Madrid and the homeless shelter

When we arrived at the Madrid central train station, we had to then take a suburban railway train and a bus in order to reach the industrial park where our hostel was located. Yup, an industrial park. And not one of those nice parks with lots of green grass and landscaping. Then, when we walked inside to the lobby and the entirely glassed in reception desk, we thought we had the wrong building and had found a homeless shelter instead. There were old, crazy-looking people in wheelchairs, people walking around dazedly like they were on something and loads of unhealthy looking kids running around screaming.

Our room and the floor on which it was located were much quieter and more normal. So we decided to stay there. On our first full day in Madrid, Amir and I slept in late and then headed into town where I spent a few hours ogling the portraits in the Prado Museum and Amir went to exercise in the nearby park. Afterwards, we met up in the park for a picnic lunch and then headed back to the hostel for a relaxing evening.

The next day, we took a 2 hour local train to Segovia where we spent the day. Segovia is home to a picturesque castle still furnished with Isabella and Ferdinand era thrones, four poster beds and armory. We also stopped inside a gorgeous cathedral built by Charles V when he was feeling particularly guilty about some pillaging or other. For lunch, we had a lunch special with the local specialty dish, roast suckling pig. It was accompanied by a lovely white bean soup and a rice pudding for dessert with some kind of fruit wine with the meal. Not bad.

And that's all we did in Madrid.