Madrid

Over my Spring Break, which was 15-25 April, I went to Madrid and then Morocco. We left for Madrid on Friday, the 15th of April. By we I mean myself and my friends Erika (Mexican-American) and Hannah (German). In order to get to Madrid though, we had to take a train to Santiago de Compostela, because Ryanair (a cheap airline here in Europe) doesn't fly to Vigo. After an hour and a half of listening to our Ipods and watching the Galician countryside go by, we were in Santiago.
Then I got to have my first experience with Ryanair. I've heard horror stories about this airline, but I thought it was fine. Not any different from any other plane, except the seats are a little closer together.
Anyway, we arrived in Madrid without any problems, and then we used the Metro to get to our hostel. (Slightly off topic, but the Metro is without a doubt, the greatest invention ever. Every city should have a metro station. We got from the airport to our hostel in about 5 minutes, which is like, a thirty minute cab ride.)
We stayed at Cat's Hostel, which I would highly recommend if you ever go to Madrid. It's pretty much in the middle of the Plaza Mayor and the Prado Museum, and we walked to the Royal Palace in about 5 minutes.
So we arrived in Madrid Friday afternoon, and we just kind of chilled. We walked around a bit, and made it to the Plaza Mayor without really trying.
Saturday, we went to the Cathedral and the Royal Palace, which was probably my favorite place in Madrid. It's not permitted to take photos inside the building, so I don't have any from there, but it was really beautiful.
Royal Palace!
We also went to the Prado Museum on Saturday, which is one of the world's most famous museums, and I think it's the largest one in Spain, but I'm not sure about that.
It was really interesting, and it's definitely the biggest museum I've ever been to. We went at 6, because entry is free from 6-8 every day, so we only had two hours there. I think in order to see everything, you would need half a day or all day. We saw a couple floors of the museum, but that was it.
Sunday was really relaxing for us. We went to the Park of Buen Retiro and just chilled all morning.
After that, we went to the mall for a little while, and then we went to another park, which was outside the Royal Palace and just chilled for a while there as well.
We had to leave on Monday though, Erika and I went to Morocco and Hannah went to Granada. I was originally going to talk about Morocco in this post too, but I think it's gotten long enough, so I'll just leave it at that. I'll be posting about Morocco fairly soon though!

Viajes

So I realize that it's been a while since I've updated this blog, but I'm in Spain!
While I'm here in Spain, I want to travel as much as I can. I already blogged about my trip to Santiago, but I've also been to Baiona, La Guardia, and Porto. I went to Baiona for the first time in February, for the festival of the Arribada. When Columbus discovered America, the ship that carried the news back to Spain arrived in Baiona. Since then, they've had a medieval festival there every year. People dress up in clothes that they would have worn in the 15th century, and there are booths that serve food and wine. They also act out a play of the sailors arriving on the shores of Baiona, which is followed by fireworks.


Some of the actors in the play.


There's also a medieval castle/fort in Baiona. During the day, there are families and elderly people taking a stroll around the castle. It's right next to the ocean, so it's really calm and relaxing and beautiful.















The view from the castle, and of course, the castle itself.
The castle has been turned into a parador, which is an old building that has been turned into a hotel.
During the night, the castle and the surrounding fields are turned into a massive party called the botellon. Teenagers will go to the grocery store and buy a large bottle of alcohol and a bottle of coke, because that's cheaper than going to a bar and buying a drink there. (the word botellon means "big bottle" because they take a large bottle of alcohol and share it between themselves)
The botellon in Baiona was huge, there were probably about a thousand people there.

A few weeks ago, I went to Porto, which is the second largest city in Portugal. I went on an organized trip with the university with all the other exchange students. We only went for a day, and it takes about 2-3 hours to get there, so I didn't get to spend as much time there as I wanted to. I'm planning on going back at some point, because there are so many things that I didn't get to see while I was there. It's a really beautiful city with a lot of history. It's also cool if you're a nerd like me, because JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in Porto, and you can go to the café where she wrote it.
The Café Majestic, where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

And I went to La Guardia this weekend. La Guardia is a city on the border of Spain and Portugal. The two countries are separated by the Río Minho, and up on a mountain in La Guardia, I could see Portugal. There's also an arqueological site there, with rings of stones where houses used to be.
Portugal is right across the river!

So, that's all of my travels so far. I'm going to Madrid and Morocco in about a week, so I'll hopefully be blogging about that within the next few weeks.