Mad Madrid (28th August)

First stop of the day was to drop off our cameras to the fuji film place we found while wandering last night. It was right near Sol so handy to everything. At 11am we started a bike tour of the city. Our guide is Hungarian, and as we find out later speaks 7 different languages. He speeds us through the city which in itself is rather crazy as sometimes we are cycling on major city roads. We stop at the ancient Egyptian temple which was located in Egypt and in the 1950's the Egyptians gifted it to the city of Madrid. It was disassembled stone by stone in Egypt and floated up a river, over the Mediterranean and by truck inland from Valencia where it was re-erected in a park. We saw the palace which is the official residence of the Spanish royal family (although they actually live in a palace outside of town), but it is where they host important events. We cycle to Plaza Mayor which was the square we were in last night. It is pretty cool by day and we are lucky because the aren't many people there so we can see just how big it is. There are 138 apartments around the square and they are a pretty noisy place to live due to the amount of people by day and at night the street cleaners and trucks filled with supplies for the restaurants come past. We ride past an old nunnery, Madrid's oldest door (400 years) and the old Arab suburb. The Arabs ruled Spain from ~900 to ~1400 and so they've had a big influence on the heritage. We also learn that the origin of the cry "ole" during a bull fight, flamenco dance or repeated during a football game is from the Arabic "Allah"... meaning that they are crying out because they feel God at their side. Next up is Parque del buen retiro or Retiro Park. Retiro means to retire and in the weekends lots of Madrigals visit the park to rest. It's a beautiful park, much nicer than Park Guell in Barcelona, mainly because there are big expanses of lawn. It is lush and green and we can see why it would be a great place to hang out. Near the middle is a big rectangular lake where you can hire row boats to use for 30mins. It's really cute! The park is also home to the Statue of the Fallen Angel - the only monument the Vatican officially recognises as a statue of the devil. It as been located there because it is exactly 666m above sea level. We head back past the Central Post Office and through a chaotic roundabout. The roundabouts here are very beautiful as they have sculptural fountains and flowers in them. This one shows King Neptune riding the water. The tour was great, but it also meant that we saw all of the things to see in Madrid in 3 hours which didn't leave much to do for tomorrow. We had already planned our afternoon to go to (you guessed it) the Madrid zoo! We checked out the lions, tigers and bears (oh my). Plus the giraffes, elephants, meercats (Mike's favourites) monkeys, gorillas, orangutans, reindeer, penguins, sea lions, anteaters and zebras. Animals to point out were the white rhinos including a baby one, the graceful display by the hippopotamuses' as they left the river (actually they stopped and did a big poo), the three koalas in the Australian section but the highlight was the giant pandas! The male is Bing Xing (Ice Star) and the female is Hua Zuiba (Beauty Mouth). Originally they were inside in the air conditioning (it was 35 degrees) but on the way out Hua Zuiba was outside playing, allowing a few good photos to be taken. The zoo also had shows throughout the day and we went to two of them. The birds of prey demonstrate their hunting prowess. It was really cool, despite not understanding Spanish. Dave you would have hated it. At one point one of the birds lands on the spectators heads. Then it decides to hop along the crowd standing on whomsoever head it fancies. The other show was the dolphin show where 3 trainers get 6 of the 8 dolphins to perform for us. The dolphins know something is up and do a few little tricks about 1 minute before the show starts, such as a flip and jumping out of the water. However they know it is really time to show off (or get lots of treats/fish for doing the right thing) when the Michael Jackson soundtrack starts to play. His music is really following us on this trip. It's a great show as they demonstrate jumping through moving hoops, how they can propel humans into the air, stand out of the water with their tails, clapping whilst lying on their backs, high jump and all sorts of other cool movements. We particularly liked when they dance, which is spinning around in the water. Not visually spectacular but very funny to watch. The show lasts 20 minutes and as we are leaving they keep popping their heads up in case there is more fish to have for performing tricks. The saddest moment of the day is in the bear enclosure. All the enclosures are very open with water or fissures separating the animals from the crowd, rather than cages. So the bears are only 3 metres away from us (with a big drop in between) and they are standing up on their hind legs and waving their arms to be thrown more food. The Spanish people are throwing peanuts and potato chips at them to make them perform and look good. We did get some amazing photos but they were for the wrong reasons. What disappointed us was that there were clear signs in Spanish that said don't throw items at the animals and don't feed the animals because they have dietary requirements. The sadder part was that it was the fathers who were the most enthusiastic about the throwing. Mike pointed to the sign at one point and the main family saw it and then left. But another family started up (check out the photo for 'caught red handed'). Tonight's dinner was a good lesson for us. We wanted to have something cheap and good but instead ended up with expensive and crap. We found a place that served pasta and looked for locals that were eating. There were 3 groups of Spanish people there, but once our meal arrived we realised that they were only drinking in the restaurant! Oh well we live and learn.