Andiamo a Madrid!

February 15-17th.

After booking my flight to visit one of my best friends, Claire before I even got to Florence, the weekend had finally arrived!
I was excited to go to Spain for the first time and especially to be there with her since we hadn't been together in a long time.

Friday morning, I got myself to the Santa Maria Novella train station at 7am and hopped on a train to the Pisa Airport. Preparing myself to go through long lines of security and baggage check, I walked off the train into a one terminal airport. With one line of security that took less than 10 minutes to go through, I was sitting at the gate with 2 1/2 hours to spare.
I introduced myself to another American girl who was sitting by me on the train, so we were waiting at the gate together, got some cappuccini and talked a little.

The gate was somewhat crowded, full of Italians young and old.
I popped my headphones in and turned a not-so-popular song by this cover band I really like. An Italian girl around my age sits down next to me and I happen to hear the music coming out of her iPod. It's the same song I was listening to. In English and everything. I tapped her on the shoulder, showed her my iPod screen, and we both laughed and said how crazy that was. I thought that was kind of a cool/bizarre moment.

Flying through RyanAir airlines was new to me. You are only allowed one check bag. Seats are first come first serve. And the passengers start lining up with over an hour left to board to the plane. I guess this is what I get for paying 60-something euro round trip...
We boarded the plane, and I sat next to the girl I met and then another American girl, who is actually from Iowa. We all fall asleep and before we know it, we have arrived in Madrid!


Claire finds me at the airport and she is still the same spaz as always! It was so good to see her, she even had a sandwich waiting for me :).
We got onto the Metro (the railway system to get around town) and are on our way to her last class of the day.
So tired from traveling, we get to her school and I realize all her classes are in Spanish so I take a seat in the back row, and fall asleep through almost the whole period. We leave after class, and start walking back to her home-stay where her 'house mom' is waiting for us.

Arriving to Claire's house, her housemom, Clara, is an old Spanish woman in her 70s. So cute. We have a little snack, relax for a while and then go back out walking. Claire took me to Museo del Prado where there was the famous work of Diego Velasquez, 'Las Meninas.' It was free that Friday night, so we spent a little time in there, met up with her friends, and made it home for dinner her 'mom' prepared for us around 8.


After such a good meal of veggies, tortilla and beans, we both showered and packed our stuff to go to the Hostel Claire and her friends booked for the weekend.
Because Claire is in a home-stay, she is not allowed to have visitors, so some other girl's friend was visiting making it easy for us to get a Hostel room.

Cat's Hostel, located in the center of Madrid was where we stayed. The place was pretty cool. We get to the front desk, give the reservation name, and the man proceeds to tell us we will be in a room with 12 other people. WHAT? Claire is about to start having a panic attack and her friend does not even know what to say. I step up and begin drilling him with questions, seeing if we can get a smaller room. Or even a 4 bedroom so it's only us.

center of Spain

Eventually, he says there's a room open for 8 people, but if we pay extra, we can have it to ourselves. 10 euros extra a person, or witnessing God knows what happen and having all our stuff stolen in a 14 person room? 10 euro extra won.

Relieved, we get settled in and figure out our plans for the night. We met a group of American guys visiting from Barcalona next door to us, and hung out in there for a while, then went into the city center area and stopped at a few of the bars.

The next day, we got our free breakfast including cereal, coffee and toast, and headed out for the day.

What we did;
-Shopped in Il Sol (the center)

Debod

-Stepped on the very, very center part of Spain
-Got my nose pierced
-Walked through the central market
-Finally found a Starbucks!
-Saw Temple de Debod
-Saw the Royal Family's castle
-Ate paella
-Went on a Teleferico ride, miles out of Madrid

We walked back to the hostel, relaxed a bit, and decided to go out and get Tapas for the night. Tapas, so delicious, are when you go to a restaurant, purchase a drink and it comes with plates of food. Kind of like our aperitivo in Florence. SO good. We hung out at Il Tigre for the night.

Dead tired, we went to the Hostel and fell right asleep. I was leaving Sunday for the airport at 11 and Claire still wanted to show me their flee market area, so we wanted to get up early.
To our surprise, we were woken up by the obnoxious entrance our new friends from Barcalona made at 7:30am, on their arrival back to the Hostel from being out that night. So now that we were all awake, we went down to get breakfast and checked out as soon as we were ready.
They showed me the market area, did some shopping, and then brought me to the airport.

I really, really enjoyed the weekend. Madrid was awesome. I love that not a lot of people spoke English, forcing Claire and her friends to speak Spanish.
What was weird, was that I was somewhat 'homesick' for Florence. I missed the comfort of hearing people speaking Italian, and also the smallness of the city. I wasn't used to taking public transportation everywhere. Traveling to all these new places has given me so many perspectives on life that I never knew existed. The feeling of experiencing new cultures, especially this weekend, having Claire's Spanish 'house-mom' cook and try and communicate with me.. is amazing. The world is such an interesting place, filled with so many different types of people, that I truly never realized... And I probably would not have if it weren't for studying abroad. Once again, I am the luckiest girl in the world.