Madrid! And crazy Americans running through the streets of Toledo.

Last weekend was our overnight trip to Madrid.  We left Friday morning and took the AVE (Spain's high speed train) to Madrid and it only took 2 hours.  We arrived and even the train station was cool- it was like a rainforest!  There was even an area with baby turtles.  Walking around Madrid, it was obviously a very cosmopolitan city.  Our hotel was amazing!  During our 1 hour period of free time, Brittany and I found a pizza place down the street from our hotel and it was soooo good!  Then it was time for our tour of the city with our awesome tourguide, Paco!  He was the best.  My favorite part of the tour was when we suddenly entered the Plaza Mayor.  I totally forgot I would be seeing it, so I was really excited when we unexpectedly walked into it!  I'm happy we had beautiful days in Madrid because the plaza was full of people and street performers (those people are scary!).  After the tour, some of my friends in the program and I got some dinner- it was a bit pricey but delicious!  Lindsey and I shared a pitcher of the BEST sangria! 

Then it was time to experience Madrid's nightlife that I always heard about.  We found a sketch convenience store that whipped out a random bottle of tequila from under the counter, and the man got us a lemon, plastic cups, and a plastic knife that broke in .2 seconds haha.  So sketch.  But let's just say all of those ingredients led to an incredibly fun night.  We went to this famous 7-story nightclub that was conveniently down the street from our hotel.  It was called Kapital.  It was 18 euros to get in but it was soo worth it.  It had stage performers, a karaoke room (where people were singing "Under the Sea" in spanish), and different music on different levels.

Plaza Mayor

The Besttttt

Inside Kapital

I got back to the hotel at 5:30 from the club and had to wake up 2 hours later for breakfast and for our day trip to Toledo.  That was ROUGH.  I was dying all day.  But the breakfast was amazinggg.  It was a buffet of pastries, croissants, meats, toast, tortillas, cereal(SO bummed I didn't get any!), bacon, fruit, you get the point.  Way better than the non-existant breakfast I usually get here.  So then we took the train to Toledo.  It was a beautiful city!  I unfortunately missed a lot of the information/tour of the city because I was so out of it.  But I do know from my history class this semester that it was the first territory/big win for the Christians when they were winning back Spain from the Muslims. 

The most memorable part of the day, though, was our running marathon through the streets of Toledo.  We all had to meet in a plaza at 3 to catch our 3:40 train. We were a good ways away from the train station.  So it's a little after 3 and all of a sudden I see some kids in the group start sprinting and they're shouting "Run!  Run!!!"  I had no idea what was going on, I just followed everyone anyways.  It was only a little bit into the run that I found out our train actually left at 3:20!  Which meant we had like 10 minutes to get from point A to point B.  NOT enough time.  So, keep in mind this is in the middle of siesta, when the Spaniards are calm and relaxed (not that they ever rush anyways), and all they see is a huge group of 20 Americans trailing behind an older spaniard (Paco definitely had to be in his 40s, but he completely out-ran all of us!), just full-on running through the cobble-stone streets of Toledo.  Let's just say, that run must have done a number on all of us because we were sore for days after that trip.  But luckily, we just made it in time for the train, because it left just a few short minutes after that.

Toledo

Our sprint to catch the train!

When we got back from Toledo, a bunch of us went to the Reina Sofia (said to be the best modern museum in Spain).  There we saw a crust from a slice of bread on a podium, a lot of high-heels on display, and famous paintings from Picasso.  The most interesting part was the room dedicated to September 11th.  There were news articles all over the walls from countries all around the world after 9/11 happened.  It was crazy.  Getting back to the hotel was interesting.  Lindsey and I stared at a map of what we thought was Madrid for literally 10 minutes until we realized it was a map of Toledo.  Hey, we were very sleep deprived!

So we got back to the hotel, took a little siesta, and had dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Afterwards, a few of us went to this famous churros place.  People like Stevie Wonder have eaten there!  The night was still young (but I was exhausted out of my mind) but I refused to call it a night on my last night in Madrid.  So Lindsey and I went to the karaoke bar we had been eyeing up.  It was cool because they were all spaniards, singing spanish songs for the most part.  But we would get occasional songs in English, like Lady Gaga, or Bon Jovi (the spaniards love their Bon Jovi!).  It was funny to hear them because they would pronounce things like diner, "dee-ner" lol.  Sadly, after Lindsey and I finally chose a song to sing, we handed in our request too late because the bartender said "no more requests.  There's an hour and half wait and we close at 3."  And we handed it in at 1:30 :(

When I got back, around 2:30 (so early for spanish life!), I took the most AMAZING shower EVER!  So I've been deprived of hot showers ever since I got to Spain.  They're hot at my house sometimes (sometimes I get FREEZING ones), but the water pressure sucks so it's not a good shower either way.  The shower at our hotel had a double shower head, so it was twice the greatness.  I blasted the hot shower and literally stayed in there for a good 30-40 minutes.  Longest shower I've ever taken, but I will never forget it :)

After a whopping 4 hours of sleep that night, I had another wonderful breakfast.  But I still didn't have time for cereal :(.  Then our last stop in Madrid was the Prado Museum.  Paco was, yet again, a terrific tourguide.  We saw/learned about the famous paintings by El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya.  Then we sadly hopped on the train and said goodbye to Madrid.  I loved it and it was definitely one of my favorite places thus far.

The group and Paco outside the Prado Museum!