Madrid has been the capital of Spain since 1561, and it is the largest city in Spain. There are a ton of people everywhere in Madrid. I liked Madrid. I have learned a lot about it all throughout school in Spanish class so it was interesting for me to walk around and see it.
This is the bull fighting ring. There are bull fights every Sunday night. My last night in Madrid was on a Saturday :( which was sad because I didn't get to go to the bull fight... even though I wouldn't have wanted to see the bull die anyways... but it would have been an interesting atmosphere. Apparently after May 15th there is a 25 day long bull fighting fesitval and there is a bull fight every night. This arena was large, but the biggest bull fighting ring is in Mexico City. In Spain about 60% of the people are actually against bull fights, because of cruelty to animals. Tickets to a bull fight can vary greatly. If you get a ticket in the sun it costs about 4 Euros, and a ticket in the shade costs about 138 Euros. At first glance you'd probably think that the people sitting in the shade are idiots for paying the extra money... but Madrid can reach 123 degrees in the summer time!! Talk about getting a tan in the sun section! 
Here is a close up of the title of the arena.
Here I am in the front!
I was wearing my bright orange College of Buiness Adminsitration shirt that says "I am the CBA" I had sooo many comments on this shirt during the day. Everyone was like "Oh wow we aren't going to lose you today" or "What does that stand for? Because in Australia the CBA is our main bank" So I was called the bank all day haha.
Here are the mother and daugther on the trip that are from Indonesia. The daughter is my photographer and she has taken almost all of my favorite pictures from my trip. She and her mom must have taken over 5,000 pictures during this trip... because they constantly take pictures, and I'm not exaggerating either... it's their thing. They just snap pictures of each other back and forth all day. I usually take pictures of both of them for them, and then they take pictures of me so it works out haha.
Madrid has THOUSANDS of trees!! 340,000 trees to be exact! It is the runner up for the city with the most trees in the world. Toyoko Japan coming in at 400,000 trees is the only other city that has more trees than Madrid. They say that they have so many trees because it gives them shade in the summer and it helps with pollution. It also messes up a lot of good photo ops!! But I guess that isn't the tree hugger in me speaking. I'm sure if I came to Madrid in the summer I'd be loving the trees surrounding me giving off shade.
Is this the Royal Palace in Madrid?? Nope! It's La Posta also known as the Post Office!! I guess they take their mail seriously in Spain...
Is this the Royal Palace?? YEP! It sure is... This isn't the best view of it... it's only part of the building. It's so huge that I couldn't fit it all into one picture!! I'm not sure if you can tell but it is decorated with what looks like pots of flowers on the top.
Originally the palace was supposed to be adorned with all kinds of statues, but the Queen at the time had a dream that the weight from the statues caused the palace to collaspe and that she got trapped inside the caved in palace so she didn't want the statues to go on top of the palace as originally planned. So when you walk throughout Madrid's gardens you will see statues lined up all the way along it, because that became their new resting place once they were banished from the palace. Oh and the Queen that banished them from the palace? You've probably heard of her. Queen Isabella the wife of King Ferdinand... who just so happened to be the same king and queen that financed Columbus's trip in which he discovered America.
This is a statue of the most famous Spanish person ever... that isn't even a real person. Don Quijote prounced Don Key Ho Tee. Don Quijote was a famous character in a book. The name Don Quijote means Mister (Don) Warrior (Quijote) and it actually was only the nickname of the character in the book. The character actually had a proper Spanish name, but everyone knows him as Don Quijote.
The story of Don Quijote is the most translated book besides the bible in history. At the top of the statue you can see 5 gives reading the book. In this picture you can only see four of them, because the 5th is on the other side of the statue. But each girl represents each continent the book has been translated and read on. I love how there are numerous books that like to compare themselves as the most *fill in the blank* book besides the bible. It seems like I've heard the phrase "besides the bible this book is the most ______" quite a few times.
And here is a close up on Don Quijote, and his horse and side kick. If you look at the horse apparently it is done fantastically because the horse in the book was a very old tired horse, and when you look at the horse in this statue you can tell that it does indeed look old and tired.
Here is just a sample of the packed streets of Madrid. This was just down one road, but as you call see the place is wall to wall with people everywhere!! You really have to hold onto your purse carefully because people are always bumping into you on the street.
These were some awesome panhandlers by the palace.
They had Beatles music playing and they were moving the puppets to the music as if they were playing the songs!!
Now if this building doesn't look familar to you... you might want to check your passport because you might not be American. If your passport checks out okay... watch more TV. When the architect of the Twin Towers made them he actually made another building that was identical to them in Madrid as well. And there she stands... only 47 stories high, but a replica of the twin towers that fell in New York. When I heard the story about them I thought it was fasinating, and you won't believe the lengths I went to get a tree free picture of the building for this post!
While we were in Madrid there was a major soccer game going on. My friends that I've made are HUGE soccer fans... it's a big deal in Australia, and actually around most of the rest of the world... I guess the USA hasn't really caught on to it yet. But Madrid was playing Barcelona which is a huge rivarly game, and the whole city was buzzing the whole day in anticipation for the game. It gets dark really late in Spain... like 9:30 pm so the game didn't start until 10 pm!!! And it was COMPLETELY sold out. My friend Bobby and his dad got lucky and ended up getting two tickets in seperate sections from each other, and got to go to the game. His mom, Vanessa, Nyree, and I went to the stadium a few minutes before kick off just to catch the atmosphere. People were EVERYWHERE! It was completely insane, but extremely exciting... You don't have to know anything about a sport to get excited about it when everyone else around you is pumped and cheering.
The city was completely trashed. This is only a fraction of the stuff that was on the ground it was ridiculously messy!! And yes that is a squad car driving by... There were tons of them. Police were around on horses, and there was a riot control squad there... it was full on security. There were about 4 horse police guarding the people picking up their tickets at the box office so that they didn't get mugged or robbed!! People were desperate for tickets and I think I heard that a scalper was selling two tickets for 1000 Euro at one point!!! It was such a long journey to get to this stadium in time... we took a bus, and rode it to the last stop and still had to walk 40 minutes to get there. On the way back the three of us were really dragging, and our bus stop was next to the Madrid Hard Rock Cafe... and I don't believe that I've EVER been so happy to see a Hard Rock in my life!!! Haha!! But it was an exciting fun night in Madrid. :) Very cool city it would have been exciting to get to attend a bull fight just to see what it was like too... but oh well! Tomorrow I have to get up at 6 in the morning, and I'm making my way out to Paris!! Woohoo!! It should be awesome. I'm kind of sad though because it's my last days of the tour :(
