A day full of Madrid

MADRID Finally, returning to where it all began, the first city I ever went to in Europe, and the first city I fell in love with in Spain.  I first came to Spain almost exactly 3 years ago with my high school program.  The first place we stopped in was Madrid, and we spent almost 4 whole days there.  I loved it and I vowed then that I would return here, only not as just a tourist, but as a Spainard, speaking the language and living among them.  And here I am, back here in Spain, living just like I said I would be.

Our first day we arrived there around 5 at night and had the rest of the night for free.  So of course the first thing we all do is decide to get food.  But not after checking out our cool new diggs for the next three days.  Boy, when AIFS gives us a place to stay, they don't skimp.  I loved the hotel!! The room was huge, the bathroom was really nice and we had basically a whole floor to ourselves, or at least a section of the floor because there were so many of us.  So this is our room, and then of course this is my bag that I managed to stuff all of my clothes into for a whole weekend or so.  It fit enough clothes and other things for about 5 days, I was impressed
with myself.  This room was super sweet, and I loved not having to worry about running out of hot water...or being able to turn on the heat, and everything else that comes with the luxury of staying in a hotel.  I loved it, although I did miss my senora's food!! You don't realize how much you miss home cooked meals, and comfort until you're on the road for a long time.  Traveling is fun, but not when you have to buy two meals a day and are constantly on the move.

So the first thing we all did was go get food.  None of us could agree on a place to eat, because we wanted someplace to sit but not terribly expensive, so we ended up at a little Kebab place.  I had my first Kebab!  It was okay...I'm not a huge fan, and I made a huge mess of it when I tried to eat it, so it was kind of a fail.  But I ate it, then we headed back to the room because we were so exhausted.  We ended up spending the rest of the night hanging around in the room and found a cool channel that played only music videos.  It was quite comical because while a majority of the music videos were American there were def a few that were very strange and Spanish.  Like there was this one that had people eating out of a dog food bowl and this old guy was very rich and taking pleasure in killing them, it was super weird.  But we spent the night away watching fun music videos, dancing around the room and planning for our full day in Madrid on Wednesday.

We decided to get up at for breakfast at 9 A.M, and let me tell you, that breakfast was awesome!! It was really good and we all stuffed our faces with croissants and other foods because we knew we'd only get a good breakfast like that for 2 days, the rest of our breakfasts would be only toast at the hostel, and I'm used to only toast in the morning.  So me and my friends stuffed our faces with breakfast and headed off to the Museo de Reina Sofia.

El Museo de Reina Sofia!! (The Museum of Queen Sophie)  I couldn't tell you when she was queen, or why she was so important that she got a museum named after her, but she did!  And in there is the famous Picasso piece called "Guernica"!  In case you don't know what this piece is, here you go!! No I did not take it, no pictures are allowed to be taken of this piece, I stole it from the internet.  But this is what it is, and it's massive!! The painting is literally massive.  It was really cool to see it too, and to know what it's about and see the intricate detail that's there.  It's basically a drawing about the bombing in Pais Basque during the Spainish Civil war.  It shows all the anguish and pain, and suffering, yada yada, yada.  It was super cool to see though, and this museum has a ton of art by Picasso in it.  The museum also had some cool Dali and other artists; Valazquez, Goya.  It was really cool.  We ended up getting to Reina Sofia at about 10:30, stayed till around 11:45 and then headed over to the Park.  I liked staying around the museum though, because the last time I was there I was hardly able to appreciate everything that I was seeing.  Going through college I have learned so much more about Spainish art and Spainish history that I simply appreciate these things more.  I never appreciated them 3 years ago when I was there, and now I'm so happy I returned and can appreciate these pieces.  It's also really exciting to see the things you learned about in class.  I think that's what's the most exciting part for me. :) I was a super Spanish nerd while we were on our trip.

After we hit up the Museum, me and my friends headed over for the Retiro Park, we really wanted to see the Crystal Castle that was supposedly in the middle of the park, but we couldn't find it.  We really only had about a half hour in the park because we needed to be back at the hotel for 1 for our tour of the Royal Palace.  We didn't end up finding the Crystal Castle, but we did get some great pictures.  He's a few pics of me and my friends in the garden.  So this is me at the garden, and below that one is me and my friends, me, Jen, Austin, Bree and Allie.  I really liked being back at the garden, it was really pretty.

After we went to the garden it was about 12:30 and we needed to head back to the hotel for our tour of the Prado Museum and the Royal Palace.  However, taking the metro is not quick or easy, well it's easy, but not quick.  So we had to find the metro nearest to us, then find the right line.  We realized we had to switch lines, so we def needed as much time as possible for travel.  Well...funny story...we needed to be at the hotel about 5-10 min early because we needed to meet the bus and it couldn't wait for us for forever.  So with knowing that we would be left behind if we were late we ended up sprinting from one line to the next and then sprinting out of the metro.  We got about half way up the 2 flights of stairs and ran out of steam.  we got to the hotel in time though and went off on our excursion to the Prado Museum!

Me at the Prado

I'm so happy I got to return to the Prado Museum, and it's one of the most famous, def most famous in Spain, and one of the most famous in the world.  They have some of the greatest Spanish art there is.  They also have Las Meninas!! It's a really famous painting of some of the royal family and shows a new type of painting, with dimension and other cool things.  I was so excited to see it again, but I also wanted to see some Goya stuff, like the one called "Saturn Eating his Son" Yea I know it sounds gross, but it's really cool and I learned about it so it would have been cool.  We also got to see "La Maja Desnuda" and "La Maja Vestida" (The naked girl, and The clothed girl).  They were really edgy pieces back then, and Goya got in a ton of trouble with the Catholic church because of them.  But overall I really enjoyed the Prado again, I only wish I could have stayed longer and wandered, because there is a ton of art in there and it would have been nice to see more.  Oh yea, and did you noticed that I'm wearing only a long sleeve shirt, no jacket?  Well that's because it's warmer here.  But that day was actually the only day that was warm.  I had a sweatshirt in the bus because it was colder that night and in the morning, but middle of the day was really nice.  It actually ended up snowing in Segovia when we went to visit there.

So after the museum we went to the Palacio Real.  It was pretty neat being there again.  Everything is realyl ornate and expensive.  They don't use the Royal Palace anymore for a residence, only for special events and such things.  But the place is huge and pretty cool to see inside.  Of course the views of Granada from the Palace plaza is really pretty.  We stayed there and got the grand tour of the Palace for about 2 hours and from there we had free time for the rest of the day.  After that we were all pretty hungry and split up to find food and meander around Madrid.  Me and my friends ended up finding this awesome little chocolate con churros place, and the churros were really good, so was the chocolate.  Then Austin and I were still hungry so we went to a pizza place that was right next door.  The four of us, Bree, Austin, Jen and I split a pizza, and then liked it so much we got another pizza!  That pretty much was our dinner because it was a little late for lunch but too early for dinner (perfect time for dinner in the U.S. though, it was around 5).

After we were well fed we decided to take a stroll over to Plaza Mayor, only my favorite Plaza in Spain.  I don't even know why I like it, I just do it.  The main facade is really pretty and decorated, and there's restaurants all over the place, people everywhere and an overall really good atmosphere.  Of course I felt awesome telling my friends you have to go to Plaza Mayor, and when we got there we were all so excited.  We literally just kind of hung out near one of the lamp posts and took some pictures.  We saw some cops training or doing drills with some horses and took in the sights.  There was this really strange goat thing in the middle of the plaza that turned out to be an outfit for a gypsy to get into and make some money.  There was also this really annoying baby face in a stroller, it made the most annoying noises and that dude was NOT getting any money because he was too annoying.  But the Plaza was fun, we just hung out.  Then we got bored and decided we wanted to just relax for the night in the hotel, as it was going to be one of our last nights of comfort.  We knew that getting to the hostel would be overwhelming and all go go go.  So we decided to head back, buy a few bottles of wine and kick back in one of our hotel rooms.  That's what we did.

But not before stopping by Puerta del Sol, one of the other big areas to go see.  They have a statue of the bear and the tree, which is Madrid's mascot thing, and we were also going to take the metro from that station to our hotel.  Well, that Plaza held a lot of surprises for us.  The first surprise of the night; a TON of police officers.  We weren't really sure why but it def made us feel a bit safer, if not confused.  But we didn't think much of it.  Then we saw.....CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW.  Yup, you read that right.  This guy definitly deserved my money for a picture, because he knew how to target the tourists.  And I'm a sucker for Captain Jack Sparrow, and defnitly for Johnny Depp.  Me and Austin saw him and went, OMG!! We pooled about 1 euro or so together and walked over to get our picture.  My night was officially made.  :)  I got a picture with Captain Jack Sparrow, granted he was a poser, but he was a damn good one.  He even had the little swag down to  T.  Bree took our picture and we were happy as...well happy as ever.  My night was made. Then we went over to where the bear statue was and took a few pictures there.  We got photo bombed, and in case any of you don't know what that means, it's basically when a random stranger sees your taking a picture and gets in the shot sneakily (or not so sneakily) and poses or makes a funny face.  Yup, we went around to the other side and some guys smoking a cigarette photo-bomed our picture, but then was very nice and offer to take one for us.  So it was overall a good experience.

So we headed over to the metro station after taking our pictures and got a very interesting surprise.  We were a little confused as to why there were police lined up across the metro stairs, not doing anything, just kind of hanging around providing security.  But they def all had the baton things and masks, it was a little freaky.  Then we walked downstairs and saw that there was a huge protest going on down in the metro system.  There were people chanting and it was impossible to get through the opening to the metro lines.  We originally hung around a bit to try to see what they were saying and what they were protesting, but we all had a feeling that it could have gone wrong real quick, because there were tons of people surrounding them and none of us wanted to end up getting yelled at by foreign cops or getting caught in something like that.  So we ducked out of there real quick and headed for the other entrance, which thankfully was not full of protesters or anything of the such.  We found out later that they were protesting the fact that the government cut the metro line hours and jacked up the price, so I guess they were all mad about that and protesting.

So we headed back and went to a little store that sold some wine.  We found really good wine for 2 euro, and we got some red, some white and some sangria, which turned out to be very very gross.  We ended up mixing the red wine with the sangria to make it better.  But my night was really good.  That full day in Madrid was a ton of fun and I def had a good time hanging out with my friends.  The next day held some great adventures, so the three of us hung out in Jen's hotel room, drank some wine, watched some music videos on t.v and bonded for the night.  Here's just some more pictures of random things that I did throughout the day.  We found this bronze statue of a man looking at some ruins of a church. Oh yea! and when we bought our wine they had Jamon Iberico, which is the lamb legs hanging around.  It's pretty normal to see now, but I thought you all would like to see it it.



 That's all I have to say about my day in Madrid.

More to come!! Love you all!