Lucy, you got some ex-Spaining to do.

Toledo. Click on it for gigante sized.

Day 13 - Jan. 14
My last day in London was spent primarily in the airport (awesome). I left the hostel at 6 and rode the subway for about 45~ minutes to the London City Airport (3 line changes and one with a daring long distance fast walk + jump between closing doors combo). When I got to the Light Rail, I noticed it was snowing fairly significantly and I started getting nervous.

Downtown Madrid

As I sat in the lounge of the airport, it felt like I was in gym class. I kept watching my teammates (flights) getting smacked in the face (cancelled) by speeding dodgeballs (the weather). Fortunately, my flight ended up being delayed for 4.5 hours instead of being cancelled (Odd to call that fortunate). I passed the time trying to not look suspicious to the men walking around with MP5 Machine guns and watching On the Road Again. It is a show where Gwyneth Paltrow and 3 friends travel around Spain exploring the gastronomic culture. It was crazy to watch it and realize that within a few hours I would finally be arriving in Spain.

Catedral de la Almudena

When I landed in Madrid, it was very rainy but warmer than England by quite a bit. I snagged a jamón y queso sandwich and took the metro to the hostel. It was a really nice and cozy place. I spent the first part of the night on my computer in the lobby, since it was rainy and already dark (Not great conditions for exploration).

El Palacio Real (big).

Later on,  I went to a grocery store for a snack and It finally felt like I was in a foreign country. Ireland and the U.K. were definitely different, but a change in language really emphasizes that you are no longer in Kansas. I meandered about the grocery store and looked at the totally different selection of food (abundance of ham products). Also, the carts are similar to wheeled luggage and you pull it behind you. I bought shaving cream and a razor and shaved off my sketchy facial hair and became quite a bit younger looking.

An epic plaza by the Palacio.

I spent the rest of the night chatting with some Italians, Brazilians, a Brit, and one guy from New Jersey (Unfortunately not DJ Pauly D). I hit the hay fairly early and prepared to finally meet up with the ISA group the next day.

Day 14 - Jan. 15
After a quick breakfast I took the metro to the hotel to meet my group. It was quite a change from 16 bed dorms in hostels to a 2 bed room in a 4 star hotel. Although, oddly enough, our hotels charged for internet, whereas nearly every hostel had free wifi (humorously pronounced weefee in Spain). It seems a bit backwards considering the difference in price.
I had a while to wait before our group arrived, so I wandered down the street until I found a plaza that had an excellent Don Quixote and Sancho statue. I almost accidentally walked into a live TV shot of a reporter at a food bank event and narrowly avoided Spanish TV stardom.

I wish nice places let you take pictures inside.

When I got back to the hotel, there were about 30 ISA kids with absurd amounts of luggage sitting outside waiting to check in. It made me pretty glad to have been limited by Ryanair's strict weight limits. Some people had two enormous wheeled luggage things and I had a messenger bag and a backpack. Let's just say, should a baggage-carrying foot race have occurred, I would have definitely been the champion.
I went upstairs and settled in and met my roommate for the semester (Chris) and a few others joined us at a cafe nearby for lunch. We went for a stroll through a large park and wandered a bit. On the way back, we stopped in a super small bar for refreshments and the owner brought us a free plate of paella (Stellar).

Toledo and the old castle.

That night we had a guided bus tour of the Madrid which included the biggest Spanish flag in Spain (Think Perkins in America big) and a Egyptian building from 200~ BC that was brought to Spain and reassembled. Next was an awesome meeting about safety and an opportunity to buy a prepaid cellphone (which still hasn't worked and I am currently using one a previous student left at my house). After the meeting we went out for tapas where I had some patatas bravas (literally courageous potatoes… and I must say, they were quite valiant).

Day 15- Jan 16.
This was the day of sightseeing in Madrid. We started out with a bus ride to the Prado art museum. However, our bus broke down halfway there, so we moved like a gigantic herd of cattle through the crowded streets of Madrid. Fortunately, it wasn't very far and the weather was great. We only had time to go through the Goya, Greco, and Velázquez exhibits, but they were awesome and a half. Plus we had a guide to throw out fun facts (I love fun facts).

Ayuntamiento is basically the city council/hall.

Afterwords we traversed the town on foot to the Palacio Real, which used to be the stomping ground of the kings and queens back in the day. It was absurd. I felt like I gained net worth just standing in it. In my long and luxurious life I have never seen such fanciness (Midwest, we got to up the ante). There was a room entirely lined with porcelain and another that took 27 years to make that had crazy intricate designs sewn into the walls. Every room had beautiful frescos on the ceilings and we only saw 27~ rooms out of the, wait for it… 3,418 rooms. It is the biggest palace in Europe and I wanted to sell everything in it to try to save the world economy.

Scenic, no?

Afterwords we were free to do as we pleased and so we headed back across town (couldn't get enough walking). We ate "la comida" (enormous Spanish lunch) at a restaurant and then went to the Reina Sofia museum. It is primarily modern art and the first room we went into was essentially a sensory deprivation chamber with repetitive noise and strange lighting. It was weirdness to the nth degree.

Apparently cars drive through streets like these.

We crossed a purposefully empty exhibit (modern art is a bit over my head sometimes) and eventually found the cubism exhibit and Picasso's Guernica. It was huge and amazing to see in person. There were also photos of the progression and evolution of the painting and a good amount of art from the era of the Spanish Civil War. We finished up by visiting the Surrealist exhibit which contained Dalí and a movie which was fantastically ridiculous.

This is the old Jewish quarter, before they were kicked out of Spain by los Reyes Católicos

At this point we were all way tuckered out and grabbed the metro back to the hotel. We hung out the rest of the night in the hotel and had cheap dinner from the Corte Inglés (imagine a bigger and less evil Spanish Walmart).

Day 16 - Jan 17.
After a feast of a breakfast at the hotel (I was used to toast and coffee from hostels), we hopped on the bus and left Madrid. Toledo is an incredibly beautiful city. It is surrounded on 3 sides by a river and used to be the capital of Spain. It is also a Unesco World Heritage site and is filled with crazy skinny streets. We started out with a panoramic view of the city from the opposite side of the river which had craggy hills (Craggy is a sweet word).

A cloister in Iglesia de San Juan de los Reyes

Next, we took at 2.5 hour walking tour and got to see huge churches, the oldest synagogue in Spain, and Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (Very very cool). Our tour guide was hilarious, knew tons of people around the city (population is only 80,000~), and kept making jokes (Everybody come closer…wait…  just the ladies). Seems slightly creepier typed out, but it made the tour more fun.

Toledo, Ohio probably doesn't look quite this good.

After our tour we grabbed some hamburgers at a restaurant near the plaza and it turned out that they were actually burgers of ham. Very strange but decent tasting. Fun Fact: Coca Cola is super awesome here (small glass bottles and real sugar). I fear I may develop a coke habit (rimshot). Sorry, bad joke, I know.
 Next, we all got on the bus and rode to the newer part of the city to our hotel. We chilled out on our balcony and watched the Barcelona ISA group arrive. The hotel was another 4 star and was pretty sweet (yet unnecessary).

As you can see, the city is neatly organized.

We had a 2.5 hour meeting and then set off in search of a restaurant. We found a cerveceria (bar and grill of sorts) and had tasty sandwiches. After a while,  I noticed a beer can display on the wall and low and behold… A Schell's beer can. I wish I had brought my camera with.

View from the main plaza.

Afterwords, we went back to the hotel bar and watched a Real Madrid v. Atlético football game on a huge projected screen. Unfortunately, the guys from the Barcalona ISA group were really living up to the loud annoying American stereotype. They even wanted to ask the bartender to change the Madrid football match to a NFL football game (Luckily, they lacked the Spanish speaking capabilities). It was sad to see it in real life and I was embarrassed.

Some folks from my ISA group. We have about 52 in total.

The next day we headed to Valencia, but I will save that for my next blog post. I will try to keep updating this as much as I can, but it is harder when I actually have stuff going on now. However, I will give it a valiant effort (like my potatoes).

Bonus foto:

This is a borrowed picture of the dining room in the Palacio Real. The table is twice what you can see here. Ritzy.