Traveling To Spain

International airplane trips take a lot of time. My first flight left San Diego at 7:45am and my connecting flight landed in Madrid at 7:25am. Hello 24 hours of travel (Okay 15 with the time change, but hey, who's counting?). The flights were long but routine. My connecting flight was with Aer Lingus, so all the flight attendants had cool Irish accents. Tragically, I couldn't sleep at all on the airplanes...

It took about an hour to get through baggage claim and customs, and by 8:30 I was officially in Spain. I met other girls from the program who were flying in later. Payal landed at 9:25 and Angela and Irene landed at 12:07 (delayed from 9:45... bummer). The four of us navigated our way to the other terminal where the metro was with our ridiculously large amounts of baggage. I'm sure we looked exactly like the American tourists that we are. The metro has an absurd amount of stairs for us to have to lug our heavy bags down, especially since we had to make two transfers. Besides the stairs, the Madrid metro is actually pretty nice. The line from the airport is actually fairly new and the metro overall is much cleaner than BART and the NY subway.

Eventually we got to our stop and up the daunting stairs. The second we stepped of the metro and actually got to see the city I got really excited. It was like it finally hit me, I'm in Spain. I'm going to be studying abroad in this foreign country for four months! I was so excited for the possibilities and opportunities that I was going to have, but also a little nervous about the challenges, like finding the hostel we were to stay at.

Apparently the Belgian who got off the Metro with us was headed to the same place, Cat's Hostel. The four of us made the trek down the tiny sidewalks that border the skinny cobblestone streets all the little European cars were speeding down. Thankfully the hostel wasn't too far. It had these cool huge wooden doors that opened up to a small reception area. The best thing about this hostel was that the building it's located in is actually a historical site, it was built in the 18th century! It had this little courtyard like area that all the rooms opened up to that had stained glass and a fountain in the middle (the next best thing was the free wifi in the bar/café area).

Anyways, my first time in a hostel was an... experience. I stayed in a "mixed" room with 10 beds in it. I will never know for sure who actually slept in there, because I only met one girl in the room (Kaylee, who was going to the same EAP program). The beds were hard and not very comfortable, but for €15 euro in Madrid, I can't really complain. The bathrooms though were very tiny. They had rows of the smallest little shower stalls and toilet stalls. I wasn't really all that interested in testing the cleanliness of those out...

Angela, Payal, and I stored our bags in the lockers in our rooms and headed out to get some lunch (by now it was after 2 and the last thing I'd eaten was a slightly stale croissant in the airport). We went to a café a couple of blocks away to get some lunch. Angela got some yummy spaghetti, Payal got a delicious pizza, and I got a bocadillo de jamon (ham). Turns out it's just a baguette with weirdly cooked ham and a tomato paste type thing. Not the best thing i've ever eaten... but the baguette part was good! Thankfully Angela and Payal are awesome and I got to try some of their yummy food.

Back at the hostel we met up with the rest of our EAP girls staying in Cat's Hostel. The were 7 of us: Angela, Payal, Kaylee, Maya, Danielle, Katie, and myself. Angela, Payal, and myself went off to explore the city while the other four went to get dinner. We got to see Plaza Mayor, eat chocolate con churros in the Chocolatería San Gines, and saw the Puerta del Sol. The city is so beautiful with it's cobblestone streets and the old buildings hugging the streets.

Later that night I met up with Bridget (my roommate from freshman year who's studying in Madrid for the semester) and she took me to get tapas in La Latina (a neighborhood of Madrid). We went to a nice little bar next to a ridiculously old church and ordered croquettas de jamon (ham) and got ourselves each a glass of wine. Tapas are typical Spanish bar food and croquettas are a pretty popular tapa. It's basically fried goodness with pieces of ham in it.

Afterwards we met up with Yulia (a girl in my sorority who's also studying in Madrid) and some of their other friends. We explored La Latina and the nightlife. Madrid is such a fun city and the Spanish are so friendly! I had tons of fun and I can't wait to go back again. Bridget and I split a cab home and I went back to my hard hostel bed, and so ended my 38.5 hours without sleep.


FYI:
EAP: Education Abroad Program