Woohoo! Got up at nine today! It was another long day of traveling as we journeyed back to Madrid. It's not that I like Madrid very much - it's the weather there that I long for! So anyway, after a leisurely morning shower, I packed my stuff in (my mum gave me something to pack in as well 'cause her luggage is beyond it's brim now!) then had breakfast at the same cafeteria as we had breakfast yesterday. Dad got me a very filling tortilla bocadillo indeed. I couldn't manage to finish it though it tasted quite nice. Cold though. =/ Had zumo de naranja as well.
We checked out slightly after eleven - the Hos slept in a bit late. We went out to get cabs after that and we were a little panicky because our train for Madrid left at twelve thirty. So Wendy and I went further ahead, leaving our parents behind to take care of the luggage while we went to look for taxis. We found one at a taxi stand pretty far off. We talked to the driver, a kindly older gent who spoke only Spanish and explained our situation to him. Or rather, tried to in our broken Spanish. Wendy's much more proficient than me at it though! We asked him whether he could radio for another cab but he showed us that his radio cord was spoilt and frayed and that it was supposed to be repaired sometime but manyana manyana, it kept getting pushed to a later date. In other words, either he or the company procrastinated so manyana sort of means "tomorrow"? Yeah, you get the idea. So anyway he told us to. Wait for a while and another cab would be sure to come our way, so that we might be able to get two cabs. We waited then, albeit impatiently, but no cab came. A presumably Spanish couple that spoke good English did though, and translated what the cabbie said - that if we were go back to the plaza that our parents were waiting at, cabs were sure to come. Wendy, like a nervous filly by now, rather thought that they wanted that cab, so we hopped on and went back to the plaza, picked up my parents and went to the train station. Along the way, the driver dropped her off near a stand with a few cabs waiting and she went to pick Mr and Mrs Ho up.
Actually we needn't have worried so. We reached just after noon, and so were nicely early enough get lost in a small train station looking for the right platform to take the train from. -.-" Mum, Dad and I got Mrs Ho to snap a nice picture of us (I rather thought that it was nice because of the colourful new Desigual shirt that I bought yesterday! =P) with a train and a sign stating "Cordoba" in the background. Once we were on, I spent most of the time on my iPad listening to songs and writing this post. Oh by the way, "Love Won't Let Me Wait" sung by Luther Vandross on the "Live Radio City Hall 2003" album played and it's such a wonderful song that it makes me wanna learn how to dance just so that I could dance to it! I think it'd make a great wedding song, only that Luther Vandross' singing is irreplaceable, and I rather think that no Singaporean singer could pull it off like he did! A granola bar swiped from the plane occupied me for a little bit too, thank God for it. ^^
So we reached Madrid at around two thirty, then bought our train tickets for tomorrow's trip to Toledo. What's there at at Toledo? I've only ever heard of the phrase "made of the finest Toledo steel" from ads I think. Either that or it's Zorro LOL! Yeah, then we found cabs to bring us to our hotel. Y'know, at first when they dropped us off, we milled around aimlessly for a good while on one side of the narrow paved street - we simply couldn't figure out where the Hotel Posado Del Dragon was even though it was right before our very eyes! The reason behind this was simple. The ground floor of this particular hotel is a bar, and on a Sunday afternoon, it was packed too! The registration count was this tiny counter INSIDE the bar, beside the drinks counter. We only realised that we were at the right place when a girl or presumably, waitress, standing at the entrance to the bar confirmed that it was the right place! So after several contortionist acts, we managed to worm our way to the counter and get us assigned. This is the right occasion to use the phrase "it was like trying to squeeze toothpaste back into a tube"! There were no triple sharing rooms at this hotel, nor were any of the rooms big enough to add in an extra bed, so Wendy and I got a room each, upgraded to a double room each. My room's on the first floor (up from the ground floor) and you can look down into the bar from the landing so it's pretty noisy despite their claims that it's soundproof! It has a very... interesting interior of purple coarse fur and white wallpaper. And you think my frosted glass washroom door's revealing? Wait till you take a gander at pictures of my room - you can look directly into the shower from the room through a glass panel. No frost there, just three colourful decorative dots! *grimaces* It's stylish in a modern way, I have to admit, but bordering on crass lol!
So after checking in, we went downstairs into an adjacent part of the building to have a weirdly-timed lunch. Or dinner. Too hefty for tea. Let's call it "lunner" hahaha! So it was part of the bar, but a part that served proper food, and it was a very intriguing place indeed as a large portion of the floor was glass! No, not the kind that you find in La Salle of Singapore, where there're rooms below for perverts to look up under skirts above - what was underneath, well-lit as though it were a show cave, was the excavated remains of a bygone era. Ancient walls and rubble here and there. It was a bit hairy for some of the ladies, but certainly, the glass was more than strong enough to hold the weight of us puny Asians. =P I ordered zumo de piña for a drink (we each had a complimentary drink from the bar~) and four hundred grammes of beef loin, medium rare. Mum ordered a tempura codfish fillet and Dad had a breakfasty sort of dish - farm eggs with ham. Mum got sangria for a drink and Dad got champagne. My dish came soon and it was huge and VERY red on the inside, albeit without much leaking blood. That's good because as Fleur Delacour says, "the English always overcook their steak." or something along those lines anyway! But still, I think I'll order medium in future, it was too red even for me - I'll show you a picture when I get home. ^^ Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was tender and juicy and had a nice thin crispy layer on the outside. Tasted nicely salty too. I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it but I sure did! Mum's codfish was properly cooked for once (and not undercooked like the previous two times she ordered cod!) and melted in your mouth while the batter was crispy though not too flavourful - the sauce was what gave the dish flavour. Dad's ham was very salty, quite the norm for ham here (they call it "jamon" because "J" is pronounced as "H" here!), but his potatoes (patatas in Spanish!) had a nice herby sorta taste and was fried to a crisp on the outside. It was a really wonderful meal. ^^
A visit to the Museo del Prado was next so we took the Metro from Tirso di Molina to Atocha, just two stops away, and found that entry to the museum was free from five to eight on Sundays much to our very pleasant surprise! I didn't take any pictures in the museum though. No not that it was disallowed, but because it was crowded and frankly, I wasn't very interested in most of the paintings except those that depicted Jesus or some natural landscape. The detail in some paintings was simply breathtaking though! Oh and in paintings of the Holy Trinity, Jesus is always a handsome young man, the Holy Spirit is always a dove, and the Father is always some old man with a lined face and either balding or totally white hair. I wonder if God isn't exasperated with that at times hahaha! Anyway, it just so happened that we got separated from the Hos in the museum so at eight (closing hour), having waited a little while for them at the exit, we made our way back to the hotel where I happily plopped myself on the bed and started using my iPad till this point.
I don't feel very sleepy just yet, but I guess I really should shower and sleep. I've got to go down for breakfast at seven forty-five tomorrow morning because we need to leave the hotel at eight thirty in order to catch the train to Toledo. Bother. I don't want to wake up early but I have to, so guess I'll take a trip to dreamland now. Adios, bonitas!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Hotel Posado Del Dragon,Madrid,Spain
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