Madrid

We stayed in a pretty nice hotel in Madrid, and I didn’t know it at the time but it had a pool. Oops. Even though we were exhausted, some of us decided to go out and explore the first night. We went out for tapas, which are basically like Spanish appetizers that people go eat at 10/11/so before actually going out. We would later find that almost every single place we went in Madrid had just about the exact same menu. Bocadillos, which are sandwiches, would disappoint almost any American. They usually just had ham on them. OR cheese. Or some kind of sausage. The tapas places also had calamari, croquetas(fried potato balls with some other stuff in there), chorizo(spicy sausage), and a few other things that, well, we never really did figure out what they were. Some dude stopped us on the street with a little coupon for free chupitos, which we then found out are shots. we went to a few little bars and clubs in Madrid, and by little I mean little. Theyre everywhere, just small. And of course being Americans we were usually all together in a big group and stood out like a sore thumb. Is that a phrase? Anyway, it took a few nights for us to get used to the swing of things. Tapas at 11ish.. bar at like 1-2ish.. etc. We wanted to get out to this 8-level place called El Capital, but didn’t end up making it. We also discovered $1 boxes of sangria. Since we weren’t with our host families yet, we had to buy almost every meal (except free breakfast at the hotel).

There were some really cool things in Madrid, including el Museo del Prado and el Palacio Real. As I’ve told a couple people, I don’t understand why they make such a big deal about the Sistine chapel because almost every ceiling in the palace and a few in the museum were painted, and they are absolutely amazing. Some of the rooms in the palace had porcelain walls and ceilings (believed to be smoking rooms), and all the design was incredibly intricate.

*Madrid Photos