I'll sleep when I'm dead

 We had our first travel weekend  last weekend, and an international one at that. Mike, Kevin, Alex, Dan, and Frankie and I went to Madrid to visit Chris and Jimmy and some other friends over at the SLU campus there. We got up at 6 on Friday so we could make sure we got to the airport early and try to figure out all the rules since they’re a lot different over here. It turns out security was a joke, they never checked  our tickets or photo ids till we were at the gate about to walk on the plane. Real secure huh? We all passed out on the plane and woke up in Madrid! Chris and Jimmy met us at the airport and got us through their metro system to Sol, where our hostel was, where they lived with their senora, and where the heart of Madrid is.

Madrid is a lot different than Rome, in some good ways and bad. The streets are a lot cleaner, it was nice not to be walking looking down the whole time watching out for dog…well you know. They literally have street cleaners whose sole job is to just go around picking up trash and sweeping the sidewalks, Rome should definitely invest in that. The plaza in Sol where every hung out was full of music, Disney characters, Chewbaccas, and people painted in bronze and gold frozen as statues. The ones I hated was a table with three heads poking out, the one in the middle was an actual person and he would follow you with his eyes, or wink or let out a little yell. He and Chewbacca both made me scream and jump to the delight of the boys. And there’s a lot more diversity in Madrid, in Rome it’s mostly just Italians, minus the tourists. The only people that live here that aren’t Italian are the street peddlers who are mostly from Africa, and there’s not that many of them.  But I think that’s how it is for most of Italy, people stay here and not that many people come here.

Our hostel was nice, the guys and I had our own room so we didn’t have to worry about lockers and stuff because we could always just lock the door when we all went out. People lived in the hostel for extended amounts  of time and so did the owners so it was really clean and they had someone come in every day to clean. We went out that night for dinner and had a delicious potatoes, bacon and egg dish that was actually meant to be a dinner dish and ordered three of those and split it, and then went out to this irish pub called Dublinders that all the SLU kids seem to go too and then to another place that’s open till 5 in the morning. We hadn’t had tapas yet so at one point Chris walked back to where we were all standing with a plate of tapas! Love that kid. We spent Saturday doing the touristy things, saw the royal palace, walked to this huge park called Parque de Retiro (yeah I just looked that up) and we tried to go to the naval museum but it was closed, and so we went to the art museum which was free at that time. We went and had a very non Spanish dinner at Little Italy, which served very American style pizza and made me appreciate how easily accessible, cheap and delicious the pizza around the city is in Rome. We went to the famous Kapitol that night, which is a 7 story club everyone that’s over there or that has been over there always talks about.  The thing I love about Rome as a person who loves her sleep is that they don’t feel the need to stay up till 5 or 6 in the morning, they still go out and have a good time but its perfectly acceptable to go out at 10 or 11 and come back at 2, 3 or 4. But when in Mardid, do as the Madridians do. So the more sensible of us went back to the hostel at 530, while the more adventurous of us stayed out till right before we had to check out of the hostel at 9. After stashing our stuff at Chris and Jimmy’s senora’s apartment and exploring some more we took a bus to Toledo which is basically the Spanish version of Assisi. We spent a couple hours exploring, went to a torture museum, and took a train ride outside the city walls. We came back had probably my favorite nights in Madrid. We went to this street full of restaurants and bars and sat down at a hookah place owned by some Turkish brothers and we sat out, ordered a hookah that came with a sweet tube of sangria and talked for an hour or so, and then went across the street and had a fabulous dinner complete with tapas. Even though I didn’t get to see any of my DG’s,  the guys took care of me and I had a blast with all of them.

Our original plan was to stay out till 3 in the morning on Sunday night and then go to airport and check in at 5. But the metro closes at 1:30 in the morning, so around 11 we left to figure out how to get to the airport and spent the night there. Something I know every traveling college student should have to do once but not something I want to repeat again.  We had been up since 9 that morning, and at most had gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before, and sleeping in the airport just doesn’t cut it. We all crashed on the plane and got back to JFRC at 10:30 in the morning. Sleep felt soooo good that night.

I had an amazing time and I’m so excited for Chris and Jimmy to come here and get to see Rome, and then to keep on traveling. Next on the agenda is Venice for carnival!