8am and i kid you not people were still outside drinking, dancing in their own little circles, and singing ´ole, ole, ole, ole´ to their hearts´ content! boy do they have stamina. i met a group of all nighters about 2 hours later that were still dressed in last night´s party clothes and it was like 10:30am! they were a really nice group of kids - one had been to mississippi and loved it, and was fascinated with american accents. i left her and her friends sitting on a fountain near palacio real with enough energy it seemed to keep them going for another 24 hours...
moved on to a gorgeous cathedral - catedral de la almudena - where it was just insanely beautiful and i could just sit for hours and admire all the detail put onto every inch of it.
from my hostel...
the craziest thing though was in the crypt of the cathedral - it wasn´t the fact that there are dead bodies there that weirded me out, it was the confessionals! there´s the confessional booth and it has this window that opens outward into the church. the priest is sitting in there with this light on him, then the person confessing kneels outside the booth and they talk! so basically everyone can watch you two, and if you talk too loudly they can hear you as well! i don´t know about other catholics but for me confession is hard enough in a dark booth with a screen in-between us, much less out in the open for everyone to see and possibly hear.
i later ended up in parque de el retiro - from what i gather this is like the central park of madrid.
palacio real
i was there on a hunt for this massive christmas tree that i read about online - and never found by the way - but i did stumble across a gorgeous structure called palacio de cristal. my expertise transalation skills tells me this means ´the crystal palace´ :0) it initially reminded me of the ´i am 16 going on 17´scene from the sound of music. it was really beautiful - and that was just from the back. coming around to the front revealed a beautiful lake with a fountain and waterfall and the fattest ducks i´ve ever seen living in it! i walked some more of the park, found some more of their monuments and strucutres, took a nap under a nice tree and then headed to walk the gran via - the ´artery´of madrid...
