Madrid

Our first destination for our fall break was Madrid. Just to clear up who us is, it's me, Matt, Zach, Andrew, Alex, Luke, and Jacob. We landed in Madrid Wednesday night ready to see all of Madrid within the next 38 hours before we set off for Barcelona. We didn't have any set plans for the day on Thursday which is nice to an extent but looking back at it I wish we would've done that differently. We did a lot of wondering around and time wasting in the city, but eventually we would make something out of the day. We went to visit the Santiago Bernabeu which is the famous soccer team Real Madrid's stadium. It was one of the nicest stadiums I have ever seen and I decided I would regret it if I didn't take a tour so I decided to take a tour and meet up with the guys later on. The tour was amazing and gave me chill bumps and I'm not even a fan of Real. The history of the stadium is unreal and the amount of trophies they have won over the years is ridiculous. The trophy I found most intersting was the "Team of the Century" trophy which speaks volumes about the club by itself. It hurt seeing my favorite player from Tottenham who transferred to Madrid, Gareth Bale's, locker. The rest of the day in Madrid we explored the main sites for example the Palaca Real and Plaza Mayor. Madrid was definetly an industrial city but I liked it. It was nice being in a Spanish speaking country because it's the only language other than English I feel halfway confident on so I found the basic communicating with people much easier. The hostel we stayed in was fairly nice and at no point I ever felt threatened. Although, the major downside of the hostel was the man who slept below me who snored louder than anyone I have ever heard, maybe even louder than my dad. It literally shook the whole bed and I didn't get any sleep the first night. The second night I was determined to beat him to sleep and I succeeded which lead to a much better night of sleep (however this whole struggle made me really appreciate how my mom is able to sleep each night due to the amount of snoring that takes place next to her haha.) Our meal of choice in Madrid was Mcdonald's purely because of the price and the Chicken burger they had which was basically a McChicken plus BBQ sauce already on it, and for those who know me they know how much I love my BBQ. We also had one solid local suggested meal called Paella which is basically fried rice and a choice of meat (because there's only so much McDonald's I can eat.) We went to a few parks but it literally rained off and on the whole time we were in Madrid which made it hard for us to enjoy the city. Thursday night we saw a riot take place, and our guess the motive behind it was something to do with the education system. It was a normal protest until the riot squad was released with riot shields and then people started throwing chairs and bottles at the police within five feet of us. The police started charging the people around us so naturally we ran away and went back to the hostel (don't worry none of us were injured or threw anything.) On Friday afternoon, we set off for Barcelona where we would be staying until Monday. Until next time. (Again sorry about the lack of pictures.)