Holaaa besos besos!

Yesterday we decided to finally go see Guernica at the Reina Sofia – but of course, it was closed on Tuesdays. We figured that we should go to Madrid anyway and we could go to the Pateon de Goya (Goya’s tomb with some of his frescoes). At first we didn’t even have the address, but once we found it we knew it would take us a while to find it. It was a night full of wandering. (Note: our friend that we made on the way back from Barcelona, Benny, was correct: every McDonald’s has “Wiffi”! At least the one we tried his theory on did.) We took the metro to find Goya’s tomb and walked along this park and enjoyed the state of being carefree. Once we had realized we walked too far, we weren’t able to make it inside before it closed; but a least we know where it is now. We walked back to the train station (which was attached to a mall – pretty cool) and took the metro to Tribunal to get tapas at this fantastic place recommended by Kip’s guidebook. We wandered again for a while trying to find our way around this area of Madrid. It turns out that Kip’s guidebook is either outdated or lying. By that time we were just looking for a place to sit down. I passed a Le Pain Quotiden! I couldn’t believe they had one! Took me back to good times in New Canaan. We literally began looking in windows to see which restaurant would be most appealing and found this Cerverceria that had a lot of people in it. It turns out that it was cheap and it was renown for its “motaditos” which we assumed were the small bocadillos everyone was eating with their drinks. We ordered a sampler plate to split between the four of us and they were all good! A few were questionable as to what it was made out of but that was the fun in trying new food. We headed back to Sol to of course get some Haribo which we were sad to see had closed for the night. We found out that the famous churreria is open 24/7 which is good to know for our clubbing nights in Madrid. When back in Alcala everyone headed home after a long afternoon of wandering. I wanted to meet up with the U of A kids at American night at La Media Pinta and was able to find them! It was so much fun. I met a bunch of new people who were all really outgoing and inviting me to different things. A lot of the students were from University of Maryland. Sarah and I discovered we have the same birthday, which was really exciting for both of us at the time, and we decided that we were going to throw ourselves a combined birthday party before our programs end. The place played incredibly loud music and I was shouting my conversations literally the whole night. At one point there were so many people there and the main bartender (Javier) stood up on the counter and was pouring alcohol into people’s mouths. I thought it was hilarious and was able to snap a few pictures of it. Anyway, their plans were to stay out all night but I headed back after I decided I didn’t want a relapse of my cold from earlier this week.