09-17-10 Sara

Madrid. What can I say except it's amazing! After an incredibly long but not too awful plane ride from LA to Zurich, Switzerland, a 1.5 hr layover, and an arduous flight to Madrid we arrived jetlagged and travel weary. The Madrid airport was a little confusing but we followed the crowd and somehow missed customs. I am really unsure of how we did it but everyone else on our flight did as well. We didn't have anything to declare so I guess it's alright. We'll be in and out of Spain several times in this journey so we'll get the stamp eventually. After collecting our luggage and catching a taxi we arrived in scenic downtown Madrid. Let me describe: cobblestone streets, romantic lighting, people walking up and down the completely safe streets despite the late hour, small shops with friendly people manning them, it is, indeed, amazing! The hostel we're staying in is eclectically painted with very bright colors of lime green, deep purple, vibrant red, sunshine yellow, neon blue, and Nemo orange. It's fun although I'm pretty sure we're the oldest people here as everyone else seems to be currently enrolled in one college or another. But the fact that they ask us where we go to school makes me feel better as we appear youthful apparently=)

Last night as we went to find something to eat after settling in to our room and it was incredible the amount of people out on the streets and eating in cafes. Dinner here starts about 1030p so we were barely fashionable late. The town plaza is full of people of all ages, from teenagers to grandparents, out living life, eating dinner at open tables, listening to live music, and just enjoying themselves in general. There is definitely a much slower pace of life here. The language is not quite as much of a barrier since Felicia speaks Spanish but still last night for dinner we ended up with Tostas (any number of food items put on toast). It was good but we ordered, sat down, and re-looked at the menu and realized we'd ordered a scrambled egg tosta with mushrooms, ham, and shrimp. Oops. Being as everything is in Euros we couldn't waste anything so we picked out the superfluous parts and ate the rest. Shrimp is a little squishy! Branching out.. trying something new. We then discovered that it's a little hard to sleep here as downtown is filled with party-ers and is quite noisy. Even though we didn't crash until about midnight here (which is 3p at home) the noise continued till about 6am. Lets just say I'm thankful for earplugs!

Today we went to the Museo del Prado, a very large and architecturally beautiful museum. The contents, however, were much more dark. Spanish art is rift with war, killing, and awful paintings to go along with it. We did see a few Rubens and a Velasquez (the one of the little princess with her parents reflected in the mirror in the background and the author who painted himself in off to the side.) That was a little on the lighter side but I guess you paint what you know and Spain has a very war-filled history that is reflected in its art. But yikes!

We haven't done anything truly exciting yet as we're a little jet-lagged. We spent the afternoon in a park absorbing the culture of the people that walked by and taking pics (which I'll post later when I figure out how.) My brain is a little overwhelmed trying to absorb and learn Espanol. It's a pretty serious crash course! But the people are friendly and appreciate when we use their language. We wandered into a bakery this afternoon and met two ladies who explained the differences in Spanish coffee, the language differences between Madrid and Barcelona, and a few verb conjugations. Random I know but for the low price of E1,75 we got four baguette rolls and a vocabulary/punctuation lesson. Tomorrow morning bring on the Spanish coffee... I'll keep you posted=)