That picture above is the common room of the hostel. I spent lots of time there reading cause the wifi didn't work in the common room, only in my room. Then on May 22nd, I returned to the Cat's hostel where I am staying in a 14 person mixed dorm this time. 
It has classy roll out cages to lock your stuff in. The same day I arrived, a girl named Rebecca arrived. I chatted a little with her that first day, mostly cause I overheard her conversation with her mom when I was trying and failing to watch Charles graduate, and you know how I can't help but chime in on conversations I overhear. But yeah Charles graduated on May 22nd so I spent an hour trying to get the live stream to work but the wifi wasn't having it. I tried for an hour though so it's the attempt that counts in my opinion.
I'm a pretty proud sister of this trouble maker for sure. That's all I did on May 22nd though, switch hostels and fail at watching my bro graduate. I also took weird pictures with the wall paintings since there wasn't much else to entertain myself with. I was very entertained though. Oh I also had some inspiration for a new story so I started working on that, wishing I had my laptop for that though.
May 23rd, Monday
I woke up before 9 because someone's annoying alarm was going off and they weren't turning it off. It just kept going until the alarm turned itself off. I went back to sleep because I quite enjoy sleeping and woke up, got ready for the day so I could leave around noon. I actually had the day planned before I got up, somehow I decided I needed to start being a tourist in Madrid. I chatted with Rebecca a little more in the bathroom, I'd say I perfected my small talk right there by asking her what her plans were for the day. It only took me until I went back to our room to realize I should've invited her along on my plans of the day since she hadn't known what she was doing. Don't worry I asked and we went to the botanical gardens. It was big but at the same time felt rather repetitive. It was still interesting that we were in Madrid but it didn't feel like that at all because of all the nature around us. That didn't take long to go through at all, and we ended up going to the park that was right up the road from there. It was a HUGE park that again made it feel like you weren't in the city at all. This all took us about an hour, hour and a half to do. We were just walking and talking, typical companion things to do, and then around 1-1:30 we decided to head over to the start point of the free walking tour.
The walking tour only covered part of Madrid. I could've paid for one about the Spanish Inquisition but I'm not nearly committed enough to pay money even if it's about a topic that never ceases to interest me. Anyhoo, we started at Plaza Mayor and were told of a silly sculptor who didn't think about plugging the mouth of the horse sculpture that he made. Resulta que, it was a disgusting smelling statue. I'm sure they would've said rotting eggs type smells came from this statue. I don't know how they figured it out, but birds had been flying in the horse's mouth and then couldn't find their way out because it's pretty dark in statues. So really what they were smelling was rotting corpses of birds, isn't that exciting. They plugged the hole or built a new statue or something though so everything is fine now! Madrid has 4 walls, not like a room has 4 walls but if a room was quadruple walled type thing. This is because it started out as a small village turned capital and was just expanded on.
The second wall had some big Catholic influence, which is a no duh because Spain is all about that Catholic life. The gates for the second wall, had the cheater's gate and the bad people's gate. Obviously they weren't called that, but that's what they were. During the day you could leave Madrid by the bad people's gate and go cheat on your wife but you couldn't get back in after dark because the gate was closed. It was the Church's way of weeding out the cheaters basically. So you'd have to walk around the wall to the main entrance to Madrid, the cheaters gate. Everyone knew what you had been up to if you came back through there late at night. Then the bad people's gate you could enter during the day, so all the mischievous people would go in and lay wait until night for their mischiefs. Eventually the Church just closed that gate completely and put a cross up to remind everyone that they were sinners and all that fun stuff.
We then went to a convent, technically we stood outside of it, that had a secret. If you go up to the door and hit the call button, someone will ask what you want (in Spanish) and you reply with Galletas. They buzz you in and you follow the signs to a talking wall to receive cookies that the nuns there bake! Obviously you aren't really talking to a wall but a nun. The nuns there can't be seen for some reason. We were told a bunch of other things, like Henry the 8ths wife was from Madrid and she created divorce. We saw the palace I've been walking past quite frequently and told about that. Everyone in Europe and Latin America can get in for free at certain times for some reason, basically because Spain is racist. You can also get in for free if you're the king or queen of Spain just saying in case those people were unaware. The palace isn't even inhibited since the royal people live at a different palace in Madrid or something. The palace though, was burnt down by a French ruler because he didn't like it so he packed his family up with some prized paintings and such, went away for Christmas and then burned it down. He rebuilt it in a very French way. In front of the palace is a statue of a person on a horse. I forget who it was but he was a Spanish King that Velazquez painted riding a rearing horse and he had liked it so much that he wanted it put where his people could see, which meant it had to be a statue not a painting. So a statue was made and he hated the face of it, so Velazquez came to the rescue and had his friend redo the face. Basically the statue was beheaded and then given a new head from that.
We had a short break during the tour, because someone wanted to sell tickets to the other tours the company does. So I being the outgoing person I am, sat with some random guys. That's right I asked if I could sit with them all by myself. Then it turns out one of them went to Loras! He graduated in 2014 too so he was there when I was a freshie. Loras kids are everywhere I tell ya. He was traveling with his brother and they both found it interesting how many women they have met that were traveling alone. No big deal but they called both Rebecca and I brave. Their sister would never have been allowed to travel alone according to them (cause their mom wouldn't allow it). Seriously though, Loras is everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
So after that we returned to the hostel and I read for a bit before I went out and bought me some Kebap for dinner. I have found that the tour sunburned me, so that's not cool. We did spend at least 4 to 5 hours out in the sun today between our morning activities and the tour.
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