Spain has been amazing so far. This morning found us in Barcelona, where I was really excited because I knew how to get to our train station. Well it turns out that Barcelona has more than one major train station and we ended up running and rushing on the metro to meet our noon train to Madrid.

In Madrid we found our way quite easily to our hostel. Cat’s hostel is conveniently right in the heart of the city. We are ten minutes from the royal palace and cathedral de la almuneda. Which we walked to this afternoon. I found these places fascinating. Spain’s monarchy was very closely tied in with the roman catholic church, so much so that Spain is the only country where the inquisition reported to the monarchs and not the pope. When this cathedral was started it was ordered by a queen in the 1850s and built facing the palace. While it was only completed in the last few decades, it looks like its intention was to further tie the links between the state faith and the monarchs.

It is still a beautiful building and I loved a few of the statues I saw. Especially this one.

We continued our adventure with a walk in the gardens beside the Royal Palace. They were quite lovely although I will forever think of it as PDA Park as every bench featured a couple making out. The fountains were lovely and it was another great view of the Royal Palace.

We tried finding somewhere for dinner. We looked for a while and were having some trouble making a decision, when we finally settled on one it turned out they didn’t speak any english, so we moved on. We finally found a nice little place, reasonably priced, and had dinner there. I had a lot of fun. Madrid seems to be a pretty cool city, so far at least.