Madrid I--Don't pay for a thing

Part I of II out of the Boston University London Programmes' (extra early) Spring Break Special! (where we travel to places that should be warmer...Madrid then Barcelona!)

So in the last minute of our finals, my friends and I booked a spring break travel to Madrid and

Barcelona for our 5 day long break! I had already been to Barcelona but hadn't experienced the nightlife..more on that later. But Madrid was also a fantastic city.

Booking our trip on Expedia.com landed us on a Lufthansa Flight of joy and goodness where we were served a pesto pasta dinner with bread and chocolate and a bottle of Berlin beer (featured on the left here). Trust me, it was a pretty great deal on Expedia for 5 nights and 3 flights in between! So here we goooo:

DAY ONE in MADRID

We landed late Tuesday night (2/16) in Madrid and found our way to Hotel Regina where Ryan and Cara split a room and Gretchen and I split a room... We were 5 minutes from "El Sol", the center of the city, and in a gorgeous room:

The next day we got off to a bright start and found a breakfast place near El Sol called Cervecia something where the employees only spoke Spanish. This place was a killer deal with a bread

w/tomato sauce, a small bacon baguette, a coffee, and a chocolate muffin for only 3Euro (picture to the side). It was a little difficult understanding but it definitely threw us into the Spanish environment. Good thing for Gretchen and Ryan who had more experience speaking Spanish got us through our experience there. We made it to the Madrid tourist office where we took a walking tour of the city with Jorje our guide.

On the tour we learned about the Plaza Mayor, the Bolin Restaurant which is the oldest continually operating restaurants in the world, the Royal Palace (which we visited afterward), and a market. The pictures below come from 1. El Sol (look how nice the sky is!) 2. Plaza Mayor and 3. Enjoying Sangria and olives in the Madrid Market.

1. 2. 3.

Our walking tour actually had this girl from Kauai on it..she noticed my Hawaiian bracelet and knew..more on her later because we kept seeing her and her friends around the city afterward.

So after our walking tour and relaxing visit to the market, we went to the Royal Palace which has 2800 rooms in it..absurdly huge for the Royal Family. Spain still has a sitting "monarch" in a way but is Democratic. While we couldn't take pictures inside the Palace itself, we did get some good shots outside. Across the way from the Palace was an old Cathedral. Here are the pictures below:

1. Us soaking up the sun (check out that sky!) 2. Up close with the palace 3. Behind the palace gates 4. Being silly in the guard booths

1. 2. 3. 4.

After our visit to the Royal Palace we got a drink at the Plaza Mayor again where they had "street performers" which was the following:

1. An overweight Spider Man who did nothing but stand there

2. A short Darth Vador man who danced around

3. A guy without a head sitting down

4. A woman in a Minnie Mouse costume

5. The list goes on..

But one of the guys I actually appreciated was this Spanish Flamenco guitar player who sat near the outdoor seats we were at.. He ended up playing a song that even I knew from my first years learning guitar...shows the amount of "talent" this Plaza had. Since Gretchen and I wanted to go see Museums, we headed to the Prado Museum near the park which had paintings of people and lots of Christ paintings. What was really neat was that they had live painters replicating works of previous artist. Looking at a bunch of older portrait paintings and murals got a little bit old after a while but my favorites were in one room. The first is called the Garden of Earthly Delights and the other is the Triumph of Death. Both are intricate and intriguing...much different from portraits.

(outside the Prado)

Since we were still exhausted from the flight over and hauling it all day, we took a Spanish Siesta

and woke up for dinner at a Tapa's place called Turf in Santa Ana Plaza. That was very delicious as I had Spanish meatballs and a Salmon Cream Cheese Tapa with white wine. After, we were trying to decide what to do and these men kept on approaching us with offers of free drinks somewhere or free entry another place. After declining these offers first because we thought it was sketchy, we ended up finding a place for free entry with a free Mojito for each of us...that lasted 2 seconds but we left and the place across the street had a promoter who wanted to get us free drinks and entry so we went there.. While here, we ran into Hawaii girl again and her friends and they were on a pub crawl...we talked to the guy who ran it and hopped on just for 5Euro..best idea Madrid. The first place we went to had free drinks and Gretchen and I got more
because we were "nice"..haha. I did buy 2 Fire Shots for both me and Gretchen just because the pub crawl coordinator suggested it and I'm glad we did it because when in Spain...you just get crazy. After we went to this bar we headed to a hookah bar where we just hung out more. It was a lot of fun and a great deal! Really we paid for barely anything.

Here I am with Kauai girl we met and the other is of Gretchen and I after our Fire Shots!

On to day 2 Tomorrow! Once I get caught up with these entries I can talk about my Internship which I started on Monday and the International Marketing class I started today! Lots more to come. Currently under the weather with a cold though, so hoping to recover before Paris with my boyfriend :)