So That's Why the fries are yellow...

Jueves: 13-05-10

“Early to bed, early to rise” is not a true statement. We thought the jet lag wasn’t all that bad but we were wrong. After managing to set our alarm at 7:30 P.M. instead of A.M. and being one of the unlucky few who didn’t receive a wake up call, we overslept. Thankfully we got ourselves together really fast and ran through el Paso del Prado to meet up with the rest of the group that was waiting for us outside of the first museum of the day.
We first visited El Museo del Prado, one of the three museums that make up el trianglo de arte. This museum housed the oldest artwork of Spain from artists like Goya, Velasquez, and El Grecco. Fue impressionante! After, we went to the third museum of the triangle, El Reina Sofia, which contained the more contemporary art of Picasso and Dali. We liked el Prado most. After several hours of tours, we had free time to explore the city of Madrid. It was raining outside so a group of us decided to take the metro to Sol, an area with a bunch of shops and un corte ingles, Spain’s Macys.
The Anas had their first experience with menu del día – a common meal combination at lunchtime in Spain, with primer plato de ensalada, pasta, or judias (Spain’s frijoles) y un segundo plato de alguna forma de proteina. While having lunch it began to hail outside! Apparently we brought with us some uncommon Spring weather. After lunch the group went their separate ways and we went exploring. We decided it would be a good idea to walk back to the hotel… wrong! We got lost for two hours in Madrid and walked around asking for directions and receiving different directions every time. This wasn’t all bad though because we were able to see and experience a lot. We ran into what we thought was a cathedral because to us it was really picturesque and big, turns out it was just la iglesia de San Jose, impressive nonetheless. Once we FINALLY got back to the hotel (we decided to just do a complete circle around el parque retiro until we found it), we ran upstairs, got dresses and were picked up by Maria Jose and Javier, friends of Ana RC’s family from Spain. They took us to a great, authentic taberna called Casa de Lelo where they fed us and gave us wine! Of course, as good tourists we were determined to try everything… uh oh! The first plate that came out was pulpo… raw octopus EWWWW! We felt bad saying we didn’t like it so we kept eating it! Everything else was really delicious, especially the dessert, a typical dessert in Galicia called torta de almendras… awesome! The Spaniards like to have dessert with more alcohol of course a little drink called a chupito. We tried it but it was way to strong for us!
It was a long day for us and another long one ahead…

P.S. we are dehydrated because they never give you water in Spain!