Madrid Day 2 - Ignorance is bliss

This is really long overdue. But so much has happened over the past few weeks (exams, moving out, trips). Hopefully I'll be able to update the events properly.

The morning and afternoon of the second day in Madrid was pretty boring, just going around to take pictures and all.

Temple

Aerial view of Madrid from Temple

The evening, on the other hand, kept us very excited (more of anxious really), because we bought tickets to catch bullfighting! Well, we didn't know what bullfighting REALLY was, we thought it was just a bull charging at red flags. So when SY told me bullfighting was cruel, I Googled it and the two of us were like

WHATTTTTTHHEEE?FLJDFLG./?

Google if you don't understand why the commotion.

To make matters worse, this was the first article that appeared when I Googled "San Isidro, bullfighting". 3 matadors injured the night before.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/spain-san-isidro-bullfighting-festival-suspended-matadors-injured

The audience would wave something white (handkerchief, scarf, hat, shirt, cloth) if they wanted to pardon the bull for 'outstanding behaviour'. But... I'm pretty sure the bull died so I have no idea what that was for lol, maybe to recognise its efforts

Look at how near the matador positioned himself! Crazy and tense atmosphere

Matador strutting around like a hero after finishing that bull. After that they lifted him and paraded him around, gave him a press conference in the ring, and lifted him into a van which drove off. They're treated like superstars.

After the game XY and I were stopped by 2 Spanish men while we were trying to take pictures. One of them kept gesturing to my camera and tried to take it from me to help us take a picture. For a moment there, I was wondering what elaborate pickpocketing-camera-stealing ploy it was lol. Turns out that they're just really really friendly people who were rather intrigued by 2 small Asian girls going to watch a bullfight.

We tried to have a conversation and it was challenging because they barely spoke English and we hardly knew any Spanish words. We did understand enough to know that they wanted to give us a cheek-to-cheek Spanish greeting hehehe.