I am proud to say that everyone was able to endure and even find the humour in it.
Our first daunting task was to make our return trip to the Bullring without the ease of the Metro (still on strike) by 1:30pm (…or so we thought). This involved mastering the bus system (sort of), which was not affected by the strike. We set off just before 11am. We took one bus to the main bus/train station. Then we determined the easiest way to “shorten” our trip was to take a train (also not part of the strike) to another main hub. Then we managed to get on the correct bus that was going right past the Bullring (and this we accomplished despite the less direct route recommended by the Information guy). After the very SLOW (only in that traffic was so heavy) and crowded bus ride, we arrived at the bullring at 12:51. We then continued to walk around the left side of the stadium to the Museum in the back, only to find out that the tours were separate and conducted from the front of the stadium, oh, and the last tour of the day is at 1pm (It was now 12:58…). Dave and Lukas proceeded to run around the rest of the stadium (I hope you realize how huge this construction is, not to mention how hot it was) to the front to try to catch the ticket wicket before it closed. They made it! Phew!!
The guided tour was interesting. We learned a lot of shocking facts about the bullfights and how both the success of the Matador and demise of the bull are essentially determined primarily by one man, with some influence from the crowd. Sadly, there has been only one bull, in the history of this bullring (since 1931) whose life was spared (and there have been a LOT of bullfights). Ben is sure this was Ferdinand (we didn’t verify).
Everyone got to try out their Matador skills.
As an added bonus, it turned out our tour guide is from Cadiz (our final vacation destination), so we were able to get some friendly suggestions from him.
Fortunately, our return bus ride didn’t take as long as the ride up, but it was EXTREMELY crowded. Lukas was the only one of us who got a seat – on a suitcase shelf (sorry, no photo – it was too crowded to access the camera).
Our next test of fortitude came in the form of a walking tour. Our desire for public transportation depleted, we figured some sightseeing on foot would do us some good. We chose a walk that was supposed to highlight off-the-beaten-path shopping and nightlife sights. Being that it was mid-afternoon and we were with the kids; we figured we would benefit from some unique shopping and skip the nightlife. Unfortunately, the 2 hour (and that’s cutting it short) walk seemed to have skipped the shopping, so we ended up just, off-the-beaten-path, meandering through dreary alleys, thinking something interesting would be right around the next corner.
The only interesting building we came across was the Palacio Longoria.
Which is home to the Society of Authors who gather royalties for Spanish authors.
Once we returned to the general populace and did some shopping in some actual shops, we were all quite happy to return to public transit and take the rapid (and reasonably crowded) train back to our neighbourhood.
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