Madrid y otras cosas

These past few days have been pretty fun!

On Thursdays, I only have one class and it´s at 8:40am so I have basically the whole day off! So this past Thursday, me, my roommate Sara, and one of our friends in the Fund Kim went on a mini adventure through the streets of Toledo. Ok it wasn´t really an adventure, our main goal was to get our "carnet joven" which is a free card that students can get while traveling in Europe, and it can get you discounts and stuff into museums and probably lots of other places. We did that and checked out some shops and went to the biblioteca publica (which is pretty nearby, but we had to walk up like 8 or 9 flights of stairs to get to the actual library part). It was really cool though! They have lots of CDs and DVDs in spanish and I think some in English too, so Kim and I got library cards to make use of it during our semester! Thursday night was pretty chill, I wanted to get some rest before Madrid the next day, but my unfortunate sleeping habits didn´t really allow me to...que lastima. Oh well!

Madrid was really cool though, although I think I will need to go again and spend a full weekend there. I really wanted to see El Museo del Prado, but there wasn´t really enough time in our day to not feel rushed through it. But what I did see of Madrid was amazing! Our first stop was El Palacio Real, or the Royal Palace. We spent about 2 hours there, and wow...probably the most ornate thing I have ever seen! They don´t allow pictures inside but I could have gone crazy taking pictures of all the rooms. We had a tour guide who led our little group through the palace and explained everything and what all the rooms were for and what they represented. I brought my Rick Steves book that I got for my birthday along (see, I´m using the books Mom and Dad!) so I was able to read along and make sure that the tour guide wasn´t lying to us haha. It would have been so cool to be royalty in Spain back in the day, and just live in that place. There were separate rooms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for changing clothes, for sleeping, for smoking, for silver, for porcelein, for armory, everything! When I walked into a room and I thought it was the most ornate, detailed, and beautifully decorated room I had ever seen, I would walk into the next one that was even more beautiful. My favorite room was this one that was decorated in an Oriental fashion, which was apparently trendy in Spain at the time. Actually, I´m surprised at a lot of the Asian influences I have seen around here, I didn´t think there would be that many.

Then we went to El Museo del Jamon for lunch...yes, that is the ham museum (it´s just the restaurant name though, I´m pretty sure they don´t have like exhibits about ham and stuff). Guess what we ate? Chicken...haha. And I should note here that the bread everywhere is so amazingly delicious, I can just eat loaves of it by itself...but the ketchup here tastes like vinegar. Don´t put ketchup on your french fries. Which reminds me, I have to make it out to the McDonalds in Plaza de Zocodover sometime and see how it stacks up to the US. Mmmmm.

Then we had a couple hours of free time before we had to get back on the bus to go to Toledo, so my group of girls checked out the shopping scene! There were a lot of trendy stores (and a giant H&M) and sales all over the place, but most of the stuff on sale was still pretty expensive. But me and my bargain-hunting self found a cute gray t-shirt with sequins for 3 euros! Haha but that was all I bought in Madrid, and I took some pictures but my camera died so I need to charge it first and I will upload them. Then it was time to head home, so I need to go back to Madrid some weekend to experience more! That won´t be hard to do, since it is so close to Toledo.

Friday night a group of us went to the tapas bar right down the street, Enebros, where I tried a delicious drink called a Tinto Verano. So good! Then we went to O´Briens, an Irish pub near the PLaza de Zocodover. Fun was had by all haha. I like that bar because it plays American music and stuff, which reminds me of home and that is nice sometimes. We went there last night again also, and then to a discoteca called Tsunami para bailar! That was really fun. I think I need to resign myself to the fact that I will perpetually smell like smoke here...people smoke everywhere, and I still smell like it from last night. Gross.

Well, today I am going to finish up some of my homework (I hardly really have any! It´s nice) and then probably head down to O´Briens around 1am with the rest of the Vikings fans here to watch the game, since that is the only place that is showing it. I figure I wouldn´t be able to fall asleep by then anyway, so I might as well go! I can always take a siesta tomorrow...oh how I love my siestas...

Muchos besos y abrazos!
Angie