Tuesday, November 8, 2011

My future home (hopefully!) Madrid

Plaza Mayor
This past weekend I spent in Madrid with all of the SMU girls at Franklin, and we met up with many more SMU kids in Madrid. We arrived late Friday night, ready to go out and get some drinks and tapas, and unfortunately the weather was not in our favor! We were greeted by some cold rain drizzle. But that didn't stop us- we went to a bar called El Tigre where you get massive drinks and an even greater amount of tapas for 6 euros. In Switzerland if I was to get a sangria that size, and 1 plate of tapas it probably would have costed the equivalent of 20 euros. The bar was completely packed, it was hard to move around, and there were Americans everywhere! I also happened to see one of my friends from high school in the bar without even planning it. I am constantly reminded how small the world actually is over here.



Sol

The next day we woke up and walked around the city from 11-7. The weather was cloudy, but no rain during the day. We got to see the Plaza Mayor, a palace whose name I can not remember, the Prado, and Retiro park! On one of the main Metro stops for tourists, Sol there are many people who dress up as characters to make money after they lost their jobs. This dude on the left is one of the examples of the people that appear to not have heads! 
Palace
The Metro system in Madrid makes it extremely easy to get around and the day went off without a hitch. For lunch we stopped in a restaurant and got stuck at the tiniest table for 7 people and it was so short you couldn't even fit your legs underneath it. It was really tasty food. After lunch we saw the Prado, a very famous art museum in Spain. My freshman year I took an Art History class as one of my general ed classes, and at the Prado I got to see at least 7 of the pictures we studied and it was unbelievable how magnificent they were in person.



Across from the Prado

Posing like Goya


 
















Retiro entrance
After the Prado we had to stop by Starbucks for an energy boost and then were ready to walk through Retiro Park. After my trip to New York last spring break I fell in love with Central Park.. but Central Park has nothing on Retiro!! So beautiful. It probably also helped that we were walking through it at dusk and all the colors on the trees were incredible and ahh I just love Madrid! What isn't available in the picture of the lake in Retiro is all of the paddle boats that were on it just moments before this picture was taken! I can't imagine spending a day in that park on the paddle boats, going for a run, or just sitting and watching the little kids ride bikes. It was phenomenal!
Absolutely incredible

Lake in Retiro

Glass Palace in Retiro






Churros con chocolate!
 For dinner that night the woman at the hostel told us her favorite bar and tapas restaurant that we wanted to check out. She wrote down the name of the place, and the address and gave us a map. It was in a completely Spanish part of town and there were no tourists around and it took us 45 minutes to find where the restaurant should be- and to discover that it no longer is there! Very unfortunate. It was now 9 o clock we were all starving ready to eat and we had to stumble into a restaurant which only led to communication confusion between us and the staff! We ended up getting a lot of different appetizers and splitting and after that we took off for the classic dessert to have in Spain; Churros dipped in Chocolate. The place we went to was packed and it took about 15 minutes in line to get the churros and chocolate and they weren't quite what I expected, but they were still wonderful. We then went to a bar known as "Cave Bar" in English because the inside is decorated to be like the inside of a cave. It wasn't as crowded as El Tigre which was nice but unfortunately we had to get up at 545am to catch the metro to get to the airport, so I wanted at least 2 hours of sleep so we didn't get to stay there for long.

I may have only been in Spain for 48 hours, but I can not express how much I loved Madrid and the culture and the scenery and everything!!

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