Day 42: Only by getting lost can you find your way

I did it! I woke up early enough on a Sunday to get my butt to Madrid for El Rastro! Success!! ^_^ I took the Puerta del Toledo (below) metro stop and started wandering aimlessly and following groups of people who looked like they wanted a bargin and eventually stumbled into a a giant, packed set of streets with bajillions of stalls.

I had high hopes for the market and gotta say that it wasn't all that I'd expected it to be. In my mind, a "foreign market" should have cheap hand-crafted goodness and cheap delicious food prepared on site or grown just a little ways away. This market had neither of those things. It had clothes and souvenirs and jewelery... but nothing that you couldn't just go to a store in the more touristy sections of Madrid and buy yourself for one or two euros more. What the heck, guys? I DID however purchase the cutest souvie for Woody and Jessi -  hell yes. ^_^

After the market stopped (or maybe it kept going but I lost the correct street to turn onto next and just gave up... it wasn't like Belo Horizonte's market in Brazil where it's just one really long street of a million little organized stalls... this was a hodgepodge of streets and stalls and people and heat), I found myself in a quaint little plaza with a bunch of little cafes and stopped for a strawberry daquiri and a class of ice water. :) Cute! The plaza reminded me a lot of the mall in the Gaslamp District of San Diego, California where I tipsily (LOL... slightly epic) ate a Cinnabon for my birthday with J... and it made me wonder if they'd fashioned it after quaint European plazas? Most likely, I suppose!

After my rest stop, I decied rather than heading back to Plaza Mayor, I might as well head in the opposite direction, into the unknown. I passed a yellow bug, found a sketchy park, a huge bridge and finally ended up at "el Paseo del Rey."  I had no idea what this was, but I figured it must signify I was nearing the Royal Palace, and for this I was grateful, 'cause it'd been practically 45 minutes since I'd had any idea where I was (well, okay I had an IDEA... but I KNEW I wasn't near any metro stop that'd get me back to el centro any time fast). While continuing down el Paseo del Rey I encountered a big iron fence with a beautiful arched gate and wandered inside. Lo and behold, I'd stumbled into what I then and there named the "Royal Forest."

It was the garden BEHIND the Royal Garden and was absolutely breathtaking. It looked like a miniature version of Versailles' gardens (to be honest, I'd totally forgotten I'd even visited Versailles until I saw these gardens and thought to myself, "Gee... this makes me think of France... I wonder why that is... oh, wait...") mixed with enchanted forests thought up by Neil Gaiman! Honestly, when a zephyr would stir the trees, little white flower blossoms would rain gently down and fill the air with their dulcet scent and leave my hair sprinkled with their petals.

I wandered the grounds, wondering what all the trees must have seen in their lifetimes there! The park was created in the 12th century by the Moors... and then became the King's later on. Imagine the royalty and the grand costumes and the history these little green beings have witnessed! I don't know why history books aren't written from the viewpoint of trees in royal gardens... they would certainly have a lot of interesting things to divulge.

I was slightly startled when I saw a group of peacocks approach me... I'd been in a daze following various paths and weaving in an out of woods, mini forests, bright sunny areas and stumbling upon quiet little benches near tinkling mini-waterfalls and birdbaths and fountains with soothing water... and so when a few peacocks crossed my path I had no idea what to do with myself! I'd never seen a peacock outside of a cage before! And these were pretty sociable peacocks; weren't phased in the slightest when I sat down right next to them to take their picture. As if I hadn't been pretending like a was a princess from a few hundred years back or a very proper young lady from a Jane Austin novel or an enchanted faery or nymph from a Gaiman book before seeing the majestic peacocks! Now I really felt in character!

I chose a little spot with four benches surrounding a bird bath fountain in the midst of the raining blossoms and sat for hours reading "Stardust," all the while glancing up every few pages, awed by my surroundings and feeling like I was actually in the book I was reading (the book is a fantasy tale about a journey through an enchanted forest... every once and I while I'd peer over the pages, looking for a unicorn... hee hee hee... but I'm so serious, I really did).

It was late afternoon when I got up from the bench, and, after taking a new Woody-style pictures around my new Secret Garden, realized I'd been bitten by enough mosquitos and it was time to head towards sustinence (I hadn't eaten at all yet!).

A few hours and some food later I was in Alcala with L, safely returned from her trip, and wandering towards the palacio del obispo. We had an ice cream cone and compared weekends in the serene spot near the palace and the old wall that used to keep the town safe hundreds of years ago. Once again, I felt like I was in "Stardust," in the town of Wall, wanting to journey past the wall and see what was on the otherside!

And so we did.

Cold water, crunchy pringles and a sunset that produced fluffy pink penguin clouds was the perfect conclusion to the enchanting day that was surprisingly quite exhausting.

 It's a funny thing when the one person who used to seem like a spontaneous, lucky figment of your imagination suddenly becomes the only thing that seems real and serene in your immediate existance. All the people from my group have been jetsetting every weekend to various parts of Spain and various countries, and all the while I've been here, humbly doing exactly what I'd never imagined I could be doing and smiling secretively to myself about how I Wrote this all out before I was ever Here. <3



XOXO

Jet-set Cupcake