Day 34: Saturday, February 19, 2011

Again, the most adorable man having
the time of his life entertaining people

Today we didn't get as lucky with the weather as we did yesterday.  It was SUPPOSED to rain everyday this weekend, so the fact that we got one beautiful day was fabulous!  Today however, was rainy, cold, and not fabulous at all.  But we knew it was going to rain, so we saved all the indoor things to do today.

Outside of the Royal Palace - but inside the gates this time!

Seeing as last night was a late night, this morning was a rough morning.  We didn't get going till about 11:30am, and even that was a struggle.  We skipped the Starbucks, but we did go back to VIPS.  Really??  It was terrible the first time!  Not one person liked their meal, and we went back.  And once again, no one liked their meal (again, with the exception of the Oreo milkshake) and we were all unsatisfied after finishing.  After breakfast (or lunch?) we headed to the Royal Palace.  We waited in line for a bit, paid 5E to get in, then immediate awe began.  As we learned yesterday, there are 2,800 rooms in the Royal Palace, and each one is unbelievably different.  They are all so incredibly intricate...with extravagant designs covering every inch of the walls, beautiful furniture in every room, and crystal chandeliers and light fixtures everywhere!  Each room was a different color; there was a yellow room for drinking tea, a study that was green, a humongous dining room that was blue, etc.  The dining room had a 200 person table!  It was all so neat.  (PS - You are not allowed to take pictures!  However, naturally I did anyways; I managed to sneakily take about 10 shots of different rooms, but then I got caught!  And the security guard took my camera and made me delete almost all of them!  I still have a few, but I was not happy.)

Not going to lie, this is a picture of a picture! But apparently its the Royal bedroom

A room made completely out of porcelain 

The intricate ceilings never cease to amaze me

Afterwards, some of the girls went to some museums while others walked around and shopped!  Naturally, I opted out of the museums and chose to shop :)  There was tons of great, affordable shopping by our hostel, so we headed back that way.  We spent the afternoon leisurely walking around and buying a few things here and there.  Eventually, we all met back in the hostel to shower and regroup.  We decided to skip the VIPS meal (for real this time!) and find some real Spanish food.  We walked around for awhile, asking every local we could find for a recommendation, but for some reason no one could give us an answer?  Finally we found this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant with only one waiter that didn't speak of lick on English, but, shockingly, had fantastic food.  We couldn't really  understand anything on the menu, so we all just ordered a bunch of things and shared them.  It turns out that Spanish food is basically synonymous with potatoes, because every single thing we ordered was some sort of potato.  There were fried potatoes, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes; pretty much any kind of potato you can think of, we ate.  But it was actually very good, and for once, we all left full AND satisfied.

By the time we got back, it was already about 1am, and we had to leave for the airport at 7am.  I talked with Kevin for a little on the free wifi the hostel had, then went to bed :)  All in all, it was a fantastic weekend.  We went to some classic touristy places and did some typical American things (like stand on street corners with maps bigger than us, looking at every street sign in an effort to figure out where the heck we were...10 times) as well as went to some really neat local places.  Madrid...CHECK!