Animales.

Animales.

Animals. 

Last weekend I had a meeting with Katherine in the capital. 

Let this epic Madrid-Round-2-weekender foto-fest commence.  

After navigating the metro alone and both of us having had limited sleep, we headed to the Parque del Retiro. Where we were entrusted with a boat on a fair sized lake for 45 minutes. Katherine crashed us into the wall and I got the bigger splinter of the 2 of us, and spent a fair sized chunk of the weekend complaining about the aforementioned splinter. 

Living the vida loca.

After docking, somewhat safely, we wandered off to explore; we found 2 art exhibitions,one in honour of the 10th anniversary of the Madrid metro terrorist attacks. We also happened upon a glass palace with random rocking chairs with books attached.

Preparing for retirement.

The second stop of the day was Reina Sofía, the massive contemporary art gallery (like the Prado's rebellious and hip daughter). Picasso's Guernica was as impressive and powerful as ever. I got a paper-cut picking up a leaflet (more complaining). We followed exhibition signs down to the basement to find a high ceiling-ed red brick space, in which was a glitter sand compass of sorts on the floor and on the other side of the room a disco ball spread white spinning dots along the room. It was the disco of dreams and the closest we'll ever get to actually being high. The lights gave me motion sickness after a while. We shared a well earned set of raciones at Casa Alberto (opened in 1827 and occupies the building in which Cervantes worked on several of his books, the food is also pretty good).

Saturday was a day for animals; we visited the zoo. Last stop on the metro and it felt like we were in the countryside, visible tower-blocks aside. Spanish zoos, if our experiences are anything to go by, are very, well, Spanish. You could get very close to the animals, some people had feed and were feeding the flamingos, no barriers. There was music playing from hidden speakers in some areas. There was very little, if any, presence of keepers or authority in general. Someone was smoking near one pen and people threw crisps to the bears to eat. Crisps. We were like:

 

The highlight was the baby panda, cuddling with mum. We arrived at the right time; there was a baby Asian elephant, a baby hippo and a baby orangutan and gorilla. Although, with the number of storks nesting about the place, we should have expected it.

I got to see 2 real leopards, that moved (unlike the literally sleeping lions) and yawned!! Pard met pards!

 

We ate an overly priced ice-cream outside the over crowded aquarium, I restrained myself from buying many plush animals and we left exhausted, a little dehydrated but satisfied having learnt lots of new vocab. We stopped off at the Prado to visit our favorite pieces and I marveled at the novelty of popping into the Prado, like old hands. Been there done that, bought all the postcards. 

We returned to the hostel, glammed up a bit and headed to a vegetarian restaurant hidden away down side street. Fed, well dressed and on the metro were prepared for closure. Dear reader, you may recall a certain bar we searched for during our last stay in the city, the elusive Geographic Club (if not please refer your good self to the September 2013 "Orientación" entry). 

We were not disappointed this time.

It was amazing! We were given a bowl of sweets with our cocktails, there was a high table which was fashioned from a hot air balloon basket, they had stained glass windows, statues flanking a dark wood staircase, a bizarrely 90s/early 2000s sound track including Natasha Beddingfield and Anastasia, more than 40 varieties of cocktail... 

We shared a Killer Morgan and a Nutty Buddy, enthused about how amazing it was, congratulated ourselves on our navigating skills and blasted our past selves for their lack of direction and eyesight. 

Sunday arrived and Katherine saw me off at the bus station, then discovered it was not the bus station she had to leave from, but we both survived the trip home. In summary of this enjoyable and educational weekend, I must quote the hostel's irritating slogan it insisted on printing everywhere: