We are special people, with special needs. Like oversized bathrooms for wheelchairs.
And toilets with special support bars for the handicapped.
Apparently, we somehow got “upgraded” to the disability sweet of the hotel here in Madrid.
I don’t know too many handicapped people, but what little I do know, I can say with 100% certainty that the disabled dislike wet towels just as much as everyone else dislikes wet towels. So it is with great surprise and disbelief that the shower inside this special shower stall acts as if it has a mind of it’s own.
Like most showers in Europe it comes with a detachable shower head. I’ve never had a problem with the fixed shower head variety, but the detachable version sort of makes sense, especially for those with limited mobility as one might find in this particular bathroom. But herein lies the rub… The concept of a shower-door is in a perpetual prototype stage throughout most of Europe. It’s as if they started thinking of a way to keep water from the faucet off the bathroom floor — got about halfway there — and then stopped in mid-thought. Probably distracted by their eureka moment of a detachable shower head! What I’m trying to get at here is that all the showers only have HALF of a shower door. It’s bewildering!
Taking a shower here is like those torturous games your older sibling would make you play as a child. Make the wrong move, get pulverized. Make the right move, and get pulverized as well. Or so I’ve heard. I was usually the pulverizer, not the pulverizee. Sorry Alice! Anywho, when showering in these contraptions it’s a constant battle to see how much water you can get on yourself, without getting any on the bathroom floor. In my experience, the bathroom floor usually ends up winning. And I end up in second place with wet socks. Ugh.
To make matters worse (yes, things are about to get worse than wet socks) the towel rack in this particular bathroom is on the adjacent wall. On the towel rack are two nice and clean towels fresh from housekeeping. There is about 6 feet between the shower head and the towel racks. One would have to deliberatly take the shower head and aim it directly at the towel rack in order to get the towels wet. No sane person would ever do such a thing. But just what would an insane shower do? I’m glad you asked, as I’m about to show you in this YouTube video exactly what happened to me earlier today.
So there I was in my birthday suite, all lathered up in soapy goodness. Just enjoying my morning shower, thinking of how lucky I am to even be standing there showering in Madrid at that very moment. The shower lasts the normal 5-6 minutes and I finish off the morning ritual just as I normally do by rinsing off all the excess suds. I reach for the water valve and push it towards the off position as the water pressure responds and drops to a lite trickle of the remaining drops in the shower head. I start to motion towards the dry towels on the rack when I hear a rapid succession of clicks.
*clickclickclickclickclickclick*
I turn my head towards the sound and the shower head has gone from the 12 o’clock position at which I left it, rotating quickly to 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock, 3… it was all happening so fast, 4, 5, 6 and just as gravity had worked it’s magic and caused the shower head to spin a complete 180 degrees, somehow the water came back on all by itself and resumed it’s previous water pressure state! So now the shower head is speweing water like a fountain all over the clean/dry towels!!! What the hell man!? I was just about to use one of those to dry off!!! Now what the heck am I supposed to do!?
Sheesh! Now I have to walk around the rest of the day feeling like a cripple that dried off with a damp towel! Limping around in wet socks. This sucks!
We don’t have a whole lot of time to spend in Madrid since we spent extra time in Barcelona. So we got an early start today to try and cram in as much sightseeing as possible.
What better place to start than at the beginning — or the Zero-kilometer sign in Plaza del Sol from which all of the distances in Spain are measured.
Also in the plaza is the famous statue of the official logo of Madrid, the bear eating berries out of the tree…
We would later find out that the bears which were once so common in these parts were pretty much wiped out because they would get drunk off the berries in these Madroño trees and then pass out underneath them and get killed for their fur. Yeah, that’s who I want for MY mascot! Nice choice Madrid. I’m just sayin’.
If there is one thing about the Madrileños (or gatos as they sometimes like to be called) it’s that they LOVE their jamon (ham) and take great pride in their acorn fed animals. I wandered into a Museo de Jamon for a quick snack because it looked more like a restaurant to me than a museum. In fact a Flesh Factory might be a more appropriate title.
I guess if hanging lots of something on your walls qualifies you to call yourself a museum, then this place certainly is one.
All meat. All the time.
From one scene of a great massacre to the next…
Plaza Mayor, where many a criminal was paraded around before being executed for high-crimes and misdemeanors.
Crimes like cheating at a messed up game of oversized tic-tac-toe! That’s messed up man!
But there’s a brighter side to Madrid, the Northwest side. Where you will find picturesque squares like this one…
…and these gardens…
…surrounding The Royal Palace…
…and the Almudena Cathedral.
Funny story about the palace and cathedral. At the time of their initial construction, the then king had a huge ego, and he wanted the palace to be the the largest royal palace in Western Europe. In the above pictures you can see 3 of the 6 stories that make up the 2,800+ rooms in this mega-mansion. The other 3 stories (and ~1000 rooms) are completely unusable as they are all filled with sand! Apparently the earth that the palace was build on was so unstable, and unable to bear the weight of the massive building that they had to turn the bottom three floors into a foundation for the upper 3 floors!
Similarly the cathedral across the way underwent 3 different phases of construction and had over 5 different contractors working to rush the completion of the building in time for the pope’s visit. It looks okay from far away, but if you get close you can really see the hodgepodge of varying architectural designs.
Now here is where the day gets interesting (a.k.a. uber-dorky)! At 4pm we met up with a tour guide (Anthony) at Plaza Espana, right near some warped trees…
by the Don Quixote statue…
The thing you need to know about Anthony and the tour is… well, just see for yourself…
Yup. It’s all via Segway scooters! Now before you fall out of your seat laughing, just understand that we had limited time in the city so we had to make the most of it, and Segway’s are pretty gosh darn efficient at covering a lot of distance in little time. Anthony had a massive amount of knowledge about the city and even though we got a lot of stares from onlookers, it was well worth the experience. While other tourists were limited to walking, we could just zoom past them…
From one attraction…
…to the next…
There was really no limit to where we could go on these things. From narrow pathways through the city…
…to off-roading through the dirt, rocks, water, sand and grass within the city parks. Much of what we learned about the city we learned while standing atop two wheels and a some gyroscopes. This included the previously mentioned info about the cathedral which just so happened to be the last spot in the tour where we had a look inside…
…at the domes…
…and the textile-like ceilings.
And of course what place of worship would be complete without a massive organ…
…and some religious figures to worship.
It was getting late and our 3-hour tour was now almost 4-hours long so we hopped back on our trusty steeds outside the elaborately carved cathedral doors…
…and sped off into the sunset (at 12mph), just like Don Quixote once did!
Okay, you can stop laughing now. If you too want to have a lot of fun, see a lot of Madrid, and learn a lot about the city, head on over to MadSegs.com to book your reservations.
What is fun? I’ll tell you. Fun is waiting in line for 2 hours at the Barcelona train station trying to get tickets for the train to Madrid. Apparently there was an employee strike of some sort, and only 1 of the 8 ticket windows was open.
Here’s a high speed video of the clock at the train station. No, really… time was moving THAT fast. I kid you not.
During the course of the wait, one TV news film crew interviewed me, another tried to (but only wanted Spanish speakers) and another filmed me for some b-roll (not sure if it was used or not).
Once we finally got the tickets, I was so beyond caring about anything that I actually stooped so low as to eat at McDonalds! The first time in over 4 years I consumed something from Mickey D’s. Damn unions!
It also makes the heart skip beats, and singes your nose hairs, and makes your eyes water, and looks like cloudy urine, and tastes like black licorice.
But hey, when in Rome (or Spain as the case may be), do as the Spaniards and just do stuff you can’t legally do in the US.
…with its ceiling stained caramel from centuries of cigarette smoke, and the feeble light that shimmers from its ridiculously ornate electric chandeliers, this nearly 200-year-old bar— reputedly the oldest in Barcelona — feels more late-night than most.
And I tell ya, I don’t think they have painted the place once since then. It’s quite an antique.
About 60km northwest of Barcelona lies a small village called Monistrol de Montserrat. Perched high up in the mountains (and I do mean high up) is Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine abbey.
It offers some spectacular views once you get up there. Just how you get up there is up to you. You could take one of the tour buses (lame) or you could take a cable car (sweet). Since we are awesome, we took a cable car.
Here’s a view on the way up of the village below.
Still ascending…
Once you’ve completed the ascent, 4055 feet up, you can walk even further up some stairs to the main plaza where you will find “La Moreneta” (the black virgin), which is Catalonia’s favorite saint. Rumor has it, it’s also the location of the Holy Grail as well! The queue to see the virgin was way too long so we roamed the grounds instead in an attempt to find the Holy Grail.
We didn’t see it anywhere down there…
So we rearranged some of the stones in this statue to get a better view…
Our efforts proved to be fruitless, so we just went to the cafeteria and ordered some fruit instead, and ate it while dangling on the edge of the world…
That’s when we got the idea that we just weren’t high enough yet, and needed more elevation (elevation: not to be confused with cow bells). It just so happens I am a funicular fanatic, and just my luck they had not one, but TWO funiculars. Funicular de Sant Joan climbs up the side of the mountain at a maximum steepness of 65%!! These nuns really know how to put the fun in FUNicular!
How’s this for a stunning view!?
Still not satisfied, we made the adventuorus decision to hike up EVEN FURTHER where there are various abandoned hovels in the cliff faces that were previously the abodes of reclusive monks.
And abandoned shrines high atop the cliffs.
REALLY high up.
Incidentally “Montserrat” literally means “jagged (serrated) mountain” in Catalan, and here you can see where it gets it’s name.
Despite our best efforts to find the Holy Grail, we had to call it a day as the last funicular of the day was leaving, and even though there were plenty of caves in the side of the mountain to provide shelter, we forgot our flint at home. So it was back down, down, down…
