Madrid

We pretty much conquered the city of Madrid in less than 48 hours. After our Italica trip, which was very interesting, we packed for an hour and walked to the bus station for our 6 hour ride to Madrid. When we got there, we successfully figured out the Metro and got to our hostel. The hostel was nicer than expected. It was just the 5 of us in a room. I wish I could point to a map and explain all of this to you, but i'll just tell you about the places we went. We got up early on Sat, had breakfast at the hostel, and figured out our attack plan. We left the hostel at 9AM and didn't return until 9 at night. We went to the Plaza de Espana in Madrid, the temple de Dedod (an Egyptian temple donated to Spain thanking them for something that I forget right now), walked through some Gardens by the Palace, ate churros with chocolate (different than the cinnamon mexican ones sold at amusement parks), toured the Royal Palace and saw the royal armory and royal pharmacy exhibits, saw a bunch of monuments, walked to the Plaza Mayor, went the to Puerta del Sol (a main shopping area with more monuments), and then went to the Prado. We were exhausted by the time we got to the Prado, but we were able to re-energize to see as much as possible. It was really cool to see things that I've studied before. There was a lot of Velazquez and Goya. I got to see Las Meninas by Velazquez and the 3rd of May by Goya. Madrid was a lot chillier than Seville, but luckily no snow or rain. So we bundled up to walk back to the hostel and rest for an hour. Erica, one of my rooommates, has some friends studying in Madrid so they met up with us and we all went to tapas. Slept so well saturday night and then got up again to finish our Madrid plans on Sunday. There's a really large flea market that we went to and then the Museo Reina Sofia which is a modern art museum. This museum had a lot of Picasso and Dali. We got to see Guernica!!!! It was huge and a lot more powerful in person. Slept for most of the bus ride home, obviously.

Its been cool getting to know some other girls from the program. I went to Madrid with Ashley, our roommate Erica, and 2 other girls Tia and Rachel. Its hard to keep up with everyone because everyone lives in different parts of the city, but travelling together was good.

I will put some pictures up tomorrow and answer the questions from my fans (muggs and the Larew family).

Good news! We will officially have internet in our apartment on Thursday!

love,
steph