Yeah, I went to Spain.

So this is naturally where our journey begins to Madrid. But I've never had to climb up a latter to get to my plane before. That was a brand new experience for me. I felt like I was in the movies!


Can you believe this view from my plane window! Gorgeous! It was refreshing to rise above the overcast London sky and pop out into this sunset. The sky was bidding us welcome on our journey to Spain.



So we arrived to our first hostel around midnight that night. To be honest, we were all a bit nervous to be staying in the part of the neighborhood we did. There were a bunch of men out, with hardly any women on the streets. But as you can see here, this view from our hostel seemed much friendlier in the morning. This hostel was the worst, so it was good to get it over with. My group was terrified at the possibility of bed bugs and the beds felt like they were made of cardboard.


The street in front of our first hostel.



Yeah. A little shaddy :)
To be honest, not really. Cuz you see those no matter where you are in Europe :)



This looks like some kind of ruin, but it's actually a working, functioning library!

I tried to sneak in for a peak, but those Spaniards caught me and threw me out :(


Another awesome thing we ran into on the streets was this huge garden on the wall!!! Who knew that was even possible! I have no idea what it's for or anything. I just think it's way cool.




Behold. The tortilla espanola. It's basically an omelet with egg and potatoes stuffed between two pieces of bread. Kind of bland to look at, but surprisingly delicious.


After we had that delicious lunch, we checked into our next hostel which was on this street. It's my favorite street in Madrid and we got to stroll up and down it several times. It's so charming with the trees and lamp posts that turn on at night. This was definitely a more preferable environment to stay in a hostel. We had to share a room with four other girls, but it all turned out alright.



After we officially checked in, we went ahead to the Reina Sofia art museum. This art museum is by far my favorite museum I have visited so far since I came to London. It housed the greats like Picasso and Dali. I was most impressed by Picasso's Guernica. Ah. I loved that painting before and was looking for it. I turned a corner and it was right there in you face! It's in quite a long room, and the painting took up the entire wall!!! It really was a breathtaking experience.


These are some of Salvador Dali's paintings we saw:

That little picture on the plate is of Hitler. What could he be trying to say? You could quite literally stand there for minutes on end thinking of all possible interpretations. That's what I love about Dali and Picasso. You can't notice every feature all at once. You have to stand there for a bit to take it all in.

An interesting depiction of the human body . . . . look hard. You'll see what I'm talking about :)


Picasso painted Guernica, the name of a Spanish town that was bombed during WWII. It was a harmless, defenseless city. The bomb killed innocent families and all their valuable livestock. It was pretty powerful to view in person.



We generally had very nice weather. This day was absolutely lovely. It wasn't till the very last day when the heat started to become too much. Maybe it was because I was wearing black pants. Who knows!

These pictures are in a park on the way to the Prado Museum. It's a nice place to sit, relax, purchase jewelry from illegal sellers running from the policia. You know, stuff like that.






This is us taking a break in the shade before we entered the Prado, the second biggest museum in the world! Second to only the Louve! And I'll tell ya, it was incredibly massive. We only went through like a hundredth of it in an hour. We saw very Spanish, Christian paintings that make Christian paintings from England look so boring and dull. They actually went outside the box and used bright almost neon colors! It was cool to see such beautiful paintings I had never seen before. I certainly recommend the Prado to anyone who cares for art at all. It was amazing.


Shortly after leaving the Prado Museum, we got stuck in the most intense rainstorm of my life. I thought it quite ironic that while I was in England, I saw no rain. But when I come to Madrid, one of the driest places around, We get a down pour! Katie said it was rain like she had never seen, and she's from Oregon, if that tells you anything.




After the rain stopped, after about ten minutes of down pour, we ventured out unto the street again and found this cute little sidewalk with a bunch of Spanish bookshops.


Afterward came gelato . . . or helado. I tasted some incredible gelato in London, but this blew my tongue out of the water! We were in this classy little darkly-lit shop, eating gelato. We visited it again on our last night and we did not even care we had been there before. This night I got Cheesemaria Cake. Wow. My next visit I got Chocolate Intenso. Wow. It's basically the deliciousness of ice cream times a thousand.

Yes. That is a little candle flickering on our little table :) We felt very classy indeed.



The next day we took a train out of Madrid into this little town called Alcala. It's the town Dezi's cousin is studying and she wanted to take us around. So this picture is inside the train station. You can't see it, but in the midst of that forest is a large rock covered in turtles. I want a turtle covered rock of my own!

Here is part of the Alcala University.

This little square sums up the entire attitude of the town. It's beautiful and adorable. The part I thought was cool was that the statue ahead of Cervantes. The church behind him is where he was baptized as a baby, and just down the street was the house he was born in! I was very excited about this, Don Quixote being one of my favorite books :)




At this time, there were a bunch of adorable old people lounging around. We met three older ladies sitting near us, feeding worms to birds. They only spoke Spanish, but I caught the gist: they thought we were beautiful and that we should marry their sons. They couldn't say my name though :( The "G" in the middle is pretty hard to pronounce since they usually swallow the "G". They were adorable and delightful to talk to.

So here is Cervantes's home. The statues in front are his characters Don Quixote on the right, and his side kick Sancho Panza on the left. If you are unfamiliar with the basis of Don Quixote, just think about Monte Python and the Holy Grail, and think Spanish. It's wonderful :)

As you can see, we were all quite taken with them.

Churros + chocolate = love.


First things first. Spanish churros don't have sugar or cinnamon. They just bring them fresh from the deep fryer. But they also bring hot chocolate out to dip them into. The thing about this hot chocolate is that its' so thick, it's basically hot chocolate pudding, except more delicious. I'm sad I didn't get to eat them again. Just gives me an excuse to go back right?

On the way back to the train station was this quaint little park off the side of the street. This is what I love about being here in Europe. You can so easily discover little niches of awesomeness if you are looking.






So later that night, we were wandering around the city to find a good Flamenco dancing performance. We've been told several times it's the thing to do in Spain to really get the culture. So were wandering quite aimlessly. We randomly run into this old man sweeping the streets. Our Spanish expert Ariatna asked him if he knew of any good Flamenco dancing places. He looked around all suspicious like, and told us that if we were really quiet, he could sneak us through the back to see the performance. Half of us thought it was a wonderful opportunity and were eager to accept. The other half (including myself) were a bit suspicious. Being sold into human trafficking all of a sudden seemed like a distinct possibility. But we decided to be reckless and go on ahead. And good thing we did! Because he snuck us into awesome balcony seats during a 40-50 euro concert! And it was amazing. I still can't believed it happened like that, and it was free!!! So cool. If you want a taste of it, there are plenty youtube videos of Flamenco dancing. Basically, it's a dance style, a hybrid of Spanish, Gypsy, and Arabic influence.

Us being all, "did that just really happen!?!"

The next morning, we took a free walking tour provided by our hostels. The next few photos are of this walking tour. These photos were an interesting site to be at. It was this huge protest. People in Spain aren't happy with their supposedly democratic government. So what's happening here is they are trying to convince people not to vote. People were giving speeches and what not. It was kind of cool being there. Our tour guide said that this is history in the making. We'll see if he's right.






This was one of the most gorgeous sites of Madrid I saw. It's their Royal Palace. I thought it was more pretty than Buckingham Palace to be honest. There was more greenery and that large fountain in front there was very soothing. It was a tranquil place to be. Much more so than Buckingham. At Buckingham, you were scared for your life, cars whizzing from all possible directions. I was like, "I just want to see Buckingham! Please don't kill me! Please?"

A really cool statue on top of the fountain.

The next two photos are of a house that housed the richest people in Spain back in the day. The reason it looked so, not that impressive, was that pride was considered a grievous sin, punishable by the church. So they purposefully didn't make it look gorgeous on the outside to spare themselves the wrath of the church. Apparently the inside was quite another story.






Paella! If you remember, I did eat paella back at Portobello road. I thought I had to try it IN Spain! The main difference is there is much more seafood in it, which if you know me is not a problem :) The bowl of reddish stuff is like liquefied salsa. It was so delicious to dip the bread in.

We strolled down this park on our last day in Madrid, just before we had to leave for the airport. We basically attempted to practice the Spanish culture and took a two hour siesta in the shade. Ah. Glorious heaven.


As wonderful and exciting as Spain was, we all breathed a sigh of relief to see the green country that is England. We kept saying "we're home!" And it did feel like we were coming home. And home is where it will be, for another two and a half weeks! The thing I most enjoyed about being in Spain was being fully immersed in the language. There were shops and restaurants where no one speaks English at all. It was stressful, but actually fun in a challenging way to try to communicate. It felt so alive and colorful! Everyone was happy and friendly for the most part, much more at least than in London. For the most part London people are mean :( I've learned not to take it too personal.

So yeah! Lots of fun. A fantastic adventure.

PS- My theatre post is updated! Check it out!!!