An Adventure in Madrid!

January 10, 2010

Yesterday, a group of us went on an adventure in Madrid. Using our all day pass for the bus and metro system, we went to the heart of Madrid. Our main goal was to find the Prado art museum at 6 when it would be free for the public. When we got off the metro we started to walk around the city and eventually came upon La Plaza Mayor. There were many street performers and it was really neat to be there after seeing all of these pictures from my Spanish classes. By that time it was noon and we were hungry. Our next goal was to find a place to eat. Because we our poor college students, we wanted to find a cheap meal. We finally came upon a restaurant where a very nice guy came out to greet us and told us that he had an English menu we could read…though we know words for foods in Spanish much of the words on the menus outside we did not know. We ended up getting water (which came in bottles and empty glasses to pour in) and tortilla Espana or something like that which was kind of like an omlette and the five of us split it.

Afterwards we kept walking around and came across a gorgeous Cathedral. It was huge and the artwork inside was wonderful. Right next door was La Palacia Royal and next to that was a garden with statues, trees, and stairs. It was all really beautiful!! I took so many pictures.

Because 6 pm was soon approaching, we really wanted to find the Prado museum, we got there right at 6 pm! There was a lot of beautiful artwork. In my Spanish classes I’ve looked at a lot of Greco and Goya artwork so it was good to see that in person.

Though we had an amazing day, the real adventure started after the Prado Museum. We had walked around already for 8 or so hours and really wanted to back and rest. So we started to head back to the shopping area where we had come out of from the metro. We were pretty hungry again and really craving some sweets so we wanted to find a sweet shop. We walked up and down the busy streets that had a bit of altitude to them and came across a sweets shop. We bought these bakery goods that are a soft bread like a croissent (but not buttery) with chocolate inside and chocolate sprinkles on top, it was really good! Afterwards we started to head back to our hotel, Kris Suites. We needed to take the metro so we did that till we reached one point, left the metro to find a bus to take back to our area. We were at the wrong bus stop so we stopped and asked a man about and he told us we needed to go back 2 stops, get off and take a bus there. We did this but still did not find the right bus stop (it was in an area with multiple stops and we realized that we just needed to go to a different one later). So, we got on the metro once more and finally—we were at the right one right when our bus was pulling up. Que suerte! What Luck! At about 11 o’clock at night, after 10 hours of walking, we were finally done for the day!! Well, not quite, for dinner-a group of us (Kara, Adam S., y Yo) went to the mall near by for dinner. Normally in Spain restaurants and cafes are open very late, but everything was starting to close and we couldn’t decide on what to get…we went to one restaurant…it was closing…walked to another, the same thing! There was a mc’donalds and a burger king…a $1 value menu burger was 3.49 euros there!!

We eventually settled for a little restaurant that served us 8 appetizers and 2 drinks for only 13 euro that Adam and I split. In Spain going to a restaurant only for appetizers and drinks is very common. The appetizers were an assortment of meats and sauces and spices on top of slices of fresh bread..some we weren’t quite sure of but others were really good. Overall, a decent ‘meal’ while traveling abroad. Afterwards we all went back to the hotel. The next day we would be off to Valladolid to meet our host families!