Magnificent Madrid

Madrid deserved much, much more time than we gave it, but I can confidently say that our one full day was a perfect one.

This entry is mostly written by guest blogger, B! He's providing details about a part of our day in a way that I could not.

Before diving in B's segment, I'll give a recap of our day. We started it by having a yummy and affordable breakfast (Spain is definitely more affordable). We of course had more tortilla Española, but this time on baguettes, and with some café con leche. We then embarked on a private, electric tuk tuk ride with Eco Tuk Tuk. These are everywhere, but we found this company online before arriving in Madrid. It was a four hour tour, and our fantastic, easy-going, very informative guide was Ivan. There are shorter tours, but we thought a more in-depth tour would be better, specially in a fun vehicle where we could get off where we wanted and with a guide to regale us with stories and history. I won't go into everything as the link I provided gives a list of all the places, but we did go by many of the main sights and learned, which I did not know, that the word Madrid may have come from the Arabic word for water source, due to the river and easy-to-access ground water. Now, there may be other explanations, and there is definitely more detail in the above explanation, but it was interesting to gain insight into this possibility.

Ok, I'm ending it there. Now it's time for B to provide part 2 of our day, which I think he'd agree has been the highlight of his entire Europe experience (and we had an incredible time too).

Real Madrid vs. RDC Espanyol de Barcelona at Bernabéu Stadium (written by B)

On September 21st 2024

We headed to the best game we will most likely see in our life, as we headed to the Santiago Bernabeu. It holds 85,000 seats 2nd most in the Spanish league, after Barcelona (99,000). As we headed to the game I got some photos outside of the stadium, with my new home jersey of Mbappé. This stadium had a cool design on the outside of it along with the inside where you could see the roads and side walks. When we walked to go in I got a video of going inside the Bernabeu. We walked up to the 6th floor. This was quite the view of the pitch. The height was overwhelming, we had itthe front row of the 6th floor so that we wouldn’t have to stand up the whole game. We came in early so we could get some photos and videos of the players. The goalkeepers came out 20 minutes before the rest of the team. The chants had began we couldn’t understand all of it but we got bits and pieces of it. When the opposing team came out the boo’s began. My mom got photos of the players along with S and myself. When the pre-game training finished up my mom and my sister got drinks and a bag of chips. When we started to hear the RMCF song go off we knew the starting 11 for both teams were coming on and there was a moment of silence for Scillachi. The game had started there was lots of good plays and lots of possession to Real Madrid, there was a great play where Jude Bellingham did a nice back heel pass to Luka Modrić, then Modrić passed it to the right side to Valverde where he chested the ball and chipped it over the Espanyol defender to Rodrygo. He dribbled down the wing and got tackled out for a throw in, that was an exiting moment of high class football. In the 46th minute there was a shot from Valverde the keeper caught, and lofted toward the left winger. The winger darted down the left hand side and tried to play it back, it hit the keeper’s leg and rolled in to the back of the net (the keepers name is Courtois).  Five minutes later Bellingham gave a pass between the keeper's legs and Dani Carvahal scored on the open net as hard as he could and the stadium went crazy, I went crazy. Fifteen minutes later Madrid slotted another one from a great outside of the boot pass by Vini Jr which landed perfectly for Rodrygo to a nice pass in the net. In the 70th minute around Mbappé was on a break away and Vini Jr. did an overlap to  Mbappé’s left side and he did a perfectly threaded through ball for Vini Jr. to score a 3rd goal. At that point this could have turned into a humiliation for Espanyol. In the 89th minute Endrick also known as the wonderkid got pulled down inside the box. It was time to seal it, and it was Mbappé to take the penalty, I couldn't feel my limbs I was so exited and nervous. Exited because he’s my favourite player of all time and I could see him score and nervous  that he would miss. Thankfully he did not he played it into the bottom corner of the right side of the net. It ended 4-1 it was an amazing game I’ll never look at the game the same way. The players are also ripped with muscle. I was so happy and full of other emotions it was the best day of my life. We stayed a bit longer to go look at the store I got RMCF shorts and my mom got a hat of RMCF. After we paid we got on the metro back to the hotel I didn’t stop talking about the game and the goals.

PS: I got Halls for my throat  because it hurt from the screaming.

-BB