Spain Endings and Trip to London

We left Malaga July 24th and headed back to Madrid. Chad was flying back to Canada the following day and we wanted a bit of time in Madrid before he left. When we arrived in Madrid our first task was to find a luggage. Over my 5 weeks of traveling I had accumulated many things, and my backpack had grown to be extremely large and heavy. Chad agreed to take an extra luggage full of my belongings back home so I wouldn´t need to carry them around with me for the remainder of my trip. We found a nice duffel bag at El Corte Ingles (the trusty department store that saved me from my computer problems) and I loaded it up with some of my unnecessary belongings and almost all my purchases.
That evening we went for a nice dinner at a sushi restaurant close to our hotel.

The following morning Chad left for the airport. I was very sad to see him leave, as we had a wonderful 2 weeks together.
The rest of my time in Madrid was spent in a pretty low key manner. I went for a very nice exploratory walk through the city.
I walked down Gran Via street (one of the main streets in Madrid, full of shops,  restaurants, bars, cinemas, etc.) to the Plaza de Cibeles, where there is a fountain with a statue of the Roman goddess Cybele, as well as the Palacio de Comunicaciones.

I then walked over to the Plaza de la Independencia, where the large archway (La Puerta de Alcala) stands.

From there I went to the Parque del Retiro, a large park in the city where people go to relax and get away from the city atmosphere.

In the center of the park is the Monumento a Alfonso XII with a large pond in front, where people can rent boats for a relaxing boat ride.

I spent some time in the park, sitting on the grass, relaxing. It was nice to get away from the sounds of the city.
My last stop of my little walk was at Puerta del Sol, a large square in the middle of the city. It holds the Kilometer Zero mark, which is the origin of Spain´s road network.

Also in Puerta del Sol is a statue of a bear reaching for fruit in a strawberry tree. It is the symbol of Madrid.
From Madrid I was going to London. I bought a 13 hour overnight train ticket to Paris for the night of July 26th.
The overnight trains are strange here. If you are traveling alone (and do not want to pay for a private cabin) and would still like to sleep in a bed, you are put in a 4-person room (with 4 beds) full of strangers, all of the same sex. It is a very very tiny cabin, with absolutely no walking room, just 2 small bunk beds. Luckily I got the bottom bunk, and slept the entire way.
I arrived in Paris at 8:30am on July 27th and set out to find a means of transportation to London. I hadn´t booked anything in advance for my travel from Paris to London because a) I had run out of planning time, and b) I figured it would be easy (and not too expensive) to get from Paris to London.
I found the ticket booths and asked for a train ticket to London (preferably the cheapest ticket they had, leaving as soon as possible. Unfortunately all the ¨cheap¨ tickets were completely sold out, and so were almost all of the seats on all the trains leaving that day. My only ticket option for that day would mean waiting in Paris for 7.5 hours and paying substantially more than I would have had I purchased my ticket in advance. My other option was to stay the night in Paris and get a cheaper ticket for the following day.
Since I had prepaid for my London hotel, and the cost of losing one night of hotel in London plus the cost of one night´s hotel in Paris was more than the difference between the elevated ticket cost and the ¨cheaper¨ ticket for the following day, I purchased the overpriced ticket.
I spent the following 7.5 hours waiting, sitting on the floor of the Paris train station (the waiting rooms were reserved only for people who checked in, and whose train was leaving within the hour), since there were no seats anywhere!
My train ride from Paris to London was pretty cool. I finally saw the famous Channel Tunnel, the 50.5 km undersea tunnel that connects England with France. I was surprised with how smooth the train ride was!! One moment we were rolling through France countryside, and the next moment everything outside went dark. We were only in the tunnel for a short amount of time (it felt like about 10-20 minutes, but I didn´t look at my watch, so I could be pretty off on the time), but the experience was well worth the price of the train ticket.
I arrived in London, completely exhausted, after 23 hours of travel (Madrid to Paris: 13 hours, Paris waiting: 7.5 hours, Paris to London: 2.5 hours), and immediately hopped in a taxi to take me to my hotel. It was a very tiring day, but I was so excited because it was the beginning of my adventure in London!