Spanish Adventure?Day 2

My second day in Spain was packed full of stuff. It was a very fun and stressful day all in one. We started by waking up fairly early and getting breakfast at our hostel. It was actually a decent breakfast for what you would think a hostel would provide. After we all ate, we headed out on the Metro to Reina Sofia. This museum was awesome. The artwork there is amazing. I didn’t go through the majority of the museum just because it was so big and we didn’t have that much time. I got to see a good portion of it and my favorite pieces were definitely Picasso. I just love his abstract style. Nothing else compares. The garden in the middle of the museum was also very cool. We walked around and relaxed in there for awhile.
After Reina Sofia, we headed to El Prado. It was a short walk from Reina Sofia. We didn’t go in, but we took some pictures from the outside and checked out all the individual artists outside. They had some really cool work. A lot of it was reasonably priced so a bunch of people bought some to take home. Once we got done there, we walked to the train station to get some ticket issues figured out. We ended up failing like we had been the whole trip. We just gave up since we had been wasting so much time in the station rather than actually seeing Madrid.
We left the train station and headed to El Rastro for the afternoon. El Rastro is a huge market in Madrid that is only open on Sundays. We timed it perfectly to hit it right before it shut down. I didn’t get anything, but it seemed like it never ended. It just went up and down every street. After we got done messing around in the market, we found a restaurant that was close to grab a bite to eat. We had some problems finding places open when we wanted because of their siesta. I am all for the US adopting the siesta by the way. I love their lifestyle in Spain. Anyways, right when we walked out of the restaurant I saw a person sprinting towards me. It scared me since I was in the middle of Madrid…I shouldn’t know anyone. We happened to run into Jon and Amanda. It was perfect timing. I went with those 2 to their apartment they were staying at, and met up with my group about 2 hours later to go to a bullfight.
We had all contemplated whether or not we wanted to go see a bullfight. I was all for going because of the cultural aspect. I am not for killing bulls in that way, but I had to see one while I was there. We went to Plaza del Toros. The building was awesome. I had a great time there. Some of the group left early because they couldn’t stand to see anymore. There were 6 bulls total. We had to watch the first on tv because we got there late, but I watched the other 5 in person. It was very intense, but very interesting at the same time. I won’t go into detail of what I saw, but I have many pictures and videos to show later.
After the bullfight, Ryan, Kamrin, and I went to a park not far from the stadium. It was fun walking around at night. The park was full of kids our age just sitting in the grass or playing soccer. A bunch of them were just drinking wine and talking in the grass. Once we walked through, we got back on the Metro and headed back to the hostel. We met up with everyone and figured out what was going on the rest of the night. They all wanted to nap, but Ryan, Kamrin, and I decided we wanted dinner. We headed down to Chueca and had dinner at a little café. We split two small pizzas. They were really good.
After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and Ryan and I took naps as the rest of the crew went to a tapas bar and got some drinks and a bunch of free tapas. I wanted to go, but I had just eaten and I was in need of some sleep. I slept for about an hour then woke up to go back out with everyone. There was a pub crawl that everyone wanted to go on that started at our hostel. It included 2 bars and 1 club for 15 euros. I didn’t feel like going to the club, so I wasn’t going to pay, and just tag along to the bars. When we got to the first one, we found out that they were going to charge a 10 euro cover charge so John and I headed back to the hostel instead. When we got back, we heard Ryan and Ellie in the lobby, so we stopped to talk to them. We saw that Ryan was on the phone, and kind of sensed something was wrong. I had remembered that Ryan was saying all day that his back really hurt. I naturally eavesdropped on his phone conversation. I couldn’t really tell what he was talking about, but I heard, “Where is the nearest hospital?...I need to go to the emergency room now”. That said alone, I knew something was really wrong. Once he got off the phone, I asked what was wrong. He said that his back pain was unbearable. Ryan doesn’t speak any Spanish, so I told him I would go to the hospital with him.
We took a cab to the hospital. It ended up not being anywhere close to our hostel. This experience ended up being more of a culture shock than anything else I had seen in Spain, including the bullfight. We made it to the hospital around 2am. I immediately walked in the emergency room and asked if there was a person who spoke English in Spanish, and they said no. They pointed me off to the check-in counter. The guy didn’t speak any English at all. He kept on asking me the questions about Ryan because he knew I was the only one that kind of knew Spanish. First of all, I don’t know any medical Spanish. Second, I barely know Ryan, so I couldn’t answer anything. It took us about 20 minutes just to get checked in. Ryan could barely stand at this point. After they got the paperwork done, they sent us to a waiting room. There were no medical personnel anywhere around. There were people running around with IVs in their arms. The whole building was filthy. Ryan’s pain got so bad at this point that he started throwing up, but got called in to the room not long after that. About 5 minutes after they took him in there, the one and only nurse that spoke very broken English came back out and told me that I needed to go buy Ryan water so he could drink something. I didn’t know what to think at that point. What hospital can’t even give water to a patient? It took about another hour or so before I saw Ryan again. They ran some blood tests to see if he had a urinary tract infection. I got to go in the room and talk to him for a few minutes and he wasn’t sure if he was going to have to stay the night or not, so he took my cell number and told me to go back to the hostel.
At this point, it was 4am. All the Metros were shut down, and the streets where the hospital was were empty except for the trash collectors. John and I decided to try and walk back to the hostel before we got ripped off by taxi again. This ended up being the LONGEST walk ever. It took us forever to get back to the hostel. I think I finally got back and to bed by 515am. Walking through Madrid at that time of night was probably not the smartest thing, but we made it safe. I got about an hour of sleep, and had to be back up to catch my train to Barcelona. When we all woke up, someone checked to see if Ryan had made it back. He had and he felt a lot better. The blood tests came back negative, and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong, but released him anyways. I still haven’t heard what was wrong, but we are thinking that he had kidney stones, and he passed them that night.
Well I am off for another night! Take care and I will be back with day 3 of Spain hopefully tomorrow.