If I could, I would move to spain in a heartbeat. That being said, the moment our flight touched down in Madrid was that happiest moment of our spring break so far. We took a cab ride from the airport to our hostel which was probably a mistake since we could have taken the metro for about 1/15 of the price but it was late at night and we were anxious to get settled. After the cab dropped us off we wandered for a good 20 mintues trying to find our place. I think we were thrown off by the fact that our hostel was not an entire building but rather just one floor. The Hostel did not even have a sign outside, the only way we figured it out was by looking at the names on the doorbells for the building we thought it was suppose to be in! Although we were skptical from the looks of it from the outside, the inside of the rooms were quite nice. I did not like the showers (five of them) that everyone staying in the hostel shared, but considering Emily and I had not showered in the last four days it was nice to get clean. Before arriving we had heard how the night life in Madrid is crazy and that its the clubbing capital of the world. We were all excited to go out but once we ate dinner (paella, i tried mussels for the first time!), which was considerably late, we came to the conclusion that we were exhausted and dancing in a club all night was somewhat less than appealing. So we went to bed. I'm glad we did that though because we woke up early the next morning and began touring the city. First stop, the Almunena Cathedral. I have now seen like a thousand churches on this trip but I was surprised that I actually really liked this one. The ceilings were painted in a various array of bright colors and shapes. It was something a little different, very pretty, very spanish, and I was impressed. Right next to the Cathedral was the Palacio Real de Madrid or the royal palace of Madrid. It was a huge white beautiful buiding and signifcantly less gaudy than the court of Versallias. While we were there they gaurds were doing some sort of..umm... thing? ha Not sure what they were doing it lasted for almsot 10 minutes and they kept getting into lines but then they would fall out and appear disorganized so who knows what was suppose to really happen.
The Palace... Check out those beautiful blue skies!
Have I mentioned yet that it was absolutely GEORGOUS outside?! It is amazing how a change from the rainy cold weather of paris to the warm sunny weather of Madrid could change our moods so drastically. After the palace we strolled on over to the Plaza de Espana which is just a
large square with a big monument in the middle located on the street Gran Via. There were some vendors selling little souviners/junk that Emily and I looked at for a while before heading down Gran Via to check out one of the most popular shopping streets in the city. The long street led us to Parque del Retiro where we spent the majority of the rest of the day. We ate lunch at a little resturant in the park and Emily and I had our first taste of Sangria (and by first I mean first time while in spain of course). Yum... it was delicious and it was so nice just to sit in the park and relax in the sun. After eating we wandered around the park for a while. There is a big pond in the middle where lots of people were out on canoes. We thought about getting one but we were being cheep so we passed. We walked around the city until 530ish, checking out different plazas, doing a little shopping (they had topshop!!) and maxing out on some delicious candy that we ate while chillen by the fountain in Puerta del Sol. Then we headed to the airport to catch our flight to barcelona!!
large square with a big monument in the middle located on the street Gran Via. There were some vendors selling little souviners/junk that Emily and I looked at for a while before heading down Gran Via to check out one of the most popular shopping streets in the city. The long street led us to Parque del Retiro where we spent the majority of the rest of the day. We ate lunch at a little resturant in the park and Emily and I had our first taste of Sangria (and by first I mean first time while in spain of course). Yum... it was delicious and it was so nice just to sit in the park and relax in the sun. After eating we wandered around the park for a while. There is a big pond in the middle where lots of people were out on canoes. We thought about getting one but we were being cheep so we passed. We walked around the city until 530ish, checking out different plazas, doing a little shopping (they had topshop!!) and maxing out on some delicious candy that we ate while chillen by the fountain in Puerta del Sol. Then we headed to the airport to catch our flight to barcelona!!
One of the Plazas... this one is across from the Palacio Real
We arrived with an hour till boarding, nicely done Laura and Emily, you had an amazing day and are right on schedule!! ARGH! If only that were true. While we did have a great day and we did arrive early, we were sitting at the wrong gate!!!! Now, we are not actually that stupid. We just sat down in the wrong place, our tickets did say gate H -18 but apparantly it was changed to gate H-28. Our only mistake was not checking the boards for possible changes. Who knows why it did not occur to us that maybe we were in the wrong place until the time our flight was scheduled to take off but when that light blub in our heads went off we SPRINTED to the correct gate just to watch our plane pulling away. Fantastic. The only staff member we could find was from another airline and being the horrible person that she was, she was completely unhelpful. She told us that because we were flying with a different company she could not tell us where we had go to deal with our missed flight. So I asked her to "pretend" that we were flying with her and then inform us of where we should go. Surprise surprise it ended up being the same place our company had to go. This little mishap cost us 130 euro each. Lame. But I still really enjoyed madrid :)
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