Spain, Day Thirty-One

Today, we decided to do something a little unconventional for a city vacation: we went hiking. One of the very few awesome things about Madrid is that it has the mountains right up next to the city. So after an hour train ride to the outskirts of the city, we found ourselves in the quiet town of Cercedilla (pronounced like "sir-say-dee-ya"). Once we arrived, we trekked up the hill for about a mile and a half, only to find that the visitor's center with all of the maps for the trails to be closed. Fortunately, they had a bulletin board outside their office with a map of all of the trails and their difficulties. We decided on a one and a half hour trail called "camino del agua" which translates to "water walk" (hooray for palabras del dia and for learning things!).

Dad and me inspecting the trail map

It actually didn't have all that much water along the trail except for during just the first twenty minutes of the walk, where we found some nice creeks and ponds. They served for some good photo op stops but not much else. They weren't very big.

Little creek #1

Little creek #2

The rest of the walk was an uphill rock climb for about twenty minutes and then downhill the rest of the way until we were spit out in the town of Cercedilla. We had planned on getting a drink or something from the town and just check out what small-town life in Spain is like, but we couldn't find anywhere to go. It was all just apartments everywhere. We came across two restaurants, but they were only open Wednesday-Sunday, and it was Tuesday. So we ended up just walking back to the train station that was on the outskirt of the town. Fortunately, there was a little bar open next to the station where we had a beer. My parents struggled with the language barrier a little here since it was a small town, which meant pretty much no English-speakers. When I explained to our bartender that my parents only spoke English, he was excited to use what seemed like it was his only English phrase, "Do you like Spanish?" Thinking back, we think he might have meant Spain, but he could have also meant spinach because his pronunciation was a little off. All in all, we enjoyed our hike and getting some fresh air in the mountains. Here are some photos of our adventure along the trail:

Walking along the trail

Having lunch on a boulder

Couldn't pass up an opportunity to "throw what I know" in the mountains

After another hour-long train ride back to Madrid that was significantly hotter than the first one, we were rather exhausted and decided to siesta back at the apartment for a while and then head over to a restaurant that was just around the corner to get some Italian food for dinner. Although it was certainly not as good as what I had in Rome, my mushroom risotto was still better than what we have back in the U.S. Another exciting point of dinner was dad accidentally catching his breadsticks and then, consequently, the table on fire just for a brief minute, but that's a story for another time.