I saw all the essential stuff already, now I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit. That's perhaps a little harsh on the things I did on this day, but still. My preparations for what to see in Madrid had been much quicker than the other cities, so I didn't really have much idea about what to see. Nevertheless, I formulated a little plan and set off pretty late.
First stop was somewhere that I was taking a chance on: the Estadio Vicente Calderón, home of Atletico Madrid. I'd wanted to go to both Madrid stadiums, but the internet didn't reveal any info about a museum or a tour, but I went regardless, just in case.
In the event, there was both. This is part of the museum. Never quite understood what this bit was all about, really.
A load of balls.
There was a film, too, but it was just clips of Atleti with a soundtrack, so not too interesting. Now to begin the tour. In the concourse is this wall where people write about how great the team is and that.
Woo, the stadium.
It looks very small...
...but can seat 55,000 apparently. Remarkable. Not much rain cover, though. But it doesn't rain much in Madrid.
In this corner, there is apparently always some flowers to commemorate Atleti winning the league and cup double years ago. Check it out on TV, you might see it.
This 'Marca' logo is around where the dugout is. I think Marca is a newspaper that sponsors the team.
This is the away bench. The home one is virtually the same but a little nicer - plus, these seats were very dirty when I got there.
The press room. So maybe they all have them after all.
Dressing room, with slogans on the wall such as "55,000 reasons to win". You work it out.
More of the dressing room. Comfy.
The spacious VIP lounge, with some of their great moments on the wall above, plus a list of trophies on the right (9 leagues, 9 cups, plus a few other things).
Possibly their most famous son, and someone they're obviously still very proud of, as he started with the club aged 10. I made the lack of info about the tour clear to the lovely guide we had, and she said she'd inform her boss about it. Let's hope so, as I'm sure other football fans visiting Madrid would like to visit. And it's cheaper than the Bernabeu tour...
Moving on, I went to the plaza where a statue of Christopher Columbus is, the Plaza de Colón. This is the Torres Colón. Maybe now you can figure out what Fernando's surname means in English.
Mr Colón himself.
And I've seen some big flags on my travels... but that's got to be the biggest. It's huge. I made sure to get a couple of people in the pic to give you the idea of how big it is.
The tower again.
The Biblioteca Nacional. I asked if I could come in. She said no. But there's a free museum. So I went there instead.
Is it just me who thinks this thing looks precarious? Hmm.
Another free museum, woo! The Museo Arqueologico Nacional (I really don't need to translate these names, do I?). It was a bit small, but for free you can't complain. Not bad.
I then made the trek back home to take in a few sights. You may remember the Puerta de Alcalá. Well, the lighting's a bit better, so I took this pic from the other side.
The Edificio Metrópolis. Yep.
A big cheese-shaped building. I'll let you read it.I really couldn't be bothered looking for much else, so I went to the hostel and relaxed for a while. I headed out in the evening to an Irish pub to watch the first match of the new Championship season, and was thoroughly bored by it. Had a curry, though, which was nice.
On my way back to the hostel, I stumbled across the pub crawl people. This particular crawl starts every night near the hostel, but I couldn't be bothered the last two nights. I changed my mind this time. So off I went with all the drunken people, but I'm not the party-hard type normally, and when I'm on my own even less so.
When 3am rolled around, after several bars and not too much to drink, I called it a day as I had to check out by 11am. Final day remaining, and with even less stuff to do, plus a backpack to carry around for hours, I'm sure it'll be an eventful day. Yeah.
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