Days 5-6: Christmas in Madrid

Christmas in Madrid means a lot of things close for two days, including museums, restaurants and stores. As such, the guests at Way Hostel had to get supplies to cook for themselves for two days. A group of us went to buy groceries at a European grocery store, and silly hats at the Christmas market. European grocery stores are like nicer versions of Aldi with a few more name brand items. There's fewer brands of stuff than in American stores, but the quality is higher, and it's cheap. For €60, we got enough food for 2 dinners for 4 people, plus alcohol. We made chicken, stuffing, and sautéed veggies, and then had a big Christmas party at the hostel until well after midnight.

This morning, we woke up and wandered through Retiro Park. This is sort of like Madrid's version of Forest Park, only smaller. Retiro Park has a statue of Lucifer in a fountain, but it's not the Dante style horns and pitchfork devil. There's also a Crystal Palace (a big, old glass greenhouse common in many European cities), and another old building that are used to house free art exhibitions from the Reina Sofia. They were both closed today, but we enjoyed looking at the exterior of the buildings. We went on past the rowboat pond, and bought a canvas painting of a bull from a street artist. Then we took a subway across town to Templo de Debod.

The Templo de Debod is an ancient Egyptian temple in the middle of Madrid. Egypt gave it to Spain when Spain helped them cut the massive temple at Abu Simbel out of the rock and move it out of harm's way when the Aswan dam was built on the Nile. It was in a spot that is now flooded, so the Egyptian government allowed Spain to disassemble it and rebuild it here. The park where it sits is on high ground, and has great views of the royal palace and cathedral.

After that we went back to the hostel and did laundry.