Madrid

i got into Madrid around the middle of the day on weds. I meet lynsey at the hostel that we were staying at and we decided to explore the city a little bit. The weather wasn't very good, it was cold and raining but we were excited to see madrid. First we got some "churros con chocolate" from a little coffee shop just off of plaza mayor. The churros were pretty good and we kept walking. All of the sudden we walk around a corner and randomly run into the royal palace (real palace) and the really big cathedral next door. We were both amazed at the sheer greatness of both buildings and walked around and took pictures for a while. We continued through some parks and such, taking more pictures, and eventually we meet up with Kathryn for dinner. After dinner we meet up with some other carls that are studying in madrid (jojo, alfredo, eli, etc) and had some sangraia in this cool little place in the basement of a building.

The next day the weather was much nicer and we headed out on our adventures, lynsey and I went on a tour of the royal palace (yes we got to go inside but we couldn't take pictures), it was so amazing inside, its hard to describe. Irene got in on her flight during the day and we meet up with her, she was always staying at the same hostel, so that was cool. Lynsey and I ended up hanging out that night with a couple girls we meet at the hostel, one was from panama and the other was from south africa. They were both really cool and we ended up going back to the basement bar for sangraia again. They are trying to find an apartment to live in madrid for a few months.

Friday we went on this really cool free walking tour of madrid, it lasted 3.5 hours and saw so many different things, ate tapas, and learned a lot about the history of spain and madrid. I thought that a 3.5 walking tour was goign to be pretty boring and too long but i really enjoyed it and the time past quickly. after that we took a nap in the big park in madrid ( i think i slept for over an hour on a bench, it was awesome) after that we headed for some really good gelato from a shop on the way back to the hostel.

saturday after sleeping in for a while, we headed over to the museo del prado. there is a crazy amount of famous art works there ( in the thousands) including picasso's Guernica. after some more churros con chocolate we chilled at the hostel for a while before finding a indian restraunt for dinner. Sunday moring we woke up early (even earlier than planned since we forgot about day light savings) and headed to the really big open air market, it was crazy once it got going, it took a really long time just to walk through it and there was so much stuff. Sunday night we headed to the Real Madrid game. This was one of my favorite parts of traveling, the game was insane, the stadium is huge. It seats 80,000 (used to seat 120,000 but they had to conform to UEFA regulations) and there were only a couple empty seats at the game we went to. even through we sat way up in the nose bleeds it was so much fun, the atmosphere was amazing. The place went nuts when the other teams was awarded a pk during the first half when real madrid was winning 1-0, it was pretty crazy. Real ended up winning 3-2 but it was a close game, the other team hit the post with a couple minutes left in regulation.

Monday we headed to the airport to fly to athens.


pictures at the following link:


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025716&l=f57d4&id=19103095