"Madrid"

Last weekend, of February 19th, 11 friends and I went to Madrid (Thursday – Sunday). Instead of doing the normal, poor college student thing by staying at a hostel, we decided to go a cheaper/more fun route and rent out an apartment for the weekend. Mind you, this apartment was quite small and was supposed to be for 9-10 people tops, but we crammed in and worked it out! There were 4 boys, and 8 girls. Madrid was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! We visited all of the main areas in Madrid: Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol, Plaza de Oriente, el Palacio Real Madrid, Parque del Retiro, Cathedral de la Almudena, Plaza de España, Mercado de San Miguel, Botanical Gardens, and the Prado (more but i truly can’t remember all of them! We visited so many different places!).
All of the plazas were absolutely amazing! But my favorite would have to be Plaza de . It was my favorite because it was a large plaza/park that had a pond in the center of it where you could rent a paddle boat and just hang out around it! It had tons of jungle gyms, gardens (connected to the botanical gardens and the gardens of the Prado) and steps (like the Spanish steps in Italy) that lead to the water. Not only was it fun to people watch, there were TONS of street performers from mimes, to circus acts, to parkour, to dressed up crazies that looked like they were headless! It was a blast!
As for the Prado, it was pretty amazing seeing centuries of artwork that is just as famous today as it was hundreds of years ago! It was magnificently beautiful and definitely was cool to see. However, I was kind of shocked with how gory and dark a lot of the images were! Mostly Catholic paintings, they were more mysterious and beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen before! Definitely a place to go and look at art, and truly learn to appreciate its timeless beauty!
Although, I must say my favorite was Mercado de San Miguel. This Mercado (“market”) was actually extremely nicer than any market I had ever gone to. It seemed as if it were more like “business class” people that were there. The building was made entirely of glass and had various homemade stands: bakery, chocolate, seafood, cheese, meats, homemade pasta, and little tapas bars within it. This was my favorite, because it was a grocery store/sample market all in one! If you didn’t want to eat there (free beer or sangria with a tapas) you could buy homemade dishes to go (or ingredients) so you can learn to make it for later! But, the best part DEFINITELY was the SAMPLES!!!! Not only was this a nicer market, all of the food was absolutely DELECTIBLE and was perfect to visit after a long day of walking and exploring around Madrid.
However, to save money, every night my friend Nick and I made all 12 of us a homemade dinner. The first night the boys went grocery shopping so we ate what they liked to call “man food.” Nick and I made pasta with red sauce and potato wedges (homemade French fries) and ate like 5 loaves of bread! For desert we had nutella (or what they call cola cao here) on gram cracker cookies. It was pretty good actually! Friday morning we made everyone egg sandwiches that had tomatoes, eggs, olive oil, etc. on a piece of toast with 5 different types of juices to drink. Packed 12 bocadillos (sandwiches) for everyone’s lunches so that we wouldn’t have to stop along the way around Madrid (usually would just stop at a park and eat). Then for dinner, we made chicken breasts, with fried potatoes (yes, more potatoes… the boys said men eat potatoes! Aka they saw that 10lbs of potatoes were like a euro so they got enough to feed an entire ARMY!) with a bruschetta to go with the MANY loaves of bread the boys continuously bought, however, same desert. The next morning, Nick and I woke up early and made pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream with powder sugar with, yet again, breakfast potatoes/hash browns. Bocadillos for lunch and a pasta for dinner made with olive oil and various vegetables and, you guessed it, FRIED POTATOES! Sunday morning we all made French toast! Safe to say our group lucked out because they had the two PHENOMINAL gourmet chefs with them! 
As for the night life, we usually just talked to locals to see what they liked to do, and of course, they all gave us names of discotecas that they loved to go to. Although the entrance fee was the most expensive thing of the weekend, we all decided we may as well do that since we weren’t spending much money on food. These discotechs were INSANE! They were 7 stories of different music playing on each floor. On the main floor, where we usually stayed, there was a huge fog/mist machine that we completely douse the crowd every 15 minutes or so. It was so fun! But the bizarre thing about the discotechs here is that they usually play American music! So, safe to say I am not missing much of the radio back home because I feel like I hear it enough here. Although they were expensive, all of the experiences were TOTALLY WORTH IT!
The weekend neared an end and we were on our way back to the bus on Sunday and on our last stop I noticed these sketch balls that hopped on our subway so I told my friend Hannah that was next to me to watch her stuff (and she said she noticed to and was already looking out for the both of us). Realizing that our entire group of 12 was spread throughout the car and the one behind us, I didn’t think to say anything to everyone (which I still regret). But for some reason, all of our friends decided to come out of the door that Hannah and I were waiting at (if you can imagine we were in the middle of the car by the central door, and the others were by the front and rear door of the train car). Then, a Spanish woman frantically walked up to my friend Kelly saying, “Mira! Mira a su bolsa!” while pointing to her eye. Kelly, nodding her head like any American that doesn’t understand Spanish kept saying “Si! Si!” thinking that the woman was complimenting her bag. I stopped and tried to gather my thoughts and interpret, and I looked at Kelly and said, “KELLY! YOUR BAG! She saw something with your bag! It’s not that she liked it!” she flipped her leather flap over and saw that her zipper was open. Without needing to say anything else I said “RUN!” She dropped her things and sprinted after the man who stole her wallet. I then turn to my friend Bart and told him to run after her and find him, my goodness did he run like I’ve never seen a guy run before! Unfortunately, the thief had too much of a lead and Bart never even got to see the man who took it, and Kelly and I didn’t react fast enough. But then came the next problem… We were going to be late for the bus to get back to Seville! Bart, Doug, Katie and I ran after Kelly while we sent everyone else to the bus, so they wouldn’t be late (Katie and I with all three of their belongings while the other three searched for the lost wallet). Finally we find them, and begin sprinting towards the bus. Thank goodness the buses were running late, otherwise the five of us would have been spending an extra night in Madrid!
All of that set aside, Madrid was a success. Although Kelly left with a sour taste in her mouth from it, we all truly enjoyed Madrid until the last half an hour we spent there! It was absolutely beautiful and can’t wait to share an experience with my family there! It is an extremely beautiful city, with a lot to offer! If you were to look at any of my pictures, definitely look at these! They are beautiful!

I miss you all and love you! Let me know if you’d like to know about anything else! Otherwise, look forward to my newest blog that will be put up by the end of the week!

Lauren

Vocab of the week: “una carterista”

– pick pocket (one word to learn JUST IN CASE for the visit over!)