Madrid

 For the first excursion outside of my dear little Toledo, I got to spend the last two days exploring the wonders of Madrid! On Friday we had a group trip to Madrid (meals and transportation paid for) and on Saturday I went back with a few people to do more sightseeing on our own!

Madrid - Day 1

On Friday we got started bright and early at about 8:30am, and hopped on a bus to Madrid (about 45-60min bus ride). Once we got there we did a quick bus tour on our way to the Palacio Real (royal palace) of Madrid! We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the palace, but I thought it was a really cool tour! All the architecture, art, designs, etc. were fantastic!

Palacio Real de Madrid

After the palacio, we did a little more bus-touring and made our way to our lunch destination: el Museo del Jamón. To be honest it was not that great... I think it was just the only place that could fit all 90-some of us students!

After comida, we had the afternoon to ourselves until the bus left at 6pm. A bunch of my friends planned a trip to Valencia (and so did just about everyone else), but myself and a few others decided to save our money and stay in Toledo/Madrid instead. So while they went off to find their bus stop, Nolan, Tyler, Rachel and I set off to explore Madrid! We first made our way to la Puerta del Sol, a big ole plaza where a bunch of streets converge and there are some important statues and buildings and stuff.

Covered street leading to P. del Sol

Statue in P. del Sol

Then we wandered on over to Plaza Mayor, another big important plaza, that's also very pretty: the large square plaza walled in on all sides with a statue in the center. And all around the plaza is a ring of restaurants and shops. Very close to Plaza Mayor, we found the world's (supposedly) oldest restaurant, Restaurante Botín, famously frequented by Ernest Hemingway.

Plaza Mayor

Restaurante Botín

After P. Mayor, we wandered a bit more (side note: we did a lot of wandering, just walking the streets, checking out shops and really cool old buildings; we kept reminding ourselves how awesome it was that we got to spend a day just walking around Madrid!!), and made our way back to one of the main the shopping streets. We walked down the calle, searching for a chocolatería that Mamen had recommended, and on our way back we spotted it down a side street! ¡Que suerte! They had quite the list of chocolate drinks, and Nolan was the only one with the right idea: chocolate con churros. The rest of us were tired and hot, so we got chocolate batidos (which is usually a sort of milk-shake). Well, Nolan's chocolate was a straight-up cup of melted chocolate, while our "milkshake" was pretty much chocolate milk in a bottle! Oh well, we all shared the churros con chocolate, cooled down, and discussed the logistics of opening our own chocolate-con-churros shop (obviously!).

yummmmmm.....

At this point our time was pretty much up, so we wandered back to the bus, past the Teatro Real (home of Madrid's Opera) and headed back to Toledo! The 8 of us that were still here had a pretty chill night, hanging out at the Jazz Festival! It's pretty cool, they set up a stage in the plaza right next to the cathedral, very close to mi casa, and every night they've had different musicians playing! And a ton of Toledanos go every night, it's awesome!

Madrid - Day 2


Day 2: Nolan, Rachel and I take on Madrid on our own! We arrived in Madrid on the southern edge of the city, and decided to walk up towards the center of town. We came upon a giant bridge over the "river" (it's tiny), and decided to walk along the strange dry park to find the "beaches" of Toledo!

Found it!

I kind of wanted to check out the zoo/aquarium (obv), but we weren't sure exactly where it was/how much it cost/etc., and we wanted to go to a museum too, and by then it was already midday. So we abandoned the zoo plan, and took the metro over to the museum district. After finding ourself a nice little restaurant for comida, Nolan and I decided to hit up the Museo Centro de Reina Sofía (Rachel went home with some other Toledo people we ran into).

a couple of squares...

Reina Sofía is more of a modern art museum (while the Prado has more of the older, classical stuff), and we went there because it was cool, but also because it was free... this is the life of a poor college student. Anyway, it was very interesting. There was some very cool art there (like Picasso's famous Guernica painting), but I just don't get a lot of the "modern art" that's out there... next time it will have to be the Prado!

this one did look cool, but it was still really random

After Reina Sofía we had to check out los Jardines del Buen Retiro: a huge park in the middle of the city, complete with grass and forests, and gardens, and large ponds, a few palaces here and there. It was pretty sweet. And I found a parrot and black swans.

parrot! 

There's a large pond with tons of boats and this awesome statue thing

Huzzah!