Hi friends!
We got to take a quick trip to Madrid with our class for a night in the capital of Spain. We had to meet at the train station early in the morning to take the three-hour train ride and still have time for a tour and some free time to explore. I was tired but very excited to explore the new city. Thankfully I got a nap on the train so I was feeling a bit better.
Madrid was nothing like I was expecting, and honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Our hotel was on a bustling and crowded street. I heard many people compare it to Times Square, but not having been to New York City before I thought it was like Hollywood Blvd on steroids. The first thing we did was visit Mercado de San Miguel, a market similar to La Boqueria in Barcelona, to have a snack. There were many food stands including fresh seafood, a mozzarella bar, pastries, fuerte and jamon, and various drinks. I decided on tapas that included salmon and hummus and a seafood salad type of topping.
Next, we had a walking tour of the city with a University of Madrid professor, Angel. He was an amazing tour guide and shared a lot of great information in a fun and humorous way. There is an order of nuns in Madrid that sell cookies out of the monastery. Angel had informed us that unfortunately, they hadn’t been selling the cookies in about a month, so we were crossing our fingers that we would be lucky enough to get some. As we approached the monastery Angel went running down the alley to check and lo and behold they were selling cookies! We had to quietly enter in small groups to order and we were not allowed to see the nuns. We placed the money on a spinning table and they would spin the cookies out to us.
I really enjoyed the areas of Madrid we walked through on our tour and all the architecture we saw was beautiful, but there was still something off about the city that I didn’t love. After our tour, I went back to the hotel and took a nap to shake off this funk I was in. Somehow I slept for two whole hours but it really felt like 15 minutes. I was starting to reach a point in the trip where my social battery was drained and needed a break from being around people.
We ended the night with dinner not too far from our hotel at a place called SteakBurger. It was a beautifully decorated restaurant but the service was not great. We had a good time with our server, as he was begging us to give him a good review at the end of our meal because he was going to get fired in a few days if not. We gave him a good review, but I don’t know how much help it will be.
Walking home we got stopped by a few people, one man looking for a club to go to but for some reason, he left his phone behind, and another group of men that wanted to take a picture of us “for Italy”. I was over it and just wanted to get in bed to sleep off the funk.
