Worth every minute.

To get to Madrid this past weekend we took the most economic (i.e. longest) mode of transportation: a six hour bus ride each way, but it was worth every minute.  My two friends and I arrived in the capital city around 5 o'clock in the evening, once we settled into our hostal we went out to explore.


We went to Plaza Mayor for some sangria and to unwind from the long bus ride. Our timing was perfect because we got to catch a beautiful sunset.











Our Saturday started bright and early with a trip to Starbucks for breakfast (!!!) and then a tour inside the Palacio Royal.  This is the only thing I didn't get to do on my last trip here and it was very cool to see. 









After the palace we walked around and stumbled upon/into the parade for the Chinese New Year.  There were eight or ten different groups walking, some were doing karate (or however you call the version from China) and some were carrying the dragon you'd expect to see in a Chinese New Year parade.

The whole weekend was really low-key and relaxing.  We spent most of the time just walking around, but just being in a new city was a great change of scenery.  I think it had a lot to do with the fact that the city (and all of Spain for that matter) is still in the winter lull, so things are barely busy and the weather is comfortable, only slightly leaning towards being too cold.

My favorite two parts of the trip were left to last: I got to go back to el Museo del Prado and then we wondered around el Parque del Buen Retiro for hours on Sunday morning while waiting for our bus back home to Málaga.