Day 65

Madrid was nice and cold for us on Wednesday morning! We decided it would be a good day to visit a museum.

On the way to the Reina Sofia Museum, we stopped at a cafe for breakfast. I got what was probably the thickest hot chocolate of all time, which was perfect for dipping my churros in (because in Spain, churros are a breakfast food. Makes sense).

The museum was so cool! Really beautifully designed. Students could enter for free, so that was cool, too. Katie and I probably had a little too much fun analyzing all the artwork, as most of it was created by Picasso, Dali, and their contemporaries (so you can imagine what it all looked like). In one temporary exhibit, the artist was currently there being filmed talking about his art, and we totally made it into the video. It was pretty neat!

We spent about 3 hours between the top two floors, and then headed out for a lunch break. We went to a tapas bar across the square to have our classic Spanish "meal" of patatas bravas and cheese. Manchego cheese is one of my new favorites, by the way.

The rest of our afternoon was consumed by the bottom two floors of the Reina Sofia. The second floor featured Picasso's Guernica, which was truly masterful. So huge, and so breathtaking! The first floor had this cool labyrinth thing that we just had to walk through twice. It was weirdly fun.

Some art outside the museum

We got some Starbucks because we were cold, and then made our way to the Gran Via, the main street, to walk around some. Long story short, we found a big crowd, and it turned out to be a bunch of Spanish teenagers waiting to see Justin Bieber come out of his hotel! I go crazy for celebrity sightings, so we stuck around for about 40 minutes until he came out. It was nice and warm in the mob, so that was a plus. I couldn't get a good picture (short people problems), but Katie got some great ones.

After that craziness, we headed to our hostel to chill for a little while before going to dinner. Some of the Seville semester students were in town, so we were also kind of waiting to see what their plans were. We ended up going to dinner just the two of us and meeting up with all of them later.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in our neighborhood, and it was really good. Probably the best margarita I've ever had! Also, they were totally playing the Forrest Gump soundtrack, so that was great.

The semester students had us meet them at some famous little bar that's known for its Vermouth. Obviously, we all tried the Vermouth. Then, we went to another bar for a round, and then went back for more Vermouth. Eventually, we made our way to the "party" district, Sol, and checked out a few places there. Katie and I like hanging out with that group because they all have dry senses of humor like we do; basically, they aren't afraid to be mean to you, and I love it. It's so nice not having to try to be nice for once (as bad as that sounds).

So we had a really fun time with all them on their last night in Madrid. We got in pretty late, so we didn't make any plans for the next morning, other than that we knew we'd be going on a free walking tour offered by the hostel at 11:45 am.