Weekend in Madrid!

Well I just got back from my first trip to Madrid!  We left bright and early Friday morning with the all the students from the Fundacion.  First thing we did was take a long bus tour of the city so we could see the main sights.  Afterwards we went to the Palacio Real which is the former palace of the King and Queen of Spain.  Unfortunately they wouldn't let us take any pictures inside but it was absolutely amazing.  The art and decorations were incredible. 

After the Palacio Real we went to lunch at el museo de jamon (ham museum) where we ate chicken...why i have no idea.  Afterwards we went on the long adventure of trying to find our hostel and finally found it after a lot of wandering around random streets in Madrid.  The hostel ended up being great and we met a lot of great people from all around the world.  For the rest of the day we wandered around and went shopping and just took in the sights of Madrid.  That night we went to El Capital which is a gigantic club in Madrid with seven stories!  Every story played different music including the roof.  There was a girl in our hostel from Slovenia that went out with us and it was a super fun time! The next day we went out for Thai food and then headed for El Retiro, which is a huge park in Madrid which was similar to Central Park.

We spent most of the day hanging out there and seeing all the sights.  Saturday night we did a pub crawl that started at our friend's hostel and went to three bars and then ended up at a discoteca.  For 10 euros we were led to each place and got a free drink at each bar.  It ended up being a super fun night but we didn't get to bed until about 6 am and had to be checked out of our hostel by 11 on Sunday so needless to say we were very exhausted.  We spent most of the day just sitting at a couple cafes relaxing and talking since we were tired and had all our luggage with us.  We had a traditional dinner of paella and spanish tortilla and then headed for the bullfight.  The bullfight was something I felt like I should do just because I'm in Spain and it's a big cultural thing but I didn't enjoy it very much.  It was cool seeing the bullfight arena and I don't regret going but seeing bulls die slow painful deaths wasn't very fun :( 

The trip was super fun but by Sunday night I was definitely ready to go back to Toledo.  It definitely helps when you come home to clean sheets, clean folded clothes and a huge home cooked meal with my new favorite desert.  Got to love my host mom :)  I just booked a ticket to Barcelona for this weekend so another update to come soon!