Madrid

This was the most rewarding and exciting trip I have ever taken. I was able to go on my own and I survived...well I did better than that! I had an amazing time, a time I will never forget. I left on my 9 day adventure Friday February 9th at 9pm. I took a bus from Canterbury to Gatwick airport and spent the night there. I slept on these two chairs. What a great start. The flight to Madrid left at 7:25am on Saturday!

When we got into Madrid I had to take the metro to my hostel, which was a little hard to find but I got there eventually after asking a couple people for derections. My hostel was on the 4th floor of a building so that is why it was hard to find.

This is the symbol of Madrid...a bear picking something out of a tree!?!?!? There is this symbol everywhere around the city!

As soon as I got into the hostel there was a group of people who invited me to go for a pic-nic with them. We went to el Cotes Ingles, this huge department store which has a grocery store in it as well and then we walked to the main park (Buen RetiroPark) in Madrid and sat on the grass and had a lovely pic-nic. The weather was so nice, it was a beautiful spring day and we were able to enjoy the weather. This is a picture of me by the big pond (I don't remember what the name or importance was but it was gorgeous!)

Once we finished in the part there was still some light so I decided to walk around the city a little more to make the most of the time I had there. I was only there for a couple days and there was so much to see that I didn't want to waste anytime there. I walked to the Royal Palace and then walked to the catherdral. It was too late to go in but I was able to walk around which was nice! I was really worried when I had this couple taking this picture for me because they kept walking backwards to get the whole thing in the picture and I was worried they were going to try to run off with my camera...it was the last time I had other people take the pictures for me. It turned out the be a good picture though.

That I also visited the Plaza Mayor which is one the main sights in Madrid. I DO have pictures but since these posts arent very big I cannot upload all the pictures so I will show people if they ask for more pics!

That night there was a big group of us that decided to go out and we got free entry into this AMAZING club! Normally the entry was 20euro but since we befriended one of the spanish guys they gave us these free cards which was amazing, the drinks were still a little expensive 10euro each! The club was so nice, it looked like a palace inside...there was gold trim everywhere with really high ceilings!!! Every room there was a differnet DJ with different type of music which was so nice. We danced salsa for a while which was nice and then we went into a more mainstream room. The one thing I couldn't adjust to quickly was the time because the spanish would go out at midnight and then come home around 7am, which is so different from the UK. We had such a good time and ended up back at the hostel "early" around 4am.

The next morning I decided to get up fairly early so that I could jam a lot into my day. It was not the nicest day out but it was ok. I went to the bullring in the morning but I couldn't go in because there was a circus in town and they were performing in the ring so there was no way I could get in, unless I wanted to go see the circus and I passed on that one!!!

After going to the bullring, I went back to the hostel and got some of the other girls who wanted to walk around. We went walking around the city. We went to el Museo del Prado, which is one of the best museums in the world. The line was sooo long that we decided to come back but somehow never got back there. We did walk around and found the statue that I had been looking for. This is a picture of the only statue of the devil in the world. Something unique and something I didn't think I would ever have the opportunity to see again in my life.
After a long day of walking aorund the girls and I went back to the hostel and made the most unique and weird meal ever. It was not very good and I will never ever try to make it again but it was a good idea in theory! After a little break we started getting ready to go out on the pubcrawl which runs every wednesday and sunday night in Madrid. All I am going to say is that it was an amazing time with a lot of tequilla!!! YAY....

I loved Madrid!!! it was such a fun and busy city but now onto more cultural cities...Cordoba is the next stop!