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Spain (25 August - 2 September 2007)

It's Britain's favourite holiday destination (and as a result the Spanish fucking hate the Brits because they turn up, get drunk and piss off the locals), and it plays host to the biggest food fight in the world: La Tomatina! Tomatina is something I've wanted to do ever since first learning of it several years ago, and so it was pretty high up on my list of things to conquer while I'm here :) Jen was up for hurling a tomato or two, and we decided to make a week out of it and pay a visit to Spain's main cities - Madrid (two nights), Valencia (three nights, and outside which Tomatina takes place), and Barcelona (three nights), and try not to get drunk and piss off the locals, much.

My first impression of Spain from the air was that it's a pretty bloody baron-looking place - not a lot of green down there!		We flew into Madrid, and Expedia were nice enough to email me some facts about the place: it's Europe's fourth largest city (after London, Paris and Milan - all of which I've been to for least a couple hours), it's the highest capital city in Europe at 650m above sea level, and it is said to have the highest rate of bars per person in all of Europe (I would've thought that would be somewhere in the UK but apparently not).

We arrived in Madrid in the early afternoon and ripped straight into a good ol' Spanish paella in the nearest tapas bar - bloody great stuff!		Central Madrid is a bit of a mad house with big buildings, bloody wide roads with about 500 lanes, tourists, shoe shiners, and cars / trucks / scooters / buses coming from all directions. This is looking along Gran Via - one of Madrid's busiest streets above which we were staying (and it was pretty loud at night).

As in most European cities there are a number of dodgy darkies selling dodgy shit and getting arrested hahaha! The dude on the right was selling pirated DVD's of movies currently still in the cinemas like The Simpsons and Shrek the Third hehe. Naughty!

Out of the chaos though there are some really great little back streets and arcades, particularly south of the city centre (known as Old Madrid - the oldest medieval part of the city), full of little shops, bars, cafe's and restaurants, clubs, souvenir shops, and obviously a lot of history.

For whatever reason, Plaza de Cibeles seems to be a well-known symbol for Madrid. I don't know what the deal is with the Palace in the background (though it's pretty impressive), but the fountain it overlooks is meant to be Cibeles - the goddess of fertility.		Cibeles is just one of a myriad of fountains throughout the city (and throughout the country for that matter - they seem to really love their water features here!).		Plaza de la Villa is also just one of a myriad in the city and country, and I don't know which is which but one of the three buildings here is from the 15th century, one from the 16th century, and one from the 17th century.

Just up the road is (the much bigger) Plaza Mayor. This place is good a spot to come for a piss and moan about the government apparently as there are often political rallies and protests here, as well as a few random fiestas. Most of the time though it's just a great place to get away from the traffic and feed your face at the tapas bars.				Winnie the Pooh looks more like a rapist than he did back in my day.

Palacio Real (the royal palace) is a massive palace built over the course of 28 years in the 18th century for the powers that be of the time. We didn't go inside but it's apparently pretty impressive in there with marble this and gold that, but at €10 we took the free option of wandering around the gardens out front and big forecourt out back.

Next door is the Catedral (not misspelt) de la Almudena (Almudena Cathedral), where you can go in and eat blessed crackers and get splashed with holy water. Holy water would probably burn me, so I avoided a scene and stayed at the back hehe.				After you've fulfilled your religious obligations for another Sunday, you can go buy a Jesus souvenir out back like this nun here ;)

This was pretty much where the thermometer stayed both days in Madrid. It was like being back in Brisbane! :)
Since we were in the area, we scoped out the train station for the journey to Valencia the following day. Atocha Station was renovated in 1985 and this big tropical garden added - nice! On March 11, 2004, Muslim terrorists placed bombs in several trains, killing close to 200 people. One of the trains was stationed in Atocha at the time of the explosion.		We grabbed some lunch while we were here from a little tapas bar. The menus were all in Spanish and the waitress didn't speak a word of English so we just pointed to something random and interesting-looking on the menu, and this is what came out hehe. It was good!

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