The thing about Madrid is: besides art museums and nerdy stuff, there really isn’t that much to do. We found this out on our last day. We woke up and went back to the Prado to see the remaining things we hadn’t seen. Mostly Goya, actually, so reference by blog entry in Episode 20 for all about Goya. Other than that, we were officially done with nerdy things.
We went from there to a gigantic flea market kinda thing that is famous for being the largest flea market in Spain. Quite honestly, it was the largest junk market in Spain. Every stall had the exact same stuff…and it got old. VERY old. We wandered around the gigantic expanse for quite some time. I did find one interesting thing though: a stall selling old vinyl records. I found a few I didn’t have, but cost and transportation issues persuaded me to let it be. David, independently, found a record store that had some pretty cool stuff. After lunch (I ate a loin bocadillo, which was terrific!), we went back to the record store so David could buy a vinyl for his brother, all of the while, we were under the assumption that we had time to get back to the bus station on time.
And here’s where our adventure begins. We left our bags at the hostel, so we had to take the metro back to the hostel to go pick them up before taking the metro to the bus station to catch our 15:00 bus to go back to Sevilla. 13:45…we have plenty of time, right? Suddenly after the hostel, 14:00. Allright, we have an hour. Not bad, right? No one was concerned except for Rachel, perhaps foreseeing that this could be a problem. The metro was moving reallllyyyy slowly that day and we had a long way to go. Suddenly, it was 14:30 and we were less than halfway there. Oh snap. Katie, David and I officially started freaking out. This would be BAD. The tickets, 17 euros apiece, are nonrefundable, plus we had no idea if there were later busses, PLUS to make it worse, we had class in the morning. No WAY we could miss this bus! Time continued to pass, quickly, quickly. It was 14:45 and we were two stops away from station. They were probably already boarding now…We would have to run like hell in order to make it. 1 stop to go…we have 8 minutes to get there… Oh god. We started to get really depressed, knowing that we would inevitably lose the bus and end up shelling out more euros for another ticket. Our stop finally! We have hope! We have four minutes to get there! We grabbed our things, including Rachel’s rollybag and RUSHED. David and I fled like we were being chased, dodging through rude/indifferent Spanish people who could care less if you are in a hurry. I checked my cell phone. 2 minutes! We MIGHT MAKE IT! We turned another corner in the metro, looking for the exit and LO! It’s a GIGANTIC WALL OF STAIRS! Over 4 flights of stairs, maybe over 150-200 feet in the air. There were escalators, but they were too slow. I heard Katie behind me shout “HELL no!”. I didn’t look back. David burst up those stairs with his backpack and I followed, gasping heavily. We got to the station, went out to the platforms and searched frantically for our bus. THERE IT WAS! The bus driver was talking to another person on the side. David checked to make sure it was the bus to Sevilla and then he and I boarded the bus. You’ve got to understand the image here, to fully appreciate this. We had made it from the metro stop to the bus station in under 4 minutes, carrying all our luggage and mounting a gigantic flight of stairs. Here we were, two guys with backpacks, absolutely drenched in sweat, sombering through the aisles, panting like rabid dogs. We got seats together and we laughed, intermixed with relief gasping and panting. We shared a moment of celebration and gasped collectively for air. Katie and Rachel had now boarded and we were set. About a minute later, the bus pulled out of the station at approximately 15:01.
No comments:
Post a Comment