Madrid and the Conclusion of the 10 Day Adventure

This is already the last post of the 10 day adventure! I can't believe it!

We flew to Madrid from Rome and arrived at our hostel at around 5pm. The Madrid Metro system was very easy to navigate, and once we exited at the Puerta Del Sol exit, we only had a 3 minute walk to our hostel! Since it was a very full day of travel and we had such busy days in Italy, we definitely took it a litter easier in Madrid, which was the perfect city to end our program with. The entire city center is very much in walking distance, and while it is known for it's art museums and a few other main attractions, much of Madrid's charm came from plazas, the architecture, and more general things we experienced from walking around! It also felt so great to be able to speak regular Spanish again!

 This statue is of Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quijote.

 This post office could be confused as a castle in my opinion.

 La Puerta de Alcalá

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 Kelley and I being silly, what else in new?

 We walked around the gorgeous Retiro Park. It was so cool seeing this landmark, since I had seen pictures of it before and had not realized it was in Madrid. I was quite delighted when we visit the park and there it was!

 At this point, the Prado Museum was closed, but we took a picture as we walked by. Kelley and I also danced a little bit of a tango, which was included as part of the No Hay Dos Sin Tres music video I made a few weeks ago.

 We sort of did a tour of most of the major plazas before grabbing grocery store dinner. This is Plaza Mayor, which was definitely glowing and very busy on the Saturday night.

 There was also a giant telescope with a person from some Spanish space program that was showing Saturn. It looked so cool, and almost a little too perfect, so I hope it was legit. You could clearly see Saturn's rings!

 Elle and I in our flamenco or bullfighting outfits!

The next day we woke up, stopped at a bakery and checked out two very cool markets! One of them was more of a flea market that only happens on Sunday mornings, and they had a really cool table of books (in Spanish of course) for one euro each, so I bought Lizzie a script for Gato en Botas, which is "Puss in Boots" in English, referring to the cat in the Shrek movies.  Shoutout to Lizzie's Antonio Banderas impersonation! There was an awesome eco t-shirt place at the other market, so we all bought shirts! I bought a green one that shows a picture of an ice cream cone with a melting globe in place of the ice cream.

 The bear eating from a strawberry tree (there isn't a direct English translation) is the symbol of Madrid, and represents the relationship between church and state in Spain.

 We all put our feet on this special spot to ensure that we will return to Spain in the future!

 Plaza Mayor in the daytime.

 Calle del codo means "elbow street"!

 The free walking tour we were on conveniently ended outside the Royal Palace of Madrid, so we went there next!

 There is a flag missing since there is currently no one living in the Palace, but if there is something major going on in the palace, they would display the second flag.

 This is the church across from the palace.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the palace, but here are some photos from google to see how ornate the palace was. It felt sort of like a more ostentatious version of the White House. The first picture is of the throne room and the second picture is the large dining hall where they might host state dinners.

After we left the palace, we stopped at a grocery store for some sandwiches since we were hungry and also very low on funds. Our next stop was the Naval Museum, which was very cool!

I loved all of the maps on the walls! I hope my walls will look like this some day!

There was also a cool exhibit about women's contributions to exploration and navigation, which is one of the things Spain is especially famous for. In Spanish, this sign says "They weren't alone: women in the conquest and colonization of America."

Our next stop was the famous Prado Museum! It was cool since on Sundays you can get in free from 5-7pm. They had many statues circling the building, which was nice since there was a long, but fast moving line. This statue is of Velazquez, the painter whose famous work, Las Meninas, is housed in the Prado Museum.  It was painted in 1656, and I have included an image of the painting below.

It was also cool since in Barcelona, we had visited the Picasso Museum, which had an entire room that housed Picasso's 58 interpretations of the piece.

Almost inside! Once inside, we were quite overwhelmed with how large it was. On the first floor, we walked in the direction that said "rooms 1-102". So many rooms! To add to the crazyness, there wasn't a clear path between the rooms, and you could go in multiple directions. Some rooms had sub-rooms, like 77A, 77B, 77C, etc. And there were lots of wings and three floors. So, we stuck together and made the most of our 90 minutes and had a great time!

We had planned to have a much more relaxing night since it was our final night together in Europe before heading home and because we had seen everything we wanted to see and everything that the guidebook had suggested! Woot! We bought ingredients for an epic feast, including bread, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, Nutella, muffins, etc! We had a lot of fun! We watched a movie on Kelley's laptop, filmed our No Hay Dos Sin Tres music video, and packed up our stuff for the last time!

And before we knew it, we were on the plane heading home! This shot is a little blurry, but is symbolic since we were able to sit in the exact order we did when we first met each other in row 44 on the plane ride over to Spain. Perhaps because it was in the middle of the day, we had lots of fun and neither Kelley nor Elle slept much, so the 9 hours didn't seem that long at all. Before I knew it, we were going through customs and I saw my parents and my sister! Then there were some hugs and tearful goodbyes and we were on our way. However, I am not really that sad since I will continue seeing these wonderful people, and I have so many great memories and photos from the past 8 weeks.

I will take this time to thank you for reading this blog throughout this entire journey! It's strange to me that I have already been at home for 3 weeks since this adventure. Blogging about the 10 day adventure  helped me to re-live the experience, and now that I will be heading to campus in just a few days, I am amazed at everything I did this summer and all of the things it meant to me. I am definitely very lucky and very appreciative. And this concludes my Granada posts, though I will probably continue bringing it up along the way in my other upcoming posts! There will be many more to come! :)  Hasta luego!