Things I learned during my all-day trip to downtown Madrid:
-Spanish people do NOT fuck around while driving. You know when someone does something on the road that you feel was a risky jerk-move? That's par for the course here. Everyone does that ALL THE TIME. The bus I was on literally pulled out onto the highway in a lane where a guy was barreling toward us at full speed and had to change lanes to avoid us.... and this happened TWICE, once during each trip. I couldn't believe it. An interesting side effect of this is that everyone is a very skilled, very precise driver. I consider myself in the top 1% of USA drivers, and I'm not sure I could hang over here.
-Spanish radio stations play mostly American music, of completely random genres. During the ride uptown, I heard some 70's disco song, followed by Celine Dion, followed by "We Don't Need No Education". On the trip back, I heard some kind of Beatles-like, 60's happy-happy song followed by "I'm a Creep" by Radiohead, followed by Ke$ha.
-I learned just how effective public transportation can be when done right. Once I was done with uptown, I had to force myself to figure out the subway system (why was I forced to? More on that in a minute), and once I did, I was back at the bus hub within 10 minutes and on my way back to the house 5 minutes after that. I couldn't believe how efficient the whole thing was. I wish something like that could be implemented in Charlotte, but I guess it's too spread out.
-It SUCKS walking long distances on concrete sidewalks when you can barely put any pressure on your foot. My foot was still in pain when I woke up this morning, but I didn't want to spend a second day stuck in the apartment so I tried to tough it out. I can't say it was a bad idea exactly, but man did I pay a high price for it. I was barely able to make it to my final destination (before I headed home). I literally cannot walk on it right now. I will probably be laid up for two more days because of this.
-I had a sense of this before today, but now it's confirmed. Everything is wayyyy more compact in Spain (Europe in general?). Buildings are closer together, streets are narrower, the space inside of buildings is sparser. Most of the businesses I've come across have been about the size of that newspaper shop in Carolina Place Mall (the one by the food court). This includes restaurants with tables to sit at. And forget about parking spots; they're ALL FULL. ALL THE TIME.
-The mall I randomly came across while wandering around uptown was pretty lame. It had four categories of store: Stores for women (including clothes, perfume, etc), restaurants, an eye-glasses store, and one book store. I was hoping to take an interesting picture inside, but there wasn't anything worth documenting.
That's all for now.
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