Well, trains, you’ve been fun. We’ll miss you.

We decided to take full advantage of our hostel’s noon checkout time and slept in this morning. There is a speed train between Sevilla and Madrid that leaves every hour or so, so we didn’t have to be in a rush to get to the train station. We got our things together and started to walk toward the train station when a cab stopped right in front of us to let a lady out. We decided that it was fate that we take a cab to the train station so we loaded up our backpacks and had a nice ride instead of walking the half hour to the train station. Because we took the taxi, we got there about 25 minutes before one of our trains left so we reserved our seats and hopped on the train. The ride was about two and a half hours. It was cool! This train line has all speed trains and they play movies each time like on the airplane. Neither of us took advantage of being able to watch the movie, but we thought it was cool that we could nonetheless. We finally got caught up on our blogging! We were sad to think that this was our last train ride. We love and will miss those awesome trains!

When we got to Madrid and found that the train station is connected to the metro system so we hopped on the metro and made our way to our hostel. We started walking toward our hostel and ended up taking a wrong turn somewhere and ran into Blaire and Natalie! In case y’all didn’t know, Madrid is a pretty big place. We were really surprised to bump into them. They have a couple of friends that came to hang out for a week before starting a 4-week European tour next week. The four of them were about to grab a bite to eat so we ran to the hostel and checked in and threw our things down and met back up with them.

We had heard through the grapevine that the Prado Museum is free on Tuesday nights from 6 - 8pm so we all headed off in that direction to check out the museum. We did some photo shoots and exploring along the way and made our way to the Prado. They only let in so many people every 15 minutes so we stood in line for a bit and waited our turn. We got inside and decided to all meet up at the Goya statue out front at 8pm so we split up and went on our own art exploration adventures.

The Prado Museum in Madrid houses a ton of European art from the 12th - 19th centuries. Lots of Byzantine, Romanesque, Romantic, Gothic, religious and realistic paintings and sculptures. One of the more famous paintings here is Hieronymus Bosch’s painting of “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” We had recently heard comedian Stephen Colbert compare the new KFC Double Down sandwich to this painting. We actually ran into a KFC about 15 minutes before going into the Prado to grab one just to test his theory but the “deep fried madness and breaded insanity” has sadly not made its way across the Atlantic. Oh darn.

We met back up outside afterward and talked with our new Aussie friends about the awesomeness known as Australia. We talked about everything from kangaroos, to politics, the Aborigines, the epic blue ring octopus, and even learned some new Australian phrases. For example, when Katie tried out her new Aussie accent, one of the guys responded, "You've got Buckley's doing it right." Apparently that means that she had no chance of speaking with a believable Aussie twang. Also, we taught them how to say “y’all.” It was a very productive evening.

After a while, our stomachs started to get a bit grumbly so we started to make our way to a tapas restaurant that Blair had found in their Lonely Planet book. Katie wasn’t feeling too well so she left and headed back to the hostel to rest while Rachael went to go eat dinner with the Aussies. We ended up going to a small Italian restaurant called “Pinocchio” that served great pasta and sangria. After dinner, we made plans to meet up at some point tomorrow to see the Royal Palace of Spain and possibly do a hop on/hop off bus tour together. We bid adieu for the evening then headed back to our respective hostels. The Woodmere Gang is now at the hostel and chillin' for the rest of the night. We want to make sure we get enough sleep so that we can take full advantage of our last day of our epic European adventure tomorrow! How did it get to be so late so soon?!

Peace ninjas!

XOXO K&R