby district. We noticed that the area was a bit quiet and dark, not like what I read about Huertas as being a happening place. But when we went back an hour later, the place was already alive with activity- people were finally having dinner and still drinking some more. So we decided to join in by having some tapas at a nice bar along Calle de Barcelona near Huertas.

As we were headed home close to midnight, more people were still getting into the bars as if the night was just starting. Then we realized that this is the Madrileno way of life- relax, chill, linger and party till wee hours of the morning!

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Our flight to Madrid was via the RyanAir budget airline, operating out of Beauvais Airport – small town around 45 minutes from Paris. Learning from our experience in London, we woke up earlier this time, setting our alarm from 3AM and scheduling a taxi to pick us up at our hotel at 4:30AM to the Beauvais shuttle point. We got to Beauvais without any incident and got down from the bus to a very cold, foggy morning.

Before the end of our Paris trip, I was telling Mench, “The easy part of our trip is over. Now, the real adventure begins.” Little did I know that we would get that adventure before even getting out of Paris!

The plane was a bit late, so we proceeded to write about our previous days on the trip while waiting for the boarding call. After 20 minutes of waiting, the announcement came up that the plane was circling around the airport as it couldn’t land due to the fog. A collective sigh of annoyance came from the crowd.

After fifteen more minutes, another announcement came up on the loudspeakers, first in French then in Spanish. We could hear the crowd gasping and commotion starting to build. In the cacophony of French and Spanish we heard over the loudspeakers that our flight to Madrid had been cancelled because our planes couldn’t land at all. Crap!

We quickly fell in line to get our baggage back and process our refunds. There was real mayhem in the airport, with English, Spanish and French conversations flying all over the place, trying to figure out how to go to Madrid. We figured out that the best way would be to catch a train – but like almost everyone there, we were in the middle of nowhere in an obscure airport town and had no idea when or where the trains would be!

Mench and I started texting our contacts to help us figure out how we could get to Madrid. I texted my sister and our French friend in Manila, Vincent while Mench told our friend in Madrid that we were going to be late – just how late exactly, we still had no idea. We had exhausted Paris and Paris had exhausted us, and we couldn’t wait to get to the next part of our trip.

Fortunately, RyanAir offered a free shuttle service back to our pickup point in Paris. We made our way to Olivier’s apartment in Les Halles to regroup and figure out what to do next. With my sister’s text messages and Olivier’s help, we found out from that the SNCF (France’s national rail network) train from Paris to Madrid was leaving at 7:45 later that evening, and that it would take 14 hours to get to Madrid.

We thanked Olivier for his help and quickly made our way to the Gare de Lyon station to buy tickets at the SNCF (the French national rail line) ticket booth. At the ticket booth, we were informed that all seats on the 7:45PM train to Madrid had already been filled up. Oh no! Thoughts of having to stay another night (or maybe more) filled our heads, while we had already reserved and was paying for our hotel in Madrid.

We asked the ticket attendant if we had any more options to Madrid. After searching on the computer, she found a train that would take us to Irun, on the border for France and Spain leaving at 11PM. It would arrive at Irun at 7:30AM, and we could transfer to another train on Spain’s Renfe rail line to Madrid, arriving there at 2PM. Finally, we found a way!

Then the ticket attendant told us that she would put us on a sleeper train to Irun, and that the entire trip would cost us 295 Euro (roughly P20,000 for a 14 hour journey; our budget flight which was refunded would have cost us 60 Euro and 2 hours). We swallowed hard, gritted our teeth, handed over our credit card, and bought our second-most expensive journey of our entire trip (after our long haul plane to Lodon). At least, we would be on our way to Madrid that evening!

We made our way to Gare de Austerlitz station 10 minutes away where our train was leaving and left our large bags in lockers. With 5 hours to spare and no more energy to go around Paris, we helped ourselves to a yummy mid-afternoon dessert meal of crème brulee and vanilla apple pie to perk us up. Afterwards, we found an Internet café where we could update the website and get in touch with our family back home.

As the departure time neared, we went back to Gare de Austerlitz and waited for our train to arrive. At least, we told ourserlves, we would be on a sleeper coach – the privacy of our own room with beds where we could comfortably enjoy our overnight ride to Irun.

We got one assumption right – there would be a room with beds. When we got on the trains, we found out that our expectations were way off – we would be in a tiny room with six bunks laid out over 3 levels, and we would be sharing the sleeper coach with 4 other people. My mind zoomed back to 1999 when my family took a similar train from Paris to Rome – but then it was our entire family in one coach. Now, during our honeymoon, we’d have to bunk in with 4 total strangers. So that’s what 100 Euro each can buy you on a train!

I was feeling mildly depressed and slightly claustrophobic at this point, but our backpacker sensibilities quickly asserted themselves in us. We climbed up to the beds on the top deck, hauled our bags up, and slept as comfortably as we can as the train silently crept its way from Paris to the border of Spain.

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