Fall Break Part 2 — Madrid!

After spending the weekend in Barcelona, we arrived in Madrid at about 2 PM on Monday! When we first got there, we went to the hostel to check in. The hostel was in a perfect location that was so close to everything! It was called Las Musas hostel and wasn't as new or nice inside as the Barcelona hostel but it was cheap and the people who worked there were so nice. I think they must have a rule that they only hire good-looking, charming guys to work there, or at least that was what it seemed like! After putting out luggage up in our room (and meeting some of our roommates—a couple of guys from Germany and a guy from California), we headed out to explore and get some lunch. Since it was the afternoon, and most places in Spain close during the afternoon for "Siesta", we had a little trouble finding a restaurant to eat at. We eventually found one where we all got individual pizzas. Mine was called a "rodeo" pizza with beef and rodeo sauce, which I think was like a carbonara sauce. It was really good!

near our hostel

my "Rodeo" pizza. They gave us these cool hammer things to cut our pizzas.

After lunch, we walked over to the Royal Palace. It was huge and really cool! I had never seen a palace so it was pretty exciting! We couldn't go inside at that time but I still liked seeing it from the outside. After that, we explored some more and came across the Plaza Mayor. It was a huge square with a cool horse statue and a ton of street performers. There was one street performer dressed like a baby that made these weird crying and whining noises. It was actually super annoying haha! There were also street performers who popped their heads out of holes in tables trying to scare people and ones who did different balancing acts. After being in the Plaza Mayor for a while, we went over to a big market nearby. There were lots of food stands, and all the food looked so good! Then we went to another plaza, the Plaza del Sol. While we were there, there was a protest going on by some metro workers. I'm not 100% sure what it was about but it was interesting to see! There were some more street performers in this square too. There were Disney characters walking around and a mariachi band! There was also a woman standing up on a platform preaching. After she was done, she came over to our group and started asking us all these questions. She basically told us that everyone in the world is a sinner and is going to hell. Thanks for warning us, lady...

the Palace

the Palace

me in front of the Palace

the Palace

Plaza Mayor

Plaza Mayor

the weird baby street performer in Plaza Mayor

with Ben, Juliette, and Virginia in the Plaza Mayor

a random square that we came across that looked really cool!

the Plaza del Sol. You can see the protest that's going on in front of the statue!

me, Virginia, and Juliette with Mickey Mouse in the Plaza del Sol!

After that, we tried going to the store Primark to do some shopping. Primark is a British store with really cool and affordable things, similar to H&M. They don't have one in Lyon, which is probably a good thing because I would be shopping there all the time! Someone had told us how to get to Primark, but the metro took a lot longer than we had planned! It took us half an hour to get to the metro stop, and when we were there, we realised we weren't even in the city anymore — we were in a suburb! We walked for a little while and tried to find the shopping centre that had the Primark store, but gave up after a while and headed back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel, they were doing a paella dinner that cost 2€. Even though we had gotten paella the previous two nights, we couldn't turn it down since it was so cheap! It had chicken and seafood in it, and it actually ended up being just as good (if not better!) than the other paellas that we'd had! After dinner, we were craving something sweet, so we went to a gelato shop. I got chocolate and coffee cake gelato and it was delicious! After getting gelato and exploring the area a little more by night, we headed back to the hostel where we hung out for a little while before going to bed.

Paella dinner in our hostel

with my delicious Spanish gelato

if I lived in Madrid, I would so want to live in one of these purple flats!

We spent most of the next day in Madrid as well, except it rained that day so it was limited what we could do. We had breakfast in the hostel and then rushed through the rain to the famous Prado museum.  It's one of the biggest and most visited museums in the world. There was a lot of cool art inside, mostly from the Renaissance era. We had a small lunch when we were in the Prado as well. I wanted to get a hot chocolate after being outside in the rain, but they didn't have hot chocolate. So I got a spinach and cheese quiche-type thing that was good! After the Prado, the rain had slowed down a little bit and we went over to the Templo de Debod that we had been wanting to see. It is an old Egyptian temple that was really cool looking!

the Prado Museum

the Prado Museum

the Templo de Debod

After the Templo de Debod, we had a little bit of time before we had to go to the airport for our flight to to Lisbon. So we went into a few stores near the Plaza del Sol, including one of my favourites: Topshop! We didn't have much time to look before having to go to the airport, so I didn't buy anything. When we got to the airport, there was a surprisingly huge line to check in considering it was a Tuesday night. Me and Virginia had not checked bags online, so we had to do it at the airport. I tried to get out of having to pay the expensive fee to check my bag, but the Easyjet woman who helped us wasn't understanding us or something and wasn't making any sense. So we ended up having to go through a long process of going to a separate office to pay for our bags and then go back to get our boarding passes. We decided that we hated Easyjet and that we would never fly them again... until our flight from Lisbon to Lyon that Friday and then to and from London next weekend haha. We got some food and then got on our flight to head to Portugal for the final destination of our holiday: Lisbon!