Champagna? It's from Spagna!

A man named Parker Fernandez was one of my college roommates during my senior year at Ohio University. We then lived in different areas for a few years, but he would occasionally show up in Chicago and we'd have a hell of a time wandering the city. Not long after I came to Italy, Parker moved to Madrid to teach English through a much-more-official-than-mine program. In mid-November, Jenna and I visited him. This is our story.

We had a 6:40 a.m. flight from an airport almost an hour outside of Milan, so we got up at 3, waited outside for an overnight bus to take us nearish the train station, then walked 2/3 of a mile to the train station, got on a shuttle bus, and arrived at the airport around 5:30. That's not a fun start. I stayed optimistic and upbeat, my bride to be was...less enthused. We were both also getting sick.

Madrid is big. Like, really big. Just the airport took ages to get through, and eventually we got the train to the appointed meeting location for Parker and we wandered a small market to see what was in store, but it was just, you know, market stuff.

But once we got to Parker's and put our stuff down, it was off and moving. Would you have ever guessed that Madrid had a huge Egyptian monument (a gift from Egypt) and reflecting pool at the top of a lookout point over what used to be the Royal Hunting Grounds? No, you wouldn't have, unless you've been. We wandered down through a rose garden - slightly out of season - and made our way over to the Royal Palace where a crew of young girls probably tried to steal my money, but it didn't work. The Royal Palace though? Ain't bad.

Parker obviously knew the lay of the land, so we pretty much followed along and looked at everything on the way. We stopped at the main plaza, Porta del Sol, and took a photo or two of the Tio Pepe sign (it's famous?). We saw regal buildings that we didn't really have much explanation for (and took pictures). Then we went to the Retiro Park. It was huge. It was beautiful. It was wonderful.

There's an artificial lake in the middle with rentable boats and a huge monument. There are fish to feed in the lake. There are people posing for horribly stupid pictures by themselves. There are people making fun of those people who horribly pose for their pictures by also posing horribly for pictures.

We walked around nearer dusk as well, but after 13 or so miles, the colds we were both coming down with, and the 2-3 hours of sleep the previous night, we'd had about all we could take and turned in by 9:30. Ooops.

The next day we basically set out to see everything we didn't see on the first day, which included art. The Reina Sofia is the modern art gallery in Madrid, popularly known as the location of Picasso's "Guernica." It's huge. It didn't leave the impression on me that it did on Parker, and while I do wish I would've felt more upon seeing it, it was fun to see him take so strongly to it.

The art I really dug that day? Graffiti. There's an old former-warehouse (or maybe former slaughterhouse?) he took us to where the entire bottom floor is just a workspace for street-artists. There was some seriously incredible stuff down there. The below was one of my favorites, but the photo doesn't show that it was approximately 10 feet tall and notably wider than that. 

Pressing on, we ultimately made it to the river which rounds out the western half of the city and has the best looking river-front area of nearly any city in Europe. It's a giant network of beautiful parks, gardens, playgrounds, workout equipment, and, of course, GIANT swings hanging from bridges above.

This was the ultimate "this is not a drill" moment. And the exact moment this photo was taken was as she realized there were the single-rope swings on the other side of the walkway. They weren't as fun as the one she's on in this photo though.

Really though, the whole area down along the river was gorgeous. Plenty of photos taken, plenty of photogenic spots, and just a pleasant experience all around.

In the evening, we had the delightful fortune of meeting up with a buddy of mine from high school who has lived in Spain for about five years now and is basically just Spanish at this stage. He and his best gal are looking like lifers, which is wild. The craziest thing of it all is that we were informed of two things: Spain is cheap, and they eat late.

This dinner we had started at about 9:00 and we were early in the restaurant (on a Sunday night), and dinner plus drinks for five people came out to be about 30 euros, or about $40 (at the time - the exchange rate is still dropping). So...roughly the price of just the drinks in Chicago, and probably not even all of them.

Terrific stuff. Didn't know what to expect and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next up: Stuttgart and Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany.