I am sorry I have been slacking on this, I really wanted to do better at it but I don't know what happens. Anyways, here goes Spring Break. Last week, 5 of my roommates, and one of the girls from next door, Deanna, went to Spain for 7 days. It was amazing. We went to Madrid for three days, Granada for two, and Barcelona for the last two. The only downfall was, I left my camera in Granada, so I have no pictures for this post at the moment, and no pictures of Barcelona what so ever. Someone found it and is in the process of mailing it to me though, so that is great news.
We had to wake up extremely early for our flight to Madrid. We got up at 6am and caught a cab to the airport. Once we got through security, we stopped by duty free to take a look at what they had. We were wandering around and looking at some Patron, deciding that we would splurge. How many times to you get to spend Spring Break in Spain? Not many, that is the answer. While we were looking, a girl who worked there came up and asked if we would like to sample the Patron to see if we wanted silver or gold. Umm... yes? Yes, if you are keeping track in your head, it is only about 8:00 am at this point. Stop judging, it is Spring Break.
We end up buying the gold, and take off to Madrid. We got there in the afternoon, dropped our stuff off at our hostel and took a walk around the city. It was very different from London, and awesome. After a quick lunch, which wasn't the greatest because I was probably the most efficient in the language, except for the fact that I never took the time to learn the details of food. Oh, well. After that, we went back to our hostel and decided to take part in the Spanish culture of ciestas (naps). We got up later that night and met two of the girls from our program who were also in Madrid for dinner and to go to the club Kapital. We ended up at this Beatles bar that played really awesome music and was quite nice. After dinner we headed for the club and it was almost midnight at this point, Spaniards are crazy with how late they stay out. The club was one of the coolest I have ever been to, seven stories tall, different style of music on each floor. Only problem was drinks were 12 euros each, so the complimentary drink I got upon entry was the last one for me. Still stuck around til about 4 am and then walked back to our hostel. Even after the hour walk, there were still hundreds of people around. Like I said, they're crazy.
The next day we went on a guided tour of the city which was also awesome. This company puts on free tours in a lot of the major cities in Europe, so we obviously took part in it. It was three hours long and pointed out all the historical places in the city and I learned a ton about Spanish culture. Later that night we went on a pub crawl with the same tour guide from the afternoon. We went to four bars and then a club. It turned out that one of the girls that was on our tour actually went to Chapman University in Orange, and we had 2 or 3 mutual friends. This world just keeps getting smaller. We started at a bar where we had free beer and sangria for about 45 minutes until we left for the other bars where we had a free shot upon entry at each one. It was great. The first bar we went to everyone was dancing and having a great time. I am not sure if it has become big in the States yet, but there is a techno song here called Barbra Streisand that is HUGE here. They play it absolutely everywhere, probably in each of the bars we were at that night. After that bar we went to another bar which actually turned out to be a salsa bar. A girl that was on the tour turned out to know a little about salsa so she spent the about 45 minutes we were there teaching and dancing with me. If I didn't have two left feet it would have helped a lot, but it was still great. After the four bars our guide took us to this awesome club where we danced until about 5 am again. When we left, the club was still jam packed, with no signs of slowing down. These people are crazy, I'm telling you.
The next day, Deanna, Sean, and I decided to get up relatively early and head over to a convent where they supposedly sold delicious cookies. It was an adventure to say the least. We got there and were trying to figure out how to get the cookies and there was this crazy Spanish nun yelling at us in Spanish what to do, but we obviously weren't understanding. Supposedly you were supposed to put your money on a shelf that spun around and there were cookies that would spin around to you. How could we have not know that? Stupid Americans. But anyways, the cookies were stupid, it was a box of little lemon cookies that you probably could have bought from any grocery store in the area. Oh well, gave us a reason to wake up and an adventure. Later that afternoon we took about a 40 minute train ride to Toledo. It is set upon a hill surrounded by a river so it looks amazing walking up to it. I would love to show pictures, but like I said before... Ugh. But we walked around for a few hours and had some laughs. The city was pretty dead because the day was ending so we ended up just finding this nice little cafe for some wine and sandwiches. We made our way back to Madrid later that night and thought it was going to be a relatively mellow night because of our early bus ride to Granada the next morning. How wrong we could have been.
We got to the city and decided we were going to go find this bar that had shots in chocolate glasses with Spanish liquor called Madroño. It is made from the fruit of the madroño treem which is the symbol of the city. It was easily one of the most delicious things I have ever had. We ended up having a couple and bought two bottles of it. That night we decided to walk around and went into a bar and it turned out to be one of the bars on our pub crawl the night before that we loved. So we spent some time there before we decided it was time to head home. Some people said they didn't want to leave which was fine with me but I wanted to get sleep so I and some others were leaving. But everyone seemed to follow for some reason, I am not sure why. As we were walking we were approached by a bar promoter telling us to come to their bar, we kindly declined saying that we were going home. He offered us a free drink upon entry. "Well, I guess we'll come for one drink." After our drink and hanging out for about half an hour, we were on our way home again. Another promoter stops us, "No thanks, we have to get some sleep." "Free drinks?" "Ughhhh." That happened to us four or five times, so I guess I can't complain too much. It was great. We ended up at this Irish bar, where we ran into two other friends from our pub tour. We danced there for about an hour or so, where Deanna and I actually ended up on top of the bar at one point. Maybe it is good I don't have any documentation of that for this. But after that bar we headed back to the city center again and one last promoter comes up to us and we ended up back at the first bar of the night. There we were talking to random Americans that we ran into and met a girl who was in Madrid for the weekend but was headed back to Granada the next day, where she studies. "We are going to Granada in the morning! Or who are we kidding, in like 3 hours." We hung out the rest of the night and all exchanged numbers and decided to meet up while there. In the end, Deanna and I decided to leave and get at least some sleep, I would rather have an hour than nothing. The rest of them stayed out all night and we went back for some much needed rest. An hour later, we were up and on our way to the bus station for a five hour bus ride.
Overall, Madrid was my favorite of the three cities in regards to nightlife. So I am going to end this one right here and write about Granada and Barcelona sometime this weekend probably. If you made it all the way through this post I appreciate it. Sorry it was so long. Just so much happened in those three days so I didn't know what to cut out.
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