Madrid was really cool. It is the capital of Spain so it was very urban. It reminded me of New York City but MUCH cleaner. We found our hostel and got ready for the Tapas Tour that I organized last week. A nice man named Pablo picked all 8 of us up at our hostel around 7:30 and took us to 3 different restaurants around the city of Madrid. At each place, we had glasses of wine that he personally paired with the tapas dish he chose. At the first place we had a really great white wine with shrimp in garlic butter. At the second we had a very exclusive unfiltered wine not even available in Spain that was paired with scallops and shrimp. Lastly, our drink was a really dark, 12-year-old red wine with beef and ham dishes, followed by a little-too-sweet-for-me desert wine. It was such a great experience and we tried things we never would have known about had Pablo not shown us. It was well worth the money. After we were done with the planned stops, Pablo took us to a local piano bar and dropped us off. We were definitely the only tourists and the music was great. We went to a few other places before calling it a night fairly late.
Tuesday morning only half of us made it out to look around. Me, Kate, Lindsay, Corey and Mike left the hostel, got a Starbucks (I have missed it so much!) and headed to the Royal Palace of Madrid, the official palace of the King of Spain. We toured around the inside and then went close by to the Santa María la Real de La Almudena Cathedral. This was by far my favorite church I have seen in Europe. It was covered in stained glass windows and the ceiling was covered in colorful mosaic. It had a really modern feel and a really interesting interior. After the church we went to the opposite side of the city to explore the Parque del Retiro. It was a huge park with runners and bikers everywhere and really beautiful scenery. Thank goodness the day was as gorgeous as it was! We made our way to the Monument to Alfonso XII and found that you could rent rowboats for the lake in front of the monument for only 5 Euro!!! So of course, we did it. We went to the downtown area after boating in search of the Reina Sofia Museum, which has a huge collection of Picasso and Salvador Dali. But just our luck, it was closed on a Tuesday…I was super bummed. We went to the Botanical Gardens which we quickly dubbed the “garden of death” since nothing was bloomed and almost everything was dead. We met up with the ones that stayed behind in the morning around dinner time and then got back to the hostel around 7. We didn’t have plans for the night and earlier in the day I saw a sign for the musical Chicago playing in a theater near our hostel. Of course, that being one of my more favorite musicals, I decided I was going. The show started at 8:30 and I went by myself to see it :-) The language barrier was a bit unnerving (since I speak zero Spanish) but I found some people who spoke English to tell me how to get to my seat. Since I knew all the songs and the storyline, it was sooo cool to see and I am happy I did it even though no one else wanted to. When I was done I came back to everyone waiting for me to go out. We wandered into random places such as a Hawaii bar that made us order 7 Euro drinks just to sit down. There are also a ton of promoters on the streets offering your free drinks/shots/pizzas if you went to their bar. We took advantage of a few of those offers during the night. We didn’t stay out too late since we had a train ride to Seville at 8:30 the next morning.
Tuesday morning only half of us made it out to look around. Me, Kate, Lindsay, Corey and Mike left the hostel, got a Starbucks (I have missed it so much!) and headed to the Royal Palace of Madrid, the official palace of the King of Spain. We toured around the inside and then went close by to the Santa María la Real de La Almudena Cathedral. This was by far my favorite church I have seen in Europe. It was covered in stained glass windows and the ceiling was covered in colorful mosaic. It had a really modern feel and a really interesting interior. After the church we went to the opposite side of the city to explore the Parque del Retiro. It was a huge park with runners and bikers everywhere and really beautiful scenery. Thank goodness the day was as gorgeous as it was! We made our way to the Monument to Alfonso XII and found that you could rent rowboats for the lake in front of the monument for only 5 Euro!!! So of course, we did it. We went to the downtown area after boating in search of the Reina Sofia Museum, which has a huge collection of Picasso and Salvador Dali. But just our luck, it was closed on a Tuesday…I was super bummed. We went to the Botanical Gardens which we quickly dubbed the “garden of death” since nothing was bloomed and almost everything was dead. We met up with the ones that stayed behind in the morning around dinner time and then got back to the hostel around 7. We didn’t have plans for the night and earlier in the day I saw a sign for the musical Chicago playing in a theater near our hostel. Of course, that being one of my more favorite musicals, I decided I was going. The show started at 8:30 and I went by myself to see it :-) The language barrier was a bit unnerving (since I speak zero Spanish) but I found some people who spoke English to tell me how to get to my seat. Since I knew all the songs and the storyline, it was sooo cool to see and I am happy I did it even though no one else wanted to. When I was done I came back to everyone waiting for me to go out. We wandered into random places such as a Hawaii bar that made us order 7 Euro drinks just to sit down. There are also a ton of promoters on the streets offering your free drinks/shots/pizzas if you went to their bar. We took advantage of a few of those offers during the night. We didn’t stay out too late since we had a train ride to Seville at 8:30 the next morning.
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