Monday in Madrid

Monday was our first full day in Madrid. We went to our first classes and realized that our other professor (Dra. Pertusa) does not mess around...we have a ton of work to do for her. So after classes, we decided to explore Madrid on our own...except we brought Lopez with us and he gave us his "official" tour of Madrid. We took the bus into the center of Madrid. We saw the sites like the Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol...we even stood in the exact middle of Madrid.

We did a little shopping in the Corte Ingles (it´s like a 9 floor Target and Macy´s mixed together). We bought some groceries, like water and granola bars for breakfast. The Colegio Mayor gave us like a piece of bread and some water for breakfast...maybe a muffin too. We stopped for a snack at the top of the Corte Ingles, which had an amazing view of the city.

After seeing a few other sites and doing a little more shopping, we ate at the "best" Chocolateria in Spain. It was called St. Ginés. We got chocolate and churros....and this is not regular hot chocolate...it´s like melted hershey´s chocolate in a cup and you dip churros...which are like fried dough stick thingys. mmmmm.

A few of the other girls with us decided to go back to the Colegio Mayor, but the rest of us (it just happened to be 6 Bellarmine girls) stuck around to see more. We walked by the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and MacKenzie and Brittany got massages from some vendors there. Later, we ate some tapas in el Museo de Jamon...I had chorizo with my beer, but we also tried tortilla español, which is like an omlette with potatoes, and we also had some olives. After that we decided to head back...the boys were waiting for us to go out!

When we got back around 10, we had to rush to get ready and take showers in the cracker box...it was pretty funny, but we all looked cute! Two of the boys drove and a couple of others took taxis. We rode with Nico, and he was the nicest boy! He spoke English really well too!

So we went back down to the center and waited for everyone. Where did we end up? A bar called Dubliners, that played Irish music! haha. I was a little disappointed that we didn´t go somewhere a little more "authentic" but we still had fun, dancing to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and the Black-Eyed Peas! It was a fun night, and we didn´t get home until 4 a.m.! And we had to be at the bus for Toledo in the morning at 8 a.m.!