we love Rick
October 28
God it feels good to start the day with Starbucks! Our plan for sightseeing today was to take the walking tour that’s printed in Marilena’s Euro tour book. Our guides for the day? Rick and Anne… the author and his wife. :)
First we stopped at Plaza del Sole (which looks WAAY different during the day than it did the night before) where Marilena read us a brief history about the various buildings that bordered the huge piazza. Then we waited in a crowd of Asian people in order to take a picture at a spot that marked the dead center of the entire country of Spain! Cool!
Second, Rick recommended we walk to the Royal Palace. It was a little ways walk away so we were strolling along, taking pictures, and stumbled across Plaza Mayor. It looked a lot like Piazza San Marco in Venice. It was beautiful; we took tons of pictures! We even took pics of the cutest, most stylish, little 3 year old, blonde boy. He loved us too and kept following us around. Hehe.
Eventually we made it to the palace. Apparently Spain has a king and queen and this palace is used for different important ceremonies throughout the year. First we took pictures in the gardens in front (where they were filming a movie!) then we went and waited in line to tour the inside cuz Rick’s guide book had a detailed description of the interior.
The atmosphere around us while we were waiting in line was priceless. We had perfect weather, beautiful people to watch, a circle-turning fluffball of a dog to laugh at, Canadian tuxedos to take pictures of, homeless people playing really good music on a keyboard in the middle of the plaza, and fun friends to talk to.
On our way into the palace (woot for being a student and only having to pay ½ price admission) there was a little drama with the metal detector. Marilena was spacing out a little and had to go through it, liek, four times and was so flustered by the time she got in that she took someone else’s Spain guide book thinking it was hers and then proceeded to freak out about karma for the remainder of the day.
The palace was AWESOME. Every single room was beautiful. Kate got in trouble by every single guard working there for taking pictures with her flash… good job Kate. Good job.
Our next stop after the palace was the Prado Museum. On our trek there we stopped into an Irish pub called O’neils for a beer (hey, why not? It was lunch time anyways…). I LOVE irish pubs because the people that work in all of them always speak English! We made friends with the bartender; she was really cool. She gave us directions to restaurants that seved good paella for dinner and educated us in Irish slang (did you know that “wanker” basically means “jerk off?” Now you do.).
After our beer we continued our walk to the Prado (without a map… karma bit us in the ass: Marilena stole the book then we lost our map. Ugh). Then Marilena had a hard time going through security AGAIN (this time cuz of her swiss army knife).
Ok, if you ever visit Madrid and know or care at all about art GO TO THE PRADO. I felt like a total dork cuz I was getting REALLY excited about the paintings they had in their collection. God, to name a few: Durer’s self-portrait, Adam and Eve, lots of Reubens’, lots of Velasquez’s, lots of Raphael, lots of Carravaggios… I recognized paintings all over the museum! It was so freaking exciting.
After the Prado we grabbed some sandwiches at VIPS where we saw the same German guys from the night before. We awkwardly ran away from them when they started talking to us…
THEN we saw two guys from SCU that were studying here in Madrid (that, of course, I didn’t know since I’ve come to realize that I know basically no one at SCU).
THEN we sat down for churros con chocolate and I looked up and saw Allie Sevy (!!!) a girl I haven’t seen since high school! God, SMALL WORLD (that keeps getting smaller…)
Bytheway, churros con chocolate were really good. You literally get a plate of churros and a coffee mug full of hot chocolate sauce, dip, and eat. Unfortunately, the “Churro con Chocolate” sexual position (which is disturbingly disgusting) I’d learned about the night before kept flashing in my head while we were eating… THANKS KATE.
We got back to the hostel around 5ish, turned out the lights, and passed out for a good two hours! We were exhausted to say the least.
For dinner we enjoyed some really great (but safe with only veggies and chicken) paella! Omigod, I LOVE PAELLA! We’re def going to have to get some more before we leave Spain…
On our walk home, Kate and Marilena got soft-serve from McDonald’s… FYI if you go to Madrid and go to McD’s at 11PM expect to see a big posse of gothic kids cuz they all hang out there. Haha, we were definetly out of place…
Tonight we decided to stay in for the evening. By the time we got back to Narnia it was, liek, 11:00 already. We figured that we were going to go out every night in Barcelona and since we had a long day of museums and tours lined up for tomorrow we might as well crash early.
Today was awesome. I love my travel buddies. I love Madrid. It’s so great to love your life… right now, I do.
Quotes of the Day:
Kate - “Who did I give a lap dance to last night?” Tera – “Me.”
“Wait, did they have midgets back then?” “No, they were invented kinda recently.”
“You’re such an uomo.”
“I had a really disturbing dream last night about a guy with no arms…” “Um, Kate that wasn’t a dream.”
God it feels good to start the day with Starbucks! Our plan for sightseeing today was to take the walking tour that’s printed in Marilena’s Euro tour book. Our guides for the day? Rick and Anne… the author and his wife. :)
First we stopped at Plaza del Sole (which looks WAAY different during the day than it did the night before) where Marilena read us a brief history about the various buildings that bordered the huge piazza. Then we waited in a crowd of Asian people in order to take a picture at a spot that marked the dead center of the entire country of Spain! Cool!
Second, Rick recommended we walk to the Royal Palace. It was a little ways walk away so we were strolling along, taking pictures, and stumbled across Plaza Mayor. It looked a lot like Piazza San Marco in Venice. It was beautiful; we took tons of pictures! We even took pics of the cutest, most stylish, little 3 year old, blonde boy. He loved us too and kept following us around. Hehe.
Eventually we made it to the palace. Apparently Spain has a king and queen and this palace is used for different important ceremonies throughout the year. First we took pictures in the gardens in front (where they were filming a movie!) then we went and waited in line to tour the inside cuz Rick’s guide book had a detailed description of the interior.
The atmosphere around us while we were waiting in line was priceless. We had perfect weather, beautiful people to watch, a circle-turning fluffball of a dog to laugh at, Canadian tuxedos to take pictures of, homeless people playing really good music on a keyboard in the middle of the plaza, and fun friends to talk to.
On our way into the palace (woot for being a student and only having to pay ½ price admission) there was a little drama with the metal detector. Marilena was spacing out a little and had to go through it, liek, four times and was so flustered by the time she got in that she took someone else’s Spain guide book thinking it was hers and then proceeded to freak out about karma for the remainder of the day.
The palace was AWESOME. Every single room was beautiful. Kate got in trouble by every single guard working there for taking pictures with her flash… good job Kate. Good job.
Our next stop after the palace was the Prado Museum. On our trek there we stopped into an Irish pub called O’neils for a beer (hey, why not? It was lunch time anyways…). I LOVE irish pubs because the people that work in all of them always speak English! We made friends with the bartender; she was really cool. She gave us directions to restaurants that seved good paella for dinner and educated us in Irish slang (did you know that “wanker” basically means “jerk off?” Now you do.).
After our beer we continued our walk to the Prado (without a map… karma bit us in the ass: Marilena stole the book then we lost our map. Ugh). Then Marilena had a hard time going through security AGAIN (this time cuz of her swiss army knife).
Ok, if you ever visit Madrid and know or care at all about art GO TO THE PRADO. I felt like a total dork cuz I was getting REALLY excited about the paintings they had in their collection. God, to name a few: Durer’s self-portrait, Adam and Eve, lots of Reubens’, lots of Velasquez’s, lots of Raphael, lots of Carravaggios… I recognized paintings all over the museum! It was so freaking exciting.
After the Prado we grabbed some sandwiches at VIPS where we saw the same German guys from the night before. We awkwardly ran away from them when they started talking to us…
THEN we saw two guys from SCU that were studying here in Madrid (that, of course, I didn’t know since I’ve come to realize that I know basically no one at SCU).
THEN we sat down for churros con chocolate and I looked up and saw Allie Sevy (!!!) a girl I haven’t seen since high school! God, SMALL WORLD (that keeps getting smaller…)
Bytheway, churros con chocolate were really good. You literally get a plate of churros and a coffee mug full of hot chocolate sauce, dip, and eat. Unfortunately, the “Churro con Chocolate” sexual position (which is disturbingly disgusting) I’d learned about the night before kept flashing in my head while we were eating… THANKS KATE.
We got back to the hostel around 5ish, turned out the lights, and passed out for a good two hours! We were exhausted to say the least.
For dinner we enjoyed some really great (but safe with only veggies and chicken) paella! Omigod, I LOVE PAELLA! We’re def going to have to get some more before we leave Spain…
On our walk home, Kate and Marilena got soft-serve from McDonald’s… FYI if you go to Madrid and go to McD’s at 11PM expect to see a big posse of gothic kids cuz they all hang out there. Haha, we were definetly out of place…
Tonight we decided to stay in for the evening. By the time we got back to Narnia it was, liek, 11:00 already. We figured that we were going to go out every night in Barcelona and since we had a long day of museums and tours lined up for tomorrow we might as well crash early.
Today was awesome. I love my travel buddies. I love Madrid. It’s so great to love your life… right now, I do.
Quotes of the Day:
Kate - “Who did I give a lap dance to last night?” Tera – “Me.”
“Wait, did they have midgets back then?” “No, they were invented kinda recently.”
“You’re such an uomo.”
“I had a really disturbing dream last night about a guy with no arms…” “Um, Kate that wasn’t a dream.”
posted by tera a firenze at 12:57 AM
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