England and Spain

Entry number one regarding my final Euro trip: GO! 


I began by flying to England to visit my friend Gretchen. I've mentioned her in a previous post when I ran into her on the streets of Dublin. She has been studying in Hull, England throughout this semester - a Des Moines sized college town. We pretty much just hung out and relaxed for about two days. I got to see her college campus and meet her friends which was a lot of fun. It was cool to see how much different her abroad experience was than mine simply because of different locations. 

Gretch in front of her quintessential English house 

When Wednesday rolled around I waited for Gretchen to get out of class so we could get on the 1:40pm train to Manchester Airport. She got out late around 1:15 so we had to run around Hull looking for a taxi. We arrived at the train station at 1:34pm...whew. It was a close call but added much excitement. The ride was about two hours to the airport and then we hopped on our RyanAir flight to Madrid! This was my first RyanAir experience (a cheap airline that flies all across Europe - known for their cheap tickets not their customer service). I was a bit nervous but it was 100% fine, and definitely not as sketchy as people make it sound. 


We didn't arrive to our hostel in Madrid until late so we settled in and made our plans for Thursday. We decided on a walking tour in the morning to get an idea of the city and what we wanted to go back and see. The tour was about three hours, the first two of which were rainy and cold - as if we never left Ireland and England. Super depressing, we thought we were going to 70 degrees and sunshine! 

 rainy day

our guide volunteered me to be one of the kings he was discussing - i was Phillip the second - hardworking and religious, the Philippines were named after me, and then i died from a disease that made my face explode! good times.

 plaza mayor 

(madrid is filled with plaza's)

 park across from the palace

 hot chocolate and churros 

a Madrid delicacy - its like brownie batter, this particular chocolatier is open 24 hours! 

amazing. delicious. addicting. 

(and my kind of hot chocolate)

 elephants

 isn't Spain adorable? 

the Prado - very well known art museum

 illegal photo of work by Picasso

(in my defense, i didn't know pictures weren't allowed until after i took this one)

 vroom vroom

vespas

 Gretch and i in a huge park behind the Prado

hangin' out

The following day we decided to go to the Royal Palace. We got a full tour which included 50-60 rooms as well as a viewing of the art collection. Since we needed an English tour it was just us and another couple which was really nice. 

Fun facts: 

-There are 60 different clocks throughout the palace (one of the kings loved clocks)

-It is someones jobs to wind the clocks

-The thrones in the palace have not been sat in since the early 19th century, although they are still under the ownership of the current king and queen

-There are over 2,000 rooms in the palace

 cathedral across from the palace - used for royal weddings and such

(we went into the cathedral as well)

 view of the palace from the balcony of the cathedral 

 ceiling of the cathedral

 palace gardens

The next day we weren't really sure what we wanted to do. We saw a cool looking basilica on our map and decided we'd walk there. Well... we got lost along the way and it took us about two hours to find it. AND once we did, it was closed because of the siesta! I believe this day consisted of wandering and shopping (because we deserved it after getting lost). 

 the basilica 

 graffiti 

 street sign

story says there were pictures on each street sign for the illiterate 

 i saw these buildings and thought, how Spain

 center building in Plaza Mayor, painted just back in the 90s

the pictures represent astrology i believe

 pretty architecture 

Our last day we were walking and came across a market - yay! My favorite. We each found great gifts for friends and family. 

we also got lunch, red sausage and bread

I think one of the funniest things on this trip occurred when Gretchen and I went out to eat one night. I was full after our main course but she wanted dessert and decided to order something different - not even different, something that neither of us had heard of, something with the word Marco in it. It came out and looked delicious. She didn't want to eat the entire thing so she cut me off just a little sliver. She put literally a dab of it on her fork and looked at me with a disgusted face, "This isn't good." "Good one," I said not believing her. "No, seriously... it isn't good." I took a bite and, wow, she was definitely right, it was NOT good. It was pie that tasted like five different liquors had been poured into whipped cream. We didn't know if it would be incredibly rude to not eat it so I made her eat half of her chunk. "I unintentionally screwed myself over by giving myself the biggest part," She said. She even plotted putting it in her napkin so she didn't have to eat it. I was crying I was laughing so hard. 

Although Madrid's weather was unexpectadly cool, we both still had a great time! It was wonderful to travel with a friend from home and to be able to talk about people and things familiar to us both.  Along the way we made new friends as well. Canadians! Two sisters and their brother traveling around Spain for a month. We met them our second night and hung out with them every night after. They were so much fun! We're all facebook friends and twitter followers with each other - so this means our friendship is official :). 

Keep looking back! Up next: Berlin, Germany.