Viva la fiesta, viva la noche -- Madrid, Spain

The train was extremely crowded and Eric and I weren’t able to sit together, but it was a short ride so I just slept the entire time.  After settling into the Cat’s Hostel we went straight to lunch at Museo del Jamon.

I had never been in such a chaotic yet organized restaurant.  Everyone just orders food and stands at the bar to eat it.  The chaos is going on around the bar because people are in every square inch of the place yelling back and forth at each other, but the people behind the counter were so organized and knew exactly who wanted what…. I would have never been able to keep up.  They also had a counter in the back where they sold all of their hams—I cannot even tell you how many ham stores there were in Madrid, it was unbelievable.  The first thing they did when we walked up to the bar was serve us a plate of paella, we were surprised and didn’t know what to do with it until the guy just stared at us and said ITS FREE…that’s all we needed to hear for us to start digging in, it was so good and we were both starving.  Then we ordered a peculiar combination of fries, eggs, bread, steak, lettuce, and tomato.  I made a sandwich out of it and the Spanish man working the counter thought this was quite funny…. He just looked at me laughing and said “interesting.”  I guess not too many Americans come into that restaurant because he seemed to love us, he kept asking if we were okay and just smiling at us…I think he could tell we were a little puzzled by everything going on around us.  He was really nice though, I’m glad we went there for lunch because it seemed pretty local and really was a different experience than either of us had ever had.

After that we just walked around the town for a couple of hours.  We went to the main square, Puerta del Sol, where there were a lot of characters, human statues, and people just dressed up in the most random of costumes looking for some extra money… I’m not sure why there were so many of them but I wonder how successful they are in doing this everyday.

 We didn’t really have a plan for the day when we arrived so when we got tired of walking around we just went back to the hostel to take a nap, get ready, and figure out what we wanted to do for the rest of the night.

When we were deciding on where to go for dinner I found a tapas place really close by to our hostel that happened to be ranked really high on trip advisor so we thought we’d give it a try—Café Olmo. When we walked in it was a really small place with one little counter and maybe 5 tables.  The people behind the counter didn’t even acknowledge that we had walked in…. we didn’t know whether to seat ourselves or what…. And didn’t see a menu anywhere so after standing awkwardly for about two minutes we decided to leave and find something else.  I’m glad that happened because we ended up going to Taberna Gastromaquia. The owner, Caesar, translated the entire menu for us then gave us his recommendations, it was extremely welcoming.

He was so nice to us throughout our entire dinner, checking on everything and making polite conversation.  It turned out he had lived in DC for a little while before coming back to Spain!  We started our meal with homemade guacamole with plantain chips, then a warm goat cheese salad, followed by octopus in a potato foam, and finished with mojito sorbet for dessert.  We had the best red wine I've ever had with it-- I wish I had gotten the name.  It was all absolutely phenomenal. The cheese on the salad was a little bit heavy but overall the entire meal was definitely a memorable one-- can't believe I've now eaten Octopus!

  

 

After dessert he brought us two popular Madrid shots as a thank you (told you they love this here!)-- one red and one yellow.  They weren't my favorite and I cannot for the life of me remember what he had to say about them but it was a nice gesture!  After dinner we were both pretty tired so we took the metro back to our hostel and went to bed.  The next morning we woke up in time to make the free tour of Madrid at 11:00 with our guide, O.D.

The tour began in Plaza Mayor, one of the major plazas in Madrid.  It began at the statue of King Phillip III in the center of the plaza with a lot of Spanish history, as the always do.

Then we moved out of the plaza and he told us the significance of all of the ham shops… he said when the Spanish Inquisition was going on, the Jews were afraid and the best way to convince someone you weren’t a jew was to open up a ham shop, that would make everything believe that you weren’t because jews couldn’t eat ham.  He showed us one ham shop that had been open for over 100 years.  There were many shops around Madrid that had been open for that long and they denote all of them with a plaque type thing in the sidewalk right outside of the door of the business so that everyone knows.

Then we went into Puerta del Sol where he showed us the famous El Oso y el Madroño-- the symbol of Madrid.

He told us that the tree represents all the minerals and everything on earth trying to make their way up to the sky and the bear represents the heavens and the Big Dipper.   The plaza’s name, Puerta del Sol, means “gates of the rising sun”.  This plaza is the centre of the radial network of Spanish roads marking the 0 km spot.

After the main square he showed us some of the popular pastry and sweet shops…. Don’t worry we revisited them, they looked too good not to!

 

There was one chocolate shop that is open 24 hours a day.   We said that we would go back to that one but we never ended up going…. We weren’t hungry enough during the day and it was too cold at night that we didn’t want to walk all the way there. Next time I guess!

Then he took us to see the food market of Madrid, Mercado de San Miguel, and the Restaurante Sobrino de Botin which holds the Guiness World Record for Oldest Restaurant in the World and the Forbes 3^rd most popular classic restaurant in the world.  Unfortunately for Eric and I… it was a little bit out of our price range.

 After that he took us to a monastery where apparently the nuns sell cookies.  You ring a bell to be let in then walk down this hallway, press another button and say over an intercom how many cookies you want, they tell you how much it is… you put the money in a tray and they turn it around with the cookies.  You never physically see the nuns during the entire transaction.   It didn’t sound like a way I would ever like to buy cookies but he promised it wasn’t sketchy…. Even with the promise we decided that was a place we wouldn’t need to come back and check out after the tour. 

We literally toured the entire city in these few hours.   He took us to a few more plazas, gave us the history behind various statues and such and then pointed out a restaurant with over 85 different brands of beer available from over 12 countries on the way to the Cathedral.

The Cathedral of Madrid took over 300 years to build… it wasn’t finished until 1993.  The cool thing about it was that because it took so long there were 3 major architects involved in the project…. All with extremely different styles.  Therefore, the cathedral is kind of like a hodge-podge of architectural design from the three architects. You would never think that these two pictures were part of the same cathedral.

 After the cathedral we saw the palace- Palacio Real.  He claimed it is the biggest palace in Western Europe…. but only if you don’t count the gardens at the Palace of Versailles.  It certainly was magnificent and HUGE.  The cool thing about this palace was that you could walk around the entire outside of it and pay to go inside.  At Buckingham Palace in London you could only see the front, so it was kind of neat to see the palace in its entirety and be able to walk around the exterior to take in its massiveness.  

He ended the tour outside of the palace in the gardens in front of the King Phillip IV fountain.  The interesting thing about this fountain was that the statue was a product of Galileo himself.  He told them how to make the horse stand up on its hind legs by putting a lot of weight in the rear of the horse and making the rest of the statue hollow. 

Then we went to a tapas bar with the tour group for lunch.  Eric and I got boqadillos (sandwiches) with pork and cheese that were fabulous.  I had sangria and Eric had red wine, both of which were very delicious as well.  Then we left the group to go back to the square for dessert in one of the bakeries.  We chose one of the 100+ year old shops and got these little pastries filled with chocolate called Napolitanas….mmhhhm mhhhm good.  We were pretty happy we made the decision to go back there.

After our dessert we headed back to the market so we could go inside and see what it was all about.  We didn’t get anything, but I always love walking around the food markets in every city because there isn’t anything like it in the United States.

After that we went back to the hostel to figure out a plan for the rest of the day.  We decided on the Prado museum because we got free entry with our student ID’s.  The museum has art by Velasquez, Goya, El Greco, and a lot of other really famous artists.

 

After that we headed to the Sofia museum to see Picasso’s famous Guernica.  We finally found it after a bit of confusion (this art museum has the absolute worst set up ever).  We looked at it for a couple of minutes and then left.  At this point we were kind of museumed out so we didn’t feel like staying there long at all.  After that we went back to the hostel to get ready for the night.  For dinner we went out to a tapas bar called El Tigre.  It was extremely crowded and another one of those places where you don’t sit down but rather eat standing at the counter.  Here the counters went throughout the whole building instea of just at the bar so you didn’t have to stay at the front to find a spot to eat.  All you have to do is order a drink and then they give you a huge plate full of tapas to go with it.  We started out with a couple of mojitos.  I was excited to finally have the traditional tapas that come with a drink, all of the other places we had been to didn’t still do it that way. 

It was mostly a paella mixture then some meat and cheese bread combos and a delicious fried cheesy thing (I wish I knew what it was called).  After we finished we both got Sangria…. But that also came with two heaping plates of food.  At this point we didn’t know what to do with all the food, we were too full to eat it!  If you looked around the bar there were just stacks on stacks of plates with untouched food…. They should probably start asking if people actually want the food after they move onto a second drink.

I had read a lot about the famous Flamenco shows in Madrid so after dinner we went to a place called Las Carboneras for a show.

It was ranked as the top flamenco show in Madrid on trip advisor so we thought we couldn’t go wrong with this place.  Well…. Flamenco shows aren’t quite what I thought.  The music was great! But the dancing and some of the solo acts were just a bit weird.   I was expecting bright colored flashy long skirts and younger performers and it was kind of the opposite.  It was a good experience and I’m glad we went but I don’t think I’ll ever go see one again.  By the end I was almost falling asleep…. Eric had to keep nudging me to keep me awake.  After that we were both pretty exhausted and walked home to sleep before our train to Valencia in the morning!

^^ These were where things got a little weird.  The expressions on the dancers and singers faces were pretty funny, you could tell they loved what they were doing.  

BARCA, BARCA, BAAAAAARCA! —Barcelona, Espana

Eric was exhausted from his week of exams and full two days of traveling so he fell asleep rather quickly on the train…. Around 8:30.

The overnight train wasn’t so bad, but when we had to switch to a normal train around 4:50 in the morning we were preeeetty tired.  Our connection wasn’t until 6:15 so we sat in the train station for about an hour before boarding our next train.  The train started out pretty empty so I kept on sleeping but after about 45 minutes it filled with the bustling work crowd—every seat was filled and some people were even standing.  At that point sleep was out of the question and after already having been on a train for about 12 hours I felt like I was getting some stares for being in sweats with messy hair while everyone else was nicely dressed up for work.  Our last train to get to Barcelona was the most interesting by far.  I tried to continue sleeping but I don’t think I did very much, Eric just read the whole time (he borrowed the Game of Thrones book from one of the guys on the trip and couldn’t put it down whenever we were on the trains).  After one or two stops a truckload of middle-school age girls gets on the train and are talking and laughing like hyenas behind us.  After traveling for so long….neither of us were too happy about that.  I felt like I’d been traveling forever, I can only imagine how Eric felt at that point having only had the 5 hour break in Nice since Friday morning.  Anyways…. Slowly but surely a group of little boys heads back and start sitting on the edges of our seats and the seats surrounding us so they can flirt with all the girls.  I witnessed a few exchanging phone numbers... it was too much to handle.  Not to mention we were still in France at this point so they all smelled really bad.  I don’t understand it, it’s overpowering HOW can someone live like that??? So this goes on for over an hour until we stop for what seems like 20 minutes or more to pick up a group from a retirement home.  Before we know it all of them have gathered onto our train car as well and there is clearly no room for them.  It made absolutely no sense because it was a reservation train so everyone should have known where they were supposed to sit.  It turns out ALL of the middle schoolers were on the WRONG train car and they had to get up and move between this hoard of old people.  It was absolute chaos.  The old people were Spanish and were yelling at the middle schoolers who were French…. it was a total mess.  Eric and I just sat there watching the whole encounter.

Finally, an hour later we arrived in Barcelona.  First things first we had to wait about 30 minutes to buy our train reservations to Madrid and Valencia … but after that we were free of travel and free to explore!  Our hostel was kind of on the outskirts of the city because it was right next to Camp Nou (we had planned it this way so we could be close to the game) but the metro system in Barcelona was absolutely wonderful so we had no issues getting around.  First we walked along Las Ramblas—the major street in Barcelona—to look for some lunch.  We stopped at a place I had found in a travel book I’d been looking through called Viena. 

 According to the NY Times they have "the best sandwiches in the world".  Eric and I both got this delicious sausage type sandwich and then continued walking down the street, stopping in various touristy shops along the way until we reached Mercat St. Josep La Boqueria—the most famous market in Barcelona.

 It had every type of food you can imagine and SO MUCH seafood and fresh fruit.  We shared a fruit cup, which was wonderful because its so hard to get a variety of fruit in Lugano without paying an arm and a leg for it.  

   

The seafood was really sad to look at because most of them were still alive :(

Barcelona was probably my favorite food market by far.  There was just so much there and it was SO big.

    

I saw huge ostrich eggs there and it reminded me of you Adam if you’re reading this!  I almost bought one to bring back to you but then I had absolutely no idea how I would go about that, so I decided against it.

After the market we kept walking down the street until we reached Palau Guell-- some of the Gaudi architecture.  You couldn’t see much but it still looked pretty cool!  We didn’t feel like paying to go inside because I had heard the only one that’s truly worth it was Sagrada Familia.

We kept on walking until we reached the end of the street and Port Vell!  It was beautiful.

 

We walked along the port area for a little while then made our way down the streets to the beach.  It was extremely windy outside and getting late so it wasn’t very warm.  We didn’t last too long but it was pretty to see the beach on one side and then look and see mountains in the distance on the otherside.

After that we went back to the hostel for a quick siesta (nap) and then got ready for the evening.  Everyone else would be arriving in Barcelona around 10:00 so we were pretty excited to meet up with them.  We went to the most AMAZING tapas place for dinner called La Bombeta.

The sign above the bar reads—No Hablamos Ingles pero hacemos unas bombas cojunugas, which means “We don’t speak English but our Bombas are out of this world.” And that they were.

 

We had the bombas—which were potatoes with a spicy sausage and some sort of sauce on top... they were amazing.  We also ordered Catalan sausage with peppers and meatballs with sauce, both of which were also very delicious.  To wash it all down we had our first taste of Spanish Sangria!  It was a perfect first dinner in Barcelona, I feel like we found a local gem.

     After dinner we tried to call the others to see if they were nearby but for some reason my international phone wasn’t working! We think they may have been on the metro at the time and that might be why but who knows for sure.  We knew which hostel they were staying in so we headed in that direction and then ended up running into a few others from our group we weren’t expecting in the downstairs bar of the hostel, Bellushis!

Michael and Jordan came to meet up all of us and then we made our way to Chupitos bar!  They had a board on the wall with over 100 different made-up shots listed on it—the Harry Potter shot, boyscout, smores, finding nemo, you name it… it was probably there.  Of course I had to try the harry potter shot.  It sparked and flashed, and was actually pretty good!

 

 


I didn’t get a picture but the “Raquel” shot was absolutely deeeelicious-- super fruity and beachy tasting.  We only stayed for about an hour then headed back home for the night.

     The next morning we woke up and headed toward the other hostel to meet up with everyone else.  First stop after that- Dunkin Donuts...convieniently located directly in front of the Boqueria.  We got our donut and coffee fix then headed into the market for some more fruit.  This time I got a fresh fruit juice too—Strawberry, Orange, Pineapple… soooo amazing.  I know I say this about everything we eat… but it really all has been unbelievably delicious.

 After that we walked down Las Ramblas a little bit more and then made our way to the Gaudi houses.  First we went to Casa Batllo.  I liked how ovular the windows were and the balconies off of each of them.  All of his architecture has a really colorful aspect to it. It’s all so different than anything we’ve ever seen before!

After that we went to La Pedrera—another of the Gaudi houses.  This one was really cool because its so wave-like.  Each balcony was completely different than the one next to it.  We wondered whether he had a plan for each or just freestyled when it came down to it.

After that we took a lunch break at a Mexican restaurant.  We all missed the Mexican food from home and were really excited for our quesadilla fix but unfortunately the Spanish don’t do Mexican very well, it just wasn't what we were hoping for.  Then we had a huge ordeal with the bill because the waiter accidentally added on a few extra items... so figuring that out was quite a process.  In the end, the owner felt bad about the mixup that he gave us all a limoncello shot on the house before we left!  That seems to be the way a lot of European restaurants make up for mistakes because that's not the first time we've been given limoncello to make up for something.  Our next stop was Park Guell.  The park was beautiful.  We were so lucky it was such a pretty day outside.

The park is another place with a lot of Gaudi architecture.  If we didn’t have more to see we could have walked around and relaxed there for a couple hours it is so big!

  

 

After that Eric and I broke off from the group and headed towards Sagrada Familia.  We couldn’t leave Barcelona without seeing that and we needed to see it before the soccer game.  Yep… its STILL under construction.  The last of the famous Gaudi architecture it began in 1882 and is not supposed to be done until 2015.  It was still absolutely amazing though.  Definitely much different than any of the cathedrals I’ve been in throughout Europe thus far.

After that we made our way back to the hostel to get ready for the AC Milan vs Barcelona game!   It was a little after 5 and we walked into the hostel expecting to pick up our tickets at the front desk—I won’t even go into detail about how much trouble it was organizing how to receive the tickets…. I probably exchanged about 200 emails with this company—anyways, the desk tells me that the company called and they couldn’t deliver them so we had to go pick them up from a location very close to the stadium. They had previously told me that the seller was “uncomfortable with a hand delivery” when I asked before so this was kind of frustrating but oh well.  Our hostel was really close to Camp Nou so we figured we’d be able to go get them quickly then come back to get ready.  Wrong again…. It took us about 30 minutes to walk to this “really close by” location and then we had to wait for the guy to come down and give us our tickets outside of some random office building… it was a very strange exchange.  The whole process took a little less than an hour.  With the tickets in hand we could finally get excited for the game!! (we were all concerned that we may never even get them)  We then went back and took quick showers and shortly afterwards we were on our way to the stadium.

We bought 4 tickets together but apparently they were divided in 2 and 2… so Eric and I sat apart from Michael and Jordan but there were exactly two empty seats beside us so they came to sit with us after the first half.   As far as the game goes…. I have no words.  It was absolutely amazing.  Soooo exciting from the first goal within 5 minutes to the 4-0 victory in the end.  The fans were wild!  We were sitting pretty high up but honestly there isn’t a bad seat in the stadium, you could see everything from anywhere and everyone around us just felt like such diehard fans. It was awesome.

 

 

 

After the game we went back to the Bellushis bar to meet up with everyone else and celebrate the win!  By this time everyone had arrived in Barcelona and I was happy that Eric was able to meet nearly half of the people I’ve been living with for the past semester.

We all went out together as a group to chupitos again and when we walked in we saw one of Eric’s fraternity brothers and 3 of my sorority sisters that just happened to be in Barcelona too!

     

It was so crazy running into them!  I had known they were going to London but apparently they made a spur of the moment decision to go to Barcelona for the weekend! Eric had known his frat brother was going to be in Barcelona… but it’s a huge city what are the odds that we actually see him!  Chupitos was a lot of fun that night with the whole group there.

     The next morning we woke up early to catch our train to Madrid.  This was a high-speed train so it would only take us about 2 ½ hours to get there.