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We woke up at six on Friday and scrambled to get ourselves ready to leave. Lucia had indeed made us lunches, each lunch with 2 bocadillas, 2 naranjas (oranges) a manzana (apple) and un paquete de galletas (cookies)! So, we had a good amount of food to begin our trip. We got to the bus station about 20 minutes before 7, and met everyone in the front. We were missing 2 girls, but they were on their way so we headed back to the bus and got on board. The four hour drive was uneventful, which is a good thing. Halfway through we stopped at a station to toilet and get something to eat if we wanted. When we arrived in Madrid we had to somehow find our way from the bus station to the hostel. We took the metro, according to directions from the hostel's website, but after we got off we still managed to get lost. We asked a nice lady handing out Starbuck's samples for directions, and got on track. We passed the Prado on our way to the hostal, which caused a good amount of excitement among the group.
We found the hostal and checked in. Our key cards were like watches, you pressed them to the knob which would flicker a green light and then you could turn it. The knobs were kind of funny, so it took us a minute to get it right. Once we had dropped our stuff off, we took our lunches and headed into the big park in the middle of the city, about a fifteen minute walk away. We ate lunch on some benches near the stream, got counted by a little old man walking through with his wife who told us (in french, which we only partially understood) that he couldn't believe there were 9 pretty girls all together.
After lunch we walked toward the Prado Museo and after taking some pictures at the statues we bought tickets and went inside. The Velázquez exhibit was on display temporarily so we went through that first, taking our time even though we were determined to see everything. Four hours and many many many paintings/sculptures/tapestries later we exited the Museo and went back to the hostel to get our jackets. When we got there, we met our roommate for the weekend (it was a 10 person room, and there were 9 of us from Valencia). Paula is a teacher from Venezuela who is working in Barcelona right now, she's 25 so right around our age. It was really cool to hear all about why she was here and everything. She told us a lot about the economy in Venezuela, and how she had ended up in the program to teach literature here in Spain. Her English was good but she prefered to speak to us in Spanish since we were here to practice. This became a theme this weekend, with her speaking in Spanish and the rest of us attempting to follow her lead.
We headed out to find a place for dinner and ended up in a café near the hostel where we had Sangría and a lot of different types of tapas. We started with some olives, then we had little pieces of pollo (chicken) with a tangy sauce on them, then came the patatas bravas, which are fried potatoes with a spicy sauce on them, then calamari rings, and pan con queso de goat (bread with goat cheese) and a few other things that I don't remember. The queso was a little strong for me but everything else was delicious. We devoured it and then headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out. We went to a bar and danced for a few hours, there were a few people doing flamenco in a group by us, and EVERYONE would yell and scream the words to certain songs that were obviously popular. We couldn't quite make out the words so we just did our best to follow along, and sometimes moved our mouths without saying anything hoping that people wouldn't notice. We got back to the hostel around 2 pm and went to bed so that we could get some rest and hopefully be awake all day the next day.
We found the hostal and checked in. Our key cards were like watches, you pressed them to the knob which would flicker a green light and then you could turn it. The knobs were kind of funny, so it took us a minute to get it right. Once we had dropped our stuff off, we took our lunches and headed into the big park in the middle of the city, about a fifteen minute walk away. We ate lunch on some benches near the stream, got counted by a little old man walking through with his wife who told us (in french, which we only partially understood) that he couldn't believe there were 9 pretty girls all together.
After lunch we walked toward the Prado Museo and after taking some pictures at the statues we bought tickets and went inside. The Velázquez exhibit was on display temporarily so we went through that first, taking our time even though we were determined to see everything. Four hours and many many many paintings/sculptures/tapestries later we exited the Museo and went back to the hostel to get our jackets. When we got there, we met our roommate for the weekend (it was a 10 person room, and there were 9 of us from Valencia). Paula is a teacher from Venezuela who is working in Barcelona right now, she's 25 so right around our age. It was really cool to hear all about why she was here and everything. She told us a lot about the economy in Venezuela, and how she had ended up in the program to teach literature here in Spain. Her English was good but she prefered to speak to us in Spanish since we were here to practice. This became a theme this weekend, with her speaking in Spanish and the rest of us attempting to follow her lead.
We headed out to find a place for dinner and ended up in a café near the hostel where we had Sangría and a lot of different types of tapas. We started with some olives, then we had little pieces of pollo (chicken) with a tangy sauce on them, then came the patatas bravas, which are fried potatoes with a spicy sauce on them, then calamari rings, and pan con queso de goat (bread with goat cheese) and a few other things that I don't remember. The queso was a little strong for me but everything else was delicious. We devoured it and then headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out. We went to a bar and danced for a few hours, there were a few people doing flamenco in a group by us, and EVERYONE would yell and scream the words to certain songs that were obviously popular. We couldn't quite make out the words so we just did our best to follow along, and sometimes moved our mouths without saying anything hoping that people wouldn't notice. We got back to the hostel around 2 pm and went to bed so that we could get some rest and hopefully be awake all day the next day.
