I arrived in Madrid Thursday morning, finally, and we stayed in Madrid until yesterday morning. We spent yesterday touring Toledo, a gorgeous historic city about an hour south of Spain, and this morning we take a 7 hour bus ride to our final destination, Málaga! However, our bus is broken down and we will be waiting for another half hour or so. Andddd since I may or may not have wifi tonight I'm trying to make the most of it now.
A little from Madrid
Most beautiful botanical garden I've ever seen. This makes UT's gardens look like NOTHING
The palace!
Sangria... yumm
The culture is so wonderful. This could just be because this is my first time experiencing Europe, but everything just feels so sophisticated! Everyone always looks put together, and T-shirts are very rare. It's kind of an understated elegance type of thing.
The food is pretty good; Madrid is known for their ham and their fried calamari, which is surprisingly good on a baguette. Even better than the taste of the food is the schedule though! Breakfast is a little later than the states, generally around 9, and they serve lots of bread, meats and cheeses- typically a lunch thing for us. Lunch isn't until around 2:30, and dinner is very late- not until after 9:30. Meals are more social here, lasting longer than Americans are used to. Also surprising, EVERYONE drinks, but nobody gets drunk. Public intoxication is extremely frowned upon and considered socially unacceptable. Being able to drink without the pressure of getting drunk... Can you say AWESOME??
As far as the shopping goes, I didn't really find anything in Madrid. The one exception has been friendship bracelets though- leather, string, beaded, they're all here and they're all cheap. Toledo has been much better for shopping, but I'll get into that in my next post.
OK, I'm trying to keep this short, but I'll do a post on some history stuff later- it's surprisingly interesting!
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