The complete day was spent (somewhat obviously by this point) wandering around the city. My hostel was a little away, so I got a nice walk over the river and through a couple of parks on the way.
Looking towards the city centre, somewhere on the right.
First (and only, really) stop in the centre was the Guggenheim Museum. I had no idea what was inside the thing, but had heard that the building was super cool and that it was worth a visit.
The building was indeed super cool.
Flower puppy!
Sadly the inside was one of those places where you couldn't take photos, though there were a few assigned spots where you could, and these stainless steel tulips outside didn't have guards around them so the whole world was shooting them. At the moment the majority of the art in the museum is sculptures by a guy called Jeff Koons. Most of the sculptures are stainless steel versions of light things, polished to a mirror finish. The effect was really awesome, especially for the balloon animals.
Koons made a normal-sized balloon dog, which was then laser scanned and magnified times many and somehow made from stainless steel. If you look closely you can see the tiny twists at the joints, though not so much in the photo...
After the museum I walked along the river to the old city, though I didn't see too much interesting stuff besides the river itself. The old city itself was nice, but I had no money on me so couldn't really do anything.
Cool pedestrian bridge.
The Bilbao cathedral, in the old town.
The next day I caught the bus to Madrid, which I was quite looking forward to. I'd found a camping place, but it was a ways away from the city centre so it was a bit of a mission to get there. It also cost almost twice as much as I thought it was gonna be, when I got there.
In the morning I went into the city to see what there was (though I beelined to the Royal Palace, coz it looked cool). Couple of trains and tapas for brunch later, and I arrived. Old shit in Europe be so fancy.
The front of the Madrid cathedral, across a huge frying pan of stupid hot concrete from the palace.
There was a shitton of people waiting to go into the palace, but it was reasonably big so not really that crowded in the end. I think I've read too many descriptions of ultra-rich palaces and such in books, so I fucking love seeing it in real life.
The outside of the palace with its gilded lampposts.
The palace itself is still used for state occasions by the royal family, so sometimes it's closed, and the area that tourists can go through is reasonably limited. It includes a decent amount of the rooms though.
Some kind of entrance hall.
After this point you go into the rooms proper, where they're all "no photos." Most of the way through I realised I'd been walking around with a perfectly good camera around my neck that would work without bring it up to my eyes, so I turned it on and took a few. Couldn't really adjust the settings so most of them are too blurry to bother looking at, but some of them came out aight. Suffice to say the entire palace was like this.
The dining room, with places for 145. Originally 3 rooms, the walls were knocked down to make space for the massive table. You can just see on either side 5 seats back 2 of the seats are back from the table, and they're slightly bigger. That's where the king and queen sit, and when they actually dine there I think they move the table so it's centred in the room and they're sitting directly in the middle of everything. Or so the tour guide next to me said to his group.
The royal chapel, or half of it.
I can't remember exactly what this room was, but I assume it was some kind of study. It included the abdication speech of the previous king as well as the ascension speech of the current king. Also, obviously, the crown, with the sceptre just next to it.
Almost every room was decorated like this one, with a ridiculous chandelier and usually murals on the ceilings with all kinds of gold shit everywhere. One of my favourites was the room that was entirely decorated with porcelain (except the fancy rug on the floor, but all the rugs were rolled back so all us filthy peasants couldn't walk on them).
Again, not entirely sure what this room is for these days, although apparently a succession of monarchs some hundreds of years ago used it to hold court. Probably among the nicest of the rooms in the tour.
After I left I realised I should've played with my camera a bit and walked through all the rooms again to get better pictures, but it's no biggie really. In any case it was pretty awesome, and if you have a spare couple hours in Madrid it's probably worth going. Chances are if you're in Madrid as a tourist you'll go anyway, but unless you're super strapped for cash, go (and it's free for a couple hours a day but I shudder to think of the amount of people).
From the palace I walked through the city to visit the Parque del Retiro (Retreat Park? Park of the Retreat? Big fucking park in the middle of the city?), going through the heart of the city.
La Puerta de Alcalá, slightly older and smaller than the Arc de Triomphe
Huge phony lake in the park, complete with dinghies for hire.
One of the many boulevards through the park.
Statue of Lucifer being thrown out by his supposedly all-forgiving sun god.
The crystal palace. They had a nice little quiet space set up with cushions and sofas around the place inside, though I dunno how you could spend more than 5 minutes in a glasshouse in the ridiculous heat.
I like these trees.
The following day I went to La Pedriza, a national park some 40 minutes outside Madrid, that was recommended to me. Naturally I left the memory card for my camera in my computer in the hostel, the the photos I took on my phone seem to've deleted themselves instead of copying over...
In any case the place was really cool. The town wasn't much to look at, but the national park basically consists of a huge mountain of big rocks all piled on top of each other, with what must be hundreds of places to go rock climbing. Everyone else that was there was just swimming in the river that ran alongside the mountains, but I was there to walk, so I spent a couple of hours scrambling/climbing up the side until I was at a good spot, where I sat and read for a couple of hours more, until I decided I probably didn't have enough water to wait around any more. Another couple of hours of scrambling/climbing down (there were trails, but I lost it pretty quickly on the way up and didn't even look for one on the way down), and I made it back to town. All in all a good day, though hellish in the heat. Damn Iberian sun.
And then the next day it was on to the bus to Lisbon, to visit João, the awesome Portugalman I met in Chile.
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