Madrid

Today we had a long day of walking around. We got to see a lot of Madrid and that was really cool. It is a very nice city...very different from what I’m used to seeing in Barcelona. For one thing, it’s a lot newer than Barcelona. The city plan is more spread out, but when you look at a map, it looks like someone just scribbled the roads on a piece of paper. Barcelona has an easy grid, so it’s easier to navigate. Our tour guides new where they were going, so that was good...otherwise, we would have gotten lost fast.
We got to see the Royal Palace, or Palacio Real, cathedral, and many other cites within the city. One really crazy thing that happened when we were walking around was that I saw someone I recognized. It took me a second because it was so weird. I saw the guy that cut my hair in Barcelona last week! It was crazy. I went up to him and called his name, and he turned around. All Spanish left me at the moment, so I made a gesture that he had cut my hair. I think he understood and recognized me, even though I was wearing a beanie over my head. It’s a small world. That was the third time I’ve run into someone here in Spain in an odd place. Toño, our Spanish teacher, was in our car on the Metro...and I spotted Alba, our coordinator, at a Metro stop on another side of town in Barcelona. But running into the guy that cut my hair in another city...that topped it off.

After a long day of walking and seeing the sites, we got some food in the mall across from the hotel again. It was definately nap time. We woke up around 10:30pm and started to get ready to go out. Our tour guides told a few of us where they were going to be and other people were planning on going out to dance. One of the girls I had met in the morning, Viri, is turning 22 tomorrow, so they were planning on going out. I ended up going out with some of my friends to some bar to meet up with the tour guides.

Since I don’t drink, I was very thirsty by the end of the night. It was nice to get to talk to the tour guides though. I got to learn about where they were from, how they learned English, what they do other than leading groups around, etc. They are very knowledgeable and very nice. I am definately going to try and keep in touch with them.

By the time 3am rolled around, it was time to get back to the hotel and go to bed. We found out the next morning that people were out until 6am! And the crazy thing is that that’s normal to Spaniards.