Madrid Weekend! January 28-30

The rest of the week was normal like always, didn’t want to bore anyone with details.  Bonus though, I did buy a Longchamp bag that I’ve wanted foreverrr for half the price it would have been in the states.  Like Kelly would say, win.  Other than that, it was a typical school week besides my little bro turning 16!! Wahoo.

Side note: I officially have internet, I think.  The internet lady said I had to pay for something but I plugged my internet card in and it worked so I’m gonna go with it.  The skyping begins finally!!

Thursday night I began packing for Madrid.  I came to Spain with a huge camping backpack for weekend trips so I don’t have to check bags on every flight I take.  It ended up packing really well, I just don’t know how I’m going to pack 10 days worth of clothes in this little thing for our two big breaks.  I’ll cross that bridge when I get there I guess!

One downside to traveling = EARLY mornings.  I was up around 5:15 am to pack up last minute things and head to the bus station for Madrid!  I swear I locked up every valuable thing I had in my backpack and even had a lock on my purse because we heard the pick-pocketers were pretty bad there!  Yes, we even wore those dumb passport necklaces that fit underneath your clothes.  Kelly, Audrey, and I met Lauren and Caroline there for our bus ride at 7 am.  The buses were organized and pretty nice and clean… we’d have to get used to them since we’d practically be living on them for the next few months in order to get anywhere!  The bus ride to Madrid was around 5 hours.  We met a guy from UConn on the bus that was also studying in Granada and traveling to Madrid to visit friends. Let’s just say he didn’t know how to shut up until we finally gave him the hint we all wanted to sleep.  When we finally got to Madrid we took the metro (again, great system… why don’t we have something that easy in Chicago… and no the “el” doesn’t count) to where the hostel website told us to get off.  Everything was fine until we all realized NO ONE wrote down the hostel address, first big mistake haha.  A local hotel helped us find our way and we were really just around the corner.  The hostel, La Posada de Huertas was an international youth hostel so a lot of kids our age were staying there.  It was no 5 star hotel like I got spoiled with in Italy (I quadruple appreciate everything Elvir did for us then!!) but we’d survive.  The room we stayed in we were sharing with 3 other girls… it turned out to be a girl from Buenos Aires who was traveling alone for a while (weird) and 2 friends that were from San Diego.  All of them were really nice, but I will admit it was very different to be sharing a room and bathroom with complete strangers.  Another bonus this hostel had was lockers (that had built in locks) in the rooms so we didn’t have to worry about our stuff getting taken.

The lovely room!  You can see the lockers by the  back beds and everything was bunk style.

After settling in, we went to a small restaurant and ordered “menu del dia,” one of those 3 course lunches I’ve blogged about before.  It was probably one of my favorite meals I’ve had in Spain so far.  I had pasta with chorizo (spicy sausage) and a fried fish for my second course… we all were mad that we forgot to take pictures before we scraped our plates (I think we were all hungrier than we thought).  We began traveling around the city and got extremely lucky because our hostel ended up being in the middle of everything.  

The group at our favorite restaurant!
Me, Lauren, Caroline, Kelly and Audrey

Our first stop was Plaza Mayor, the biggest plaza in Madrid.  It had a bunch of little shops and restaurants and a ton of open space for people to enjoy.  I’m sure more people would have been out there if it wasn’t so damn cold!  We also found the Christopher Columbus statue in the plaza.  There is a “sister” statue in Granada that represents when Isabel and Fernando gave Columbus the money to travel to the new world.  The one in Plaza Mayor represented when Isabel and Fernando first asked Columbus to go on this adventure.

Plaza Mayor

Sign in the plaza.. it was huge!

The famous Christopher Columbus statue.

Next stop was “Puerta del Sol” or in English, Gateway of the Sun.  Ironically enough when we stepped foot in the plaza it began down pouring.   There wasn’t too much to see there besides more shops and restaurants and a statue of Carlos III who actually ordered the original gateway to the city of Madrid to be knocked down when he ruled… rude.  We weaved in and out of stores on our way to the Prado Museum where there are many famous works of art.  Free entrance started at 6 pm so we killed time at a café and ordered Cola Cao (basically Spanish version of hot chocolate, my senora makes it for me all the time).  The Prado Museum was absolutely incredible.  We appreciated all the works of art that much more because we had studied many of them in our Spanish art history classes over the years.  One of the well known pieces, Las Meninas by Velazquez, was much bigger than I imagined but very interesting to see. 

The Prado wore us out, so we went home and got ready to get dinner.  We picked a place to eat in one of the main touristy places – MISTAKE.  The food was horrible and outrageously priced, lesson learned.  Let’s just say I got a sandwich with one piece of meat, sangria and a little ham puff for the same price as my 3 course delicious lunch.  I think it’s fair to say that put me in a pretty bad mood but I snapped out of it when we got back to the hostel.  We hung out downstairs in the kitchen/rec room with people from all over the world that were staying there as well.  That’s probably the coolest part of staying in hostels; you meet people from all over the world and learn about so many different cultures.  We met some guys from France that were studying for the semester in Madrid.  It was pretty funny because their English was horrible, our French was non-existent and they could barely speak Spanish… I swear the whole night we were saying “what?” “huh?” but we just went with the flow.  My favorite line they said was “can I pay you a drink?” instead of “can I buy you a drink?” … it’s funny how languages don’t translate very clearly into each other but I’m sure that’s how my senora feels on a daily basis with my Spanish.   We went out with them for a little while since it was one of their birthdays but decided not to wait in line for the discotecas.

We slept in a little bit on day 2 and got breakfast at the hostel… everyone in this country survives on bread and butter and that’s IT.  Our hostel offered a free walking tour (that was 3 hours long!) so we decided to try it out.  We got to the first destination (Puerta del Sol) and the guide decided to describe a bear statue and describe how it represented the city of Madrid for about 10 minutes.  It took us that short to realize this tour wasn’t for us so we set out our own way.  We headed to Palacio Royal or the Royal Palace in Madrid.

Waiting to get inside!

The gorgeous palace from inside the courtyard.

Inside a guard hut in the courtyard.

The view from the outside was incredible; we couldn’t wait to see the inside.  Of course we were typical tourists and purchased the “tour phones” to tell us the history of every room.  I wish we could have taken pictures inside because this place was ridiculous.  The main stairway (check my fb album) was intricate enough but after seeing the other rooms it seemed like a 2 year old could have done that.  My favorite room was probably the throne room.  The king and queen sat on large velvet chairs with bronze/gold lions leading up to their seats.  The walls were woven with gold plated silk and the chandeliers seemed like they probably weighed close to a million pounds each with all the diamonds hanging from them.  We saw rooms like “the smoking room” and even a pharmacy (definitely didn’t know they had those in palaces).  They even allowed us in the armory and we were able to see all the armor of the previous fighters.  Little kids even had armor, we couldn’t figure out if they actually fought or not though – scary to think about!

After Palacio we got menu del dia round 2 and went shopping for touristy things once again.  Kelly and Audrey decided to go to another art museum, the Reina Sofia, but Caroline, Lauren and I were too exhausted so we went back to rest before the night.  For dinner we went to a restaurant close to our hostel that was known for their Sangria.  Lauren and I got paella (the typical rice dish in Spain) FINALLY!  It had seafood in it and was delicious.  I hope my senora makes me some homemade as well since there are a million ways to make it.  Madrid is known to have a nightlife that doesn’t begin to the early morning, so we wanted to experience Madrid the real way.  We didn’t leave our hostel until probably 1:30 am to find someplace to go out.  I cannot explain how crowded the streets were at this time, it was ridiculous.  Picture the streets of Chicago when work is getting out for the day.  Another wakeup call that we have much different cultural norms than Spain.  We’d heard of Kapital, a famous discoteca in Spain and since we had discount cards we decided to go.  Funny joke, the cover to get INSIDE was 17.50 euro and drinks were 12 euro each… we said no thanks.  Our trip to find another place turned into us sneaking into a hotel to find a bathroom, of course we picked one of the nicer hotels in Madrid and the hotel staff was not very happy with us, oops.  After getting creeped on by Spanish guys too much, (I know I keep repeating this, but it’s like we’re some precious doll or something and they’ve never seen an American before!) we headed back to the hostel.

We woke up bright and early to head to “el Rastro” one of the biggest flea markets in Spain.  The weather must have dropped a million degrees because we were all absolutely freezing.  I even gave in and bought men’s wool socks from a random street vendor for 1 euro so my toes didn’t get frostbite.  I’m exaggerating, but that’s what they felt like.  I bought more scarves, I’m obsessed with the ones here, and we headed to get some lunch.  We stopped for a quick bocadillo at a small ma and pa place and headed back to the hostel to grab our luggage and head to the bus station once again.  Of course I sat in front of an African man that probably hadn’t bathed in 10 years so that was an enjoyable ride.  We were all so tired that we passed out for most of it anyways and were finally home sweet home Granada around 8:00.

My overall opinion of Madrid was that I really liked it, but it was too touristy for me.  I know I’m biased since I live in Granada, but I like it so much better than a big city like Madrid.  It was a little dirty, and too Americanized since there are so many tourists there.  Definitely glad I got the chance to visit though, I’ll never forget that Palacio!  Next up, Sevilla, Spain in 4 short days.  This study abroad experience is going to fly by too quick!