The morning Teresa and Jessica came in (MJ had come the night before), we did a whole lot. We picked them up from the airport and brought them back to the apartment, and basically instantly headed out. Madrid is a big city to try to fit into two days, which is what we had. But we were also basically winging it, and trying to remember to spend within our budget. The first thing we did we go to el Parque de Retiro, which is good since I had not even been there yet! You know how when you live in a city and say, "oh, I've got plenty of time to do all the touristy stuff" so you never really do it? That's what happened here. I definitely want to go back in the spring, because this park is beautiful and I can only imagine how much more so it will be with new green life. Anyway, once we got there we rented a rowboat and went out on the little lake and rowed around, which was a helluva lot harder than it appears, but really fun. 
We kept running into other boats and some little teenagers tried to race us. After we were tired of that we walked throught the park a little more and stumbled upon El Palacio Cristal, the Crystal Palace, which is a little glass building in the middle of the woods, basically unmarked but definitely a must see!
It was precious! After that we made our way to El Prado, another thing I had yet to tick off of my to do list. It's a really famous museum, lots of Spanish painters. It was a great musuem but I prefer landscapes so much more than portraits, so after a while I was kinda done. There were some really fun weird things to notice, like the "bearded woman" painting, which really just looked like a man with a boob coming out of his dress, and the boob wasn't even in the right place. By the time we finished with the museum, I was exhausted, so I can only imagine how tired the others were. We went back to the apartment and napped for a while.
Thankfully, in Madrid, if you nap until 9pm, you're not too late to go to dinner at a decent place, since most people in Spain eat that late all the time. We slowly forced ourselves awake and went down to Malasaña, first trying to get to La Musa, which was too packed, and then going for Ojalá. That, too, was busy, but we put our name in and went to another place to get some drinks and tapas while we waited. That's also cool to do, here. It actually ended up being really great, foodwise, with delicious nachos and tacos, and an actual clock on the wall (seriously, that does not happen often in Spain).
Ojalá was also fantastic! I got this sesame chicken that was delish, and they were playing Hercules on on the back wall, and there's a sand pit area in the basement where people were chilling on cushions and drinking. Weird, but cool.
Day 1 down, we slept hard in preperation for Day 2. The problem was that it was Sunday, so we had to be careful about where to go, in case something was closed. We woke up in time to get to El Rastro, the big Spanish market in La Latina before all the giant crowds arrived, and walked through about half of it before stopping for a big Spanish breakfast and introducing Teresa and Jessica to tortilla, as well as crocquettes, zuma de naranja, and cafe con leche. Yum! After we finished with the market, we walked up to el Mercado de San Miguel, an old food market that evenually got a building made for it so it could become a permanent fixture of the city, then we headed over to La Plaza Mayor. Normally this is pretty crowded, but it still had the market and rides set up for Christmas Fiestas, so it was completely packed that day! We went to La Puerta del Sol next, to see the 0 Kilometer mark of all the Spanish highways, and the main symbol of Madrid, the bear eating from the Madroño Tree. It's an iconic statue, and Teresa and Jessica had fun posing with that one. From there we walked over to the Palacio Real, stopping first at a sweets stand and paying too much money for some delicious goodies from some very convincing guys... We had planned on going through the palace, but not on the really long line, so we ended up skipping that and going into the cathedral instead, and then seeing the ruins of the original wall around the city from the 800s, when it was an Islamic fortress town. But after all that walking, we needed to rest, and we were planning on a big night out anyway, so we went back to nap again.
Now, you may think, how big a night can you really have on a Sunday, but this is a ridiculous question when you ask it about Madrid, the city that never sleeps. We did not head out for the night until about midnight, and the first thing that happened was one of the club-guys came up and told about a place to go where we could get in for free. This scared Teresa and Jessica, who were not prepared for strange men to approach and try to get them to go somewhere, but it's pretty normal, especially with groups of girls. The guys give you slips of paper for discounts and take you to the club, and it's pretty sketchy, but hey! We ended up at some club for free and with a free drink coupon, and stayed for a while to dance and drink. I had never heard a club mix of Hotel California by the Eagles before that night... not sure I ever want to again. Clubbing is not really my thing, but it is a very important Madrid experience! Once we were bored of this club, we went and this time got sidewalled by a girl who got us to go to a hookah bar for a little while. We probably embarassed ourselves here, because while there was dancing music, no one was dancing except us, which meant everyone was watching us. One very strange thing about Spain is that, a lot of Spanish people, even those of my generation, are appaled at how Americans dance (specifically, grinding). I just find it interesting since the Spanish culture is so physical in so many other ways, but anyway, what it meant was that at this point in the night, very few guys had tried dancing with us. But then again, it was still early. Now was the time to head to the main event of the night, Joy Eslava. I had never been here before and I will never go again, not because of anything horrible that happened, I just did not enjoy it. Some European clubs have a tendency to play music that is just the same beat over and over for two hours and call that sufficient, which I hate. Oh, but before we made it to the club, MJ discovered that she had been pickpocketed, and was missing her wallet. We went back to the first club with no luck, and we could not even find where the hookah bar was anymore (it had no marked door) so there was not really anything else we could do but keep going. The Joy Eslava club was really crazy. It's actually a theatre in regular hours, and there were several dancers the club had dancing on the stage that were in, let's say, fewer clothes than I would step outside in. I was really impressed by their dancing though, because even the guys were in really high heels and they were fantastic dancers.
As if it wasn't enough that MJ's wallet was stolen; when we were eating pizza outside at 5:30 in the morning waiting for the metro to open to go home, someone stole Jessica's phone out of her purse. So definitely not the most fun we could have had, but also pretty typical of Madrid! I think it's 4th for pickpocketers in Europe? Whatever. We went home and slept for a couple hours, but we had a bus ride to Barcelona at 11, so no rest for the wicked!
(Disclaimer, I did not bring my camera to Barce, so not a lot of photos were taken).
This was not exactly a fun bus ride, 8 hours long and hungover, or still drunk, but it got us there. We basically just got dinner and fell into bed that night. The next morning we went on the free walking tour that was provided by the hostel and an affiliate company, and we got to see and hear about lots of Barcelona landmarks. We saw the Castle where Cristofer Columbo greeted Ferdinand and Isabel upon his return voyage. The Cathedral of Barcelona which took ~600 years to complete because they ran out of money and so it changes from old simple gothic to new super-decorative complicated gothic style for the facade. 
We learned about the Barcino sculpture, modern art that spells out BARCINO and points to the building that marks where the original entrance to the old city was hundreds of year ago, which still has a Saint Christopher statue to pray to upon entrance and exit from the city. Also, the only free Picasso art, which was transposed from a napkin he drew on when thinking about Barcelona and is now on a big wall in the city. We saw the Cathedral of the Lady of the Sea, a church built and funded entirely by the working class and which took only 54 years to complete. It has a stained glass window with the futbol team Barcelona on it, which sounds funny until you hear why. When Franco was dictator, he tried to stamp all catalan out of the people, making it illegal, and the only place the catalan people could speak their language was in their homes or at the futbol matches, simply because you can't physically arrest hundreds of people at once.
We also saw a bit of the Jewish district which is basically non-existent now. They were confined to their district for centuries and because of this, and their more hygenic habits, when the plague hit Barcelona, Christians died much faster than the Jewish people. Which of course meant that surely the evil Jews were cursing the Christians or poisoning their wells, so they were basically killed off or forced to flee the city. I love medieval logic. Now, though, there is a mountain named in their honor (although in English is translates to Jew Mountain which does not sound very nice to me...)
We learned about the Christopher Columbus statue which stands where another building could have stood if the city had approved it. The architect showed the city the plans for this building and they did not like it, so instead he took it to Paris. Yeah. Barcelona could have been the home of the Eiffel Tower. Oops. Basically, instead of satifsying my appetite for Barcelona, all that this walking tour did was make me want to go back and explore every inch of the city. I dunno, maybe it's just because I live in Madrid and I'm used to it now, but it just doesn't have the magic that Barcelona has. After that tour, we went to this park that has a really great view of the city but I can't remember the name.
What I do remember is the graffiti that said "Refugees Welcome, Tourists Go Home, Patriots F**k Off." In case you don't know, Barcelona is in Catalan, a region of Spain that speaks Catalan (way more than I realized they would, and I also thought it was just a dialect of Spanish when it is really very very different) and that wants to be indepedent from Spain. They are rather adament about it.
Then we went down to try to see the Sagrada Familia, 
which ended up not working since the line was too long and we would have only gotten about half an hour inside. They are in the process of cleaning it and boy it there a difference! So we went back to the hostel to get ready for the New Years Eve bar crawl we were going on. Oh man. We were all prepared to go til dawn again like we had in Madrid, but the night had other ideas. We started off at this bar and the first thing they gave us were tequila shots. You know the night is not going to end well when you start off with tequila shots. We met a couple of Australian girls who were 19 and a couple of French guys who were less charming than they thought they were. One said, "I need you." To all of us, and we were like "Um? For what?" "At midnight, I will tell you." Yikes haha.
By the time we left that bar I was drunk, though I had ordered some tortilla to fill my stomach just in case, and as we left my dear friends introduced me to Hichem, this French guy who could barely speak Engoish. Teresa basically threw him at me and said "She speaks French!" and he did not leave my side the rest of the night. At the second bar, we got some drinks that had some kind of hidden super alcohol in them, because they were really strong but you couldn't taste it. I did not have any of these as I was already quite sufficiently wasted, but this is what the girls tell me. We all collected our cups of twelve graps to eat at midnight (not black eye peas, grapes), and headed over to Plaça Catalunya for midnight. It wasn't exactly Times Square, but it was fun, and we ate our grapes (seeds and all, because you can't take the time to spit in between bites when you only have twelve seconds) and I got a French kiss tutorial from Hichem with a mouthful of grapes, and then we headed to the next bar. This bar crawl was supposed to last until 7am with a free breakfast at the end. But here's where the night started to go wrong. Jessica had drunk those super-drinks and was at the point where she could not stand without needing to heave, so we needed to take her home. But while I was outside with her, apparently the rest of the +85 people went on to the club. This is what I was told, and when I looked inside the bar I saw no Teresa or MJ, so I assumed it was true. And MJ had gone with them, but Teresa had apparently been in the bathroom. I had all of the money, tickets, and hotel keys in my purse, because we did not want to risk getting robbed again like we had in Madrid, and mine was the safest purse. So after I took Jessica home, I had to go to the club and find MJ and Teresa to give them everything. Except by the time I got there, MJ had already gotten a cab home (with a kind strangers money) because she had realized we weren't there anymore. So I went back to the hostel and made sure she was okay before going back out for Teresa. I think this was around 2:30. Of course, what I did not know is that Teresa made it home just after I left to go find her, but when I did not find her at the bar, I came back, and finally we all were home and safe and went to sleep.
Let's just say, the next day was pretty lazy. We woke up for breakfast, and went back to sleep. We woke up for lunch, and went back to sleep. We woke up for dinner, got paella 
and went to the beach, and, you guessed it, went back to sleep. So now, I am on my way back to Madrid, having seen Teresa, MJ, and Jessica off to León, and hoping that this next week will be the exact opposite of the insanity that was this last week. Fingers crossed!
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