The intensive Spanish class was a little too intensive for everybody's liking. 3 credits jammed into 2 weeks is not what you want to be doing when you are supposed to be out enjoying the city! As soon as we finished our finals, we packed up and left for Madrid. We got there late Friday night and didn't really know what we were doing. We asked the person at the front desk of our hostel where there were any good tapas restaurants around, and we took a wrong turn and ended up going down a sketchy street that was kind of like the chinatown of Madrid. People kept coming up to us trying to sell us stuff or get us to come into the bars and it was just creepy. We ate at kind of a sketchy restaurant that smelled like sewage and did not have very good food. My friends Katie and Kristen ordered some shrimp and it was a little too fresh for there liking. Here is a picture...
Our hostel is another story. We ended up sharing a room with a 50 year old guy who literally slept about 3 feet away from my face and another random Turkish guy. Definitely not what we are used to! This was the first real culture shock that we have experienced so far. So Friday night was a little rough.
The next day was SOOOO much better. We went to El Museo del Prado and El Museo Reina Sofia and they were both extremely interesting and breathtaking. We saw lots of Picasso and Dalí in Reina Sofia and Velázquez and Goya in Museo del Prado. We took a guided tour en el Museo del Prado and were able to learn so much more about the paintings and got a lot more out of the experience than we would have by ourselves. One of the most famous paintings in El Prado is Valázquez's "Las Meninas" and it was cool to see in real life. Here is a picture from Wikipedia...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Meninasking.jpg/250px-Meninasking.jpg
Here is a picture of a cool church right next to El Museo del Prado....
After that we were exhausted so we went back to our hostel and took a siesta (claro). That night we decided to go to the most famous discoteca in all of Spain. It was called Capital and it was literally insane. It was 7 stories high and each floor had different theme and there were THOUSANDS of people there. It was sooooooooo fun!
The next day we went to the royal palace, which was also amazing.
After that we went to el jardín de buen retiro and then got churros and chocolate!
This weekend was by far one of the most fun weekends I have ever had! I can't wait to keep traveling and see more. I never want to leave!!!!!!
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