Madrid New Years!!

Palace in Madrid

 After walking all around Paris, Reggie and I were so excited to get back to Madrid! Yayyyy! We can finally understand the people, and ask for things without hand gestures and cherades! We met up with our friends and spent New Years in the Plaza del Sol (kind of their version of Times Square). The tradition in Spain is to eat a grape for every 12 rings of the bell at midnight. We had so much fun in the square waiting for midnight, meeting people from Chile, Serbia, Colombia, England, Brasil, from everywhere (minus people from Spain)! It must be a big touristy thing :)

BRUCE LEE!!

   The next couple days we walked around Madrid, checking out the parks, the palace, and the old business district. The city was incredible and beautiful, but advice for anyone traveling, I recommend Paris as your last stop. Compared to Paris everything looks so normal! And this is not good, because I am certainly NOT jaded to beautiful old buildings and PALACES! But it's hard to get excited about a palace tour after Versailles :) Spain was so much warmer and a nice change, to just hang out in the parks and pass the days hanging out with friends.

So nice to get back to cheap beers, coffee, and olives

  We had every intention to meet up with other friends on our last night in Madrid. We wanted to come back to the hotel room, rest for a bit, and then head back out. When we got back to the hotel neither of our keys worked in the hotel door. We both thought, hey whats going on here? On our way down to the front desk we both realized we were supposed to check out that morning!! Oh no!! When we arrived at the front desk we verified, yep, we had forgotten to check out, and had about a half hour to catch our train back to Linares! We made our train, but unfortunately left without seeing my dear friend Susie! Oh well, we'll save it for the next visit to Madrid....