Madrid, Spain

September 16, 2011

Madrid… The all nighter. Where it all begins.

For my first academic break in Europe, I decided I wanted to go to Spain and France, two amazingly beautiful places that I had only seen in magazines or on TV. I was ready for the real deal. On the 16th, Matt, Judith, Javier, Jessica, and I arrive and decide to pull an all nighter in Madrid on the first night because supposedly, Madrid has a beautiful night life. So when we get there, of course it IS beautiful, beyond any doubt. Along our discovery of the city, we run into area filled with promiscuous women. At first I couldn’t figure out where the heck we were and then I finally realized that we were standing in the middle of prostitutes. That moment was my first time ever where I had even been so close to these type of women and around so many all at once. I was glued to them. After staring at them for a a good second or two, we quickly walked past them and moved to the more touristy areas of Madrid and I saw a KFC….yeeeeee 🙂 no questions asked, that’s here we ate that night but I was very pleased with my meal. Since they were about to close and they were already almost out of food, I could only buy theses skimpy chicken strips. I ate them any way… I have to say, they taste like the KFC in California so in my opinion they did a good job. Sometimes I get nervous about eating fast food in other countries because you’ll be surprised and quick to find out that the food is not the same. Anyhow, we ate and chilled for a while and then we left.

The night went along and since we were dragging along all of our luggage, we started getting tired. We wanted to find a bar to chill in for the rest of the night but most places closed at 1 and 2:30am, so we were out of luck and at the same time, the night life started dying. For that next hour we were just walking the streets of Madrid until we approached a park. We sat there for 45 minutes trying to keep each other awake. We saw a cop pull up but they just wanted to make sure we weren’t drunk, so they drove on. We left there headed towards another park infested with huge bugs so we kept walking and then we found ourselves in front of a gorgeous big building which at one point in time was a post office but was currently a museum.

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A few blocks away we found this really pretty area with a bed of water with a flat surface so we all laid on it. First we got sort of hyper so we laughed and played around for a cool 30 minutes and seconds later we were all knocked out like homeless people outside in Madrid on this bed of water. Moments later, Jessica wakes everyone up, so we keep strolling. We find this beautiful park and a river. It was still dark and I was so desperate to see the water and since I couldn’t, I sat on the nearest bench. We took a breather and walked all the way to the end of this road following the river and then we saw 4 different roads in front of us all going in 4 different directions. So we just followed the one heading east and this road did not look like it was going to end. We got bored of walking so I pulled out my iPad and started playing our most played song: Justin Beiber ft. Usher- “Somebody to Love”. So we walked and sang!! Finally, we found ourselves at the end of the road and by the train station! We noticed the sky lightening up. I don’t know about everyone else, BUT I was so happy that the night was finally over and I could see day again. We went to the train station to try to sleep but we weren’t allowed to so we took a restroom break and cleaned up a bit. Then we left and headed to the metro to go check into our hostels. Madrid during the day was beautiful!! We all took a nap in our hostels and then went to enjoy Madrid by day!

Later on that evening we decided to go to a Bull Fighting show. I thought it was cool that Madrid still had these types of shows and again–this was only something I saw on TV. However, once I started watching the shows, I became quickly heartbroken. I lasted all of five minutes before I decided I needed to leave the arena. It was just too much for me. 🙁 That was the end of my day.