Madrid

All in all, Madrid was a great trip. I wish I could have spent more time there. It truly is beautiful and there is so much to see! My friend Elena booked our hotel, which turned out to be apartments, which turned out to be a 40-minute metro ride to Madrid. Needless to say it was an adventure getting to and from our hotel. The bathroom also didn't have a handle and yes, I locked myself in the bathroom for the worst 5 minutes of my life and Louisa unfortunately locked herself in the bathroom for 20 minutes and we had to get someone to come open the door. After we both discovered our extreme fear of confined spaces (who knew!?) we were given free breakfast J I can't say the free breakfast was worth it, but I am happy to be home to Marianna with my bathroom door that has a handle AND my fixed toilet!

Wednesday afternoon we got into Madrid and took a siesta before heading out to dinner. It was a low-key night and then Thursday we were ready to explore the city. We didn't make any plans because we all needed a little breather from every moment being scheduled. Luckily we picked a great metro stop to get off at, walked around and did some shopping, visited the Palacio Royal, walked through the Botanical Gardens and El Retiro, and went   to El Prado. For not having plans or any idea of where we were going (we truly didn't have a map!) we did pretty well! Thursday night we experienced Madrid nightlife, which we discovered is much more expensive than Salamanca.

On Friday we met up with one of Elena's friends, Natia, who lives in Madrid. She is 32 and working as a policewoman in Madrid, but had originally studied to be a veterinarian in the States and lived with Elena's family. Natia showed us around Madrid and took us to all of her favorite places. It was really fun to talk to her and see different parts of the city. She took us to the gay neighborhood, Chueca, and it was absolutely beautiful. It was also Gay Pride Weekend so there were lots of fun events going on and tons of fabulous people watching. Chueca used to be a very poor and rough neighborhood but the gay community has completely revamped the neighborhood and now it couldn't be more charming.

Getting back to Salamanca was…well interesting. We had to call a taxi that never came, and then called another that took 20 minutes to get to our hotel. Got stuck in traffic, arrived late to the bus station. After what ended up being a 30-euro cab ride we literally watched our bus pull away. Then we had to re-buy bus tickets.  After all was said and done it was funny, there was nothing we could do to control the way the morning unfolded. While it was quite an expensive morning the bus station luckily had chocolate and coffee (and "viejos verdes" or gross old men that wanted to buy our coffees and chocolates) to help ease the pain.