Immaculate Conception in Madrid and Avila

So the public holiday on Friday was the day of the 'Immaculate Conception'. The Wednesday was constitution day. They have this cool thing in spain called a ´Bridge´, where if a public holiday falls a day short of a weekend, then the day in between is also classified as a public holiday, so this means the country´s been on holiday since wednesday. Nice!

The four Aussie girls from my hostel turned out to be physio students from Syd Uni, Mel, Liz, Holly & Jacqui. We went out in search of a salsa club at around 11pm. You wouldn´t think it, but it was suprisingly difficult. As far as i can tell, there´s only one in the ´clubbing´ area near where our hostel was. But once we found it, it was pretty cool! There was an instructor dude, but it took us a while to figure out who he was, it wasn´t like a ´class´or anything. He just went around giving people hints, and demonstrating what to do and what not to do. It just kinda looked like a normal dance club, but with everyone doing the same dance. After a few dances, i begun to realise just how crap at Salsa i really am. Sure, it looks cool, (and Mel was pretty fantastic at it) But my partners may as well have been dancing with a broomstick. I just had absolutley No idea what i was doing! And spanish drinks are crazy! I asked for a ´rum and coke´, and i got literally half a glass of run, and a puny little 300ml coke. It was so strong, it took me near half an hour to drink it. And it cost 7euros too! Luckily the next place we went to gave us free drinks just for going in.

Yesterday, the girls had planned to go to Avila, and since i didn´t have any real plans, i went with them. It sounded like a fun day trip. At this pòint i had no idea where Avila was, and what there was to do there, but i figured it was better than hanging out in Madrid all day on my own. The guy at our hostel had said to catch a train there from Atocha Train station, so we hopped on the Metro towards Atocha. On the Metro we heard two guys speaking english, and started chatting to them. They were American college students (Steve & Andrew) and had been living in Madrid for the last 3 months on a ´Semester abroad´program. And they were going to Avila too! We figured they knew more about travelling in Madrid then we did, so we decided to just follow them.

At Atocha, we lined up to get tickets for the train to Avila. Half an hour later when we got to the ticket window, we found out we´d been lining up for the wrong train line. There´s three train systems in Madrid. The Metro, which is the underground subway system in the City, the Renfe, which is the National railway system which connects main cities and this third system (of which name i do not rememer) this system has fewer stops and is mainly for transporting commuters to the city centre. All in all, it kicks cityrail´s arse! We needed the Renfe, but had been lining up at the other train ticket booth. So then we went to the Renfe part of the station. And it was pretty cool! There was this huge indoor garden/green house thing filled with huge ferns and all sorts of other plans. We lined up at the Renfe ticket booth and the line was stupidly long, but it let us chat and get to know each other. Steve & Andrew´s three other friends arrived, Dana, Morgan and Mary-Catherine. All 5 of them are in the ´semester abroad´' program at NYU, although most of them are actually from different parts of the states. IF i remember correctly, Dana is from washington state, Morgan is from Virginia, and Steve is from New Jersey. The Americans learned that Australia has Summer now, one of them asked if we had xmas in july? No, we have xmas at xmas time, its just summer! *Rolls eyes at stupid american comment*

Half an hour later, we get 10 return tickets to Avila. I kinda felt like we were this huge tourist group! We had an hour to kill before our train arrived, so we sat in the garden to wait for our train. What i had previously thought was just grass turned out to be a pond filled with water lilies. And little turtles!! They were so cute, trying to climb up onto the rocks to sunbake. Me & Holly sat there 'oooh'ing and 'aaah'ing at them for a good 40mins. Then someone actually read their ticket and realised we were at the wrong station. The train for Avila left from Chamartin, not Atocha, and we weren´t going to get there in time (Chamartin´s on the other side of the city). The next train wasn´t until 1:30. Doh!! Someone decided it would be better to catch a bus instead which left at 1pm, and we all went to return our tickets. Only half of us got them returned, so half of us went to CHamartin to catch the next train, and the other half went somewhere else to catch a bus (i was one of the bus people). We got to the bus stop, and realised Morgan had read the bus time table wrong and there wasn´t a bus until 2... So then, we went to Chamartin to catch the train with the others instead. So after much to-ing and fro-ing, and running around almost all of madrid, we finally got on the train to Avila at 1:30. I figure if we hadn´t listened to the americans we´d be there by now! But it was fun meeting new people, and it wasn´t like i´d had other plans.

The train ride was very ´nice´. A word that the Americans seemed to use to describe everything! Especially steve, he seemed to say it almost every second sentence. There was pretty scenery, and even a castle on the way! Everything looked so green to me & Liz, although steve and Morgan said that this part of Spain was actually quite dry.
We taught them a few aussie phrases like ´Whinger´, ´Wanker´, ´Rock up´ and ´Maccas´, in turn they taught us that the word ´nice´can be used for absolutley everything!

Avila was really pretty. There´s this old city surrounded by a city wall that´s supposed to be one of the best preserved in the world. Consulting my Lonley Planet, it says that its been around since the 11th, 12th century. There was also a cathedral built into the wall, but by the time we went in there, it was too dark to really take any decent photos. The building felt really cold, ominous and opressive. The ceiling was really tall, and it seemed to be all built of grey stone, with some intricate carvings round the whole wall and ceiling. Perhaps it was because it was so dark, but the place was just so big and gloomy! Even the colourful stained glass windows looked depressing. It seemed to be built to make people scared of their god. I´d hate to go there on a sunday morning!

There was also a comic book festival on in Avila, and as a result there were all of these big plastic statues of comic book characters scattered around the old town. It´s a really wierd sight to see a tacky polystyrene spider man climbing a 11th century city wall!

On the way back to the station from the Wall it started to snow. Jacqui and Holly were really excited and they started taking photos of the snow. Unfortunatley it wasn´t really that cold, and it all just melted to water once it hit the ground, but it was still cool!

The train home was really full. Even though the tickets are meant to be reserved seats, alot of people got on who obviously had no seats and just sat wherever they wanted. One of them was in Liz´s seat, and when she told him it was her seat, he said to her ´there are too many people on the train, and some people have to stand, and there are old people standing´, implying that she should give up her seat to him cause he was old. She didn´t. Go girl! Stupid old man, if he wanted a seat he should´ve bought one! (It´s a hour and a half train ride!) Jacqui wasn´t so lucky, and the guy in her seat wouldn´t move for her so she ended up standing up most of the way. I was so tired, i just slept the whole way.