Pretending to be Parisian for a few months...: don't tell the spanish, but I prefer the flan in france...

We came, we saw, we conquered! Well, at least we got there. We had an uneventful flight to Madrid on Saturday afternoon, arrived around 5, and wandered around until we found our hostel (conveniently located in the dead center of the city). The first hostel we stayed in was incredibly nice, for a hostel - only shared a room with 2 other people, got clean linens upon arrival, private bathroom, and unlimited continental breakfast. (The second hostel we stayed in on Sunday night actually got better reviews on hostelworld.com but was much worse in my opinion. No private bathrooms, iffy sheets, noisy room, etc - not worth the 5 euros we saved by switching. I think if we had been looking to meet other young people, it would've been the better of the two, but that wasn't our priority. Hmm, tangent. ANYway...)

Spanish people are late to bed, late to rise, and late to eat, so in an attempt to adapt to Spanish culture, we didn't end up eating till about 10. We met up with Jacobi for dinner - one of our friends from Stanford who is currently studying abroad in Spain - but by that point we were all pretty starved - perhaps dinner at 10 was a little ambitious for our first day. The paella, however, was totally worth the wait!

That night, we got into a discotheque around 2 AM (the Spanish way! Get into the club as the metro closes, get out when it opens) and danced our feet off in 3-story club that looks like a renovated 17th century palace, appropriately called "Palazzio". We didn't get out until about 6, and of course didn't even consider going home before getting churros and chocolate (rather disgusting at 6 AM on no sleep in my opinion, but Jacobi insisted they were the way to go).

Sunday, Chloe and I went off on our own to the flea market and to a beautiful park in the middle of Madrid with some of her best friends from high school. By 5, I was falling on my face I was so tired, so I went back for a siesta until about 8, at which point we all met up and went out for tapas and a flamenco show. Olé olé!

Monday, we went to the Musée Reina Sofia, which is a world-renowned modern art museum. They were having a huge special exhibit of Picasso's career, and Picasso is one of my absolute favorites. Four entire floors of all of his artwork - I about died! It was like seeing my favorite band in concert. Afterwards, we ate lunch at a really neat Moroccan restaurant (sitting on the floor on pillows even!) and checked out the Stanford program's facilities before heading over to Jacobi's host family to stay the evening. Jacobi's host mom was SO incredibly nice - she let all three of us girls stay in her apartment and even cooked us dinner!! She talked to me a million miles an hour in Spanish, but she was SO warm and fuzzy that it was hard not to just smile and nod.

Overall, it was a very zen trip - I felt very little responsibility because I spoke no Spanish, and very little pressure to do anything because I didn't have many expectations. My to do list consisted of eating tapas, paella, and flan, drinking sangria, and going to the Reina Sofia, all of which I accomplished with gusto. After having been to Barcelona and Madrid, I think Barcelona was cooler, but I'm SO glad I got to see Madrid and had a really great time. Seville next?

Espagna!