Aye yie yie!

Friday- March 9

This morning we had our alarms set for 9:00. I woke up wide awake ready to conquer the day. I was surprised at how well I slept through the night because I normally have difficulties if it’s not my own bed. 

I climbed down the rockity ladder and was thankful the girl below me wasn’t in the bottom bunk because I was afraid I would have woken her up otherwise. The beds were so unstable that whenever you simply moved in the bed it would shake everything. 

Bethany and Amy said there was a line for the bathroom, so I hung out in the room for a little bit. The hostel wasn’t too bad, but the one thing I really couldn’t understand was how there were only two bathrooms in this joint when it slept about 30 people. There wasn’t even just a bathroom with a toilet and sink; both had a shower. So, if you just needed to go pee, you had to wait for someone to take their 15 minute — which a lot of the people did. 

After I hung out in the room for a little bit I decided to get in line. When I stepped out of my room there were a few girls outside, but I didn’t get in line behind them. After about five minutes of standing there I realized I saw Ashley, the Australian girl. I asked her if she was in line for the bathroom too, but she said one of them was actually vacant and that she was in line waiting for the receptionist to get to work. 

So I just went into the bathroom and a girl kind of looked at me odd, but it was a fend for yourself kind of situation. 

After I washed my face, brushed my teeth and got dressed, I waited for the other two girls to get ready. Next we headed out for breakfast. We started heading up the street and stopped in a small cafe. We couldn’t understand anything up on the boards, so we decided to keep walking. We found a place called Nebraska, and when we walked in it smelled delicious. 

We didn’t know whether we were supposed to seat ourselves or not, which is always our biggest problem, so we stood there confused for a minutes. Finally, I led the two just to sit down. I figure the worst that would happen would be that they would tell us no. 

We waited for about five minutes until a waitress finally came over. This is when the fun started. “Habla Inglese?” “No.” Then I though, “Well crap.”

We pointed to things we wanted on the menu. We all wanted chocolate churros because Jess highly recommended them and said they are very well-known in Spain. That’s all Amy wanted, but Bethany wanted a tea too, and I wanted eggs, ham and toast with it. 

The waitress started walking away and Amy had to catch her attention that we wanted more than the churros. Bethany ordered her tea and I ordered my eggs and ham. She then pointed to Amy and we think she said (In Spanish)  “only you want churros?” We said no, that we all wanted them. We thought we understood. We were wrong. 

I got my freshly squeezed orange juice, which was delicious, but the tiny cup was €2. Amy got her chocolate covered churros and Bethany and I were worried the woman thought only Amy ordered it. A few minutes later my eggs, ham and toast came out, but still no churros. We called the waitress back over and said that we still wanted churros for us. 

We thought she understood and then before we knew it we had a triple order of churros with Bethany’s order coming out too. We had enough churros to feed like six people, not three. 

And the churros were good, but nothing fantastic. Jess had talked them up so much that I was expecting something out of this world, but it kind of tasted like sour dough with chocolate. It was an odd combination, but yummy to drink the chocolate. 

My eggs and toast were scrumptious. It tasted like home when I’m at the Country Kitchen and I’m eating my over-easy eggs and dipping my buttered toast in them.

During breakfast the three of us were looking at the map and trying to plan our day. Bethany had made a list of things to do around Madrid and cheap places to eat. One of the only things Bethany wanted to see was a bull fighting museum, so when we saw that the museum was only opened until Friday we decided to do it today. 

When we left the restaurant we hopped on the subway and took the line to the outskirts of the city to the full fighting stadium. We found a ticket office and Amy translated some of the signs on the window. She thought it said that it wasn't opened until 2 and it was only noon at this point. There was a woman behind the window who we asked when the next tour was. The woman said they ran every half hour and the next one was in 10 minutes. Another great thing was that it was €7!

We walked to the front gate where a group of people were gathered waiting for the tour to start. About 10 minutes passed and the tour guide, Lucy, came out and let us in. She gave us a history on the building, which was constructed in the 1920s because Madrid wanted a new and bigger bull fighting ring. Around the outside of the stadium there are every neighborhoods' symbols, which I found interesting. It's also the second largest ring in the world, with Mexico's as the first.

When we were walking around the halls I felt like I was basically in a football stadium, but when we walked out into the center, it was definitely not that. The seats were basically rock benches and the ring was filled with dirt. It was such a beautiful architetural piece, that I was not expecting. I would have loved to see a bull fight because simply being there was cool enough. I could not, however, watch the bull get killed. That's one part I don't agree with. The woman said it's a part of their culture and they see killing the bull as an honor to it because they respect this particular kind of animal. I just didn't grow up in that culture, so it's one thing I can't relate to. 

After the hour tour, we spoke with Lucy for a bit. We learned that the tours of the stadium just started about two months ago. Perfect timing for us! We also learned Lucy used to be a journalist, which obviously pertained to us. She said we was a bull fighting journalist and did it for only one year because she said people gave her such a hard time because she was not a "native" to Spain because she was from England and she was a woman. She said it's hard to get a job in this field as a woman because it is very male dominating. I found this interesting because in many of my journalism classes it's female dominated. When I told her this, she was surprised. 

After speaking with Lucy we went into the Bull Fighting museum next door, which was included in the ticket price. There were sculptures of heroic bull fighting men and the outfits that many people wore. You could see blood stains on the beautiful jackets as well. On one of them it was drenched in blood because the man who wore it was struck by one of the horns in his leg. It sent chills through me seeing all that blood. 

We walked around the outside of the stadium for a little bit and then headed back to the metro. We decided to go to a museum that was close by to knock it out while we were near. The museum had Picaso paintings, which was really cool to see. I've learned about many famous artists throughout elementary school and high school, so it was cool to see actual pieces of art from this person. 

After the Picaso room we went up to the rooftop terrace, where we could see a gorgeous view of the city. You could see for miles, and there were just so many rooftops spread across the area with beautiful mountains in the background. 

After the museum we went back to the metro to take it to the "gay district" where we were going to do some shopping. The metro was much more crowded than it was earlier in the say, so we all squished our way on. I held on to my satchel purse because I had been told so many times how bad the metro could be with pick pocketing. 

At one stop this woman who was in front of me bolted off the car and pushed her way past Bethany. It was really odd, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Someone on the metro was trying to talk to her in Spanish, but she couldn't understand him. That's when she looked down at her purse and realized it was unzipped. The man was trying to tell her the woman took her wallet. 

Bethany scrambled over near where Amy and I were standing. I told her to breathe and that it was probably a mistake and that it was somewhere in her purse. I really didn't think anyone was capable of doing something like that. My heart sank when she pulled everything out and her wallet was no where to be seen. "She took it." Bethany said incredibly mad. 

It was too late to get off the metro and go chase the woman by the time we realized what had happened. We got off at the next stop and tried to find our way to our connecting metro. I felt so so bad for Bethany. I knew there was nothing I could do or say that would make her feel any better. So I said nothing and let her wallow about it and keep saying "what if" theories. 

What the woman got from her: Her driver's license, credit card (which wasn't activated yet), debit card, key to our school, key to our hostel (which we had to pay a €10 deposit each for ) and €80 cash. 

When we finally got back to the hostel I had her use skype on my ipod to call her bank. It ended up working, which made me breathe a little bit. While Bethany was on the phone, Amy started snooping around our new roommates stuff, curious if they were girls or boys. She got excited because she realized they were American. Their flight tags said Philly, so we knew they were, but then she said, "Oh, crap, one of them is Jessie James." "Like the singer," I asked. "No, like the western killer," she said. I laughed. 

While Bethany was finishing canceling her debit card, Amy and I decided to go out to the gay district and give Bethany space. I figured I'd let her wallow and be sorry for an hour or two, but then I was going to make her go back out because I knew she'd regret staying in a hostel in Madrid and not see anything else for the weekend. 

Amy and I stumbled on a very odd mall when we were hunting down this place Bethany told us about. We walked into this building and there were tiny stores but a ton of them in this circular structure. There were three floors and each floor had a different style. It was extremely confusing, but we were entertained by it. 

— our hostel —

We didn't have any luck with shoes like we were hoping, so we decided to head back to the hostel around 6, which was about an hour anyways. We stopped at Starbucks and got Bethany a drink. We hoped she liked Mocha Frapps because that's what we got her — luckily that's what she likes. 

We ended up hanging out in the hostel for an hour or so and started looking into Flamenco dancing places. We found this one advertisement that sounded good. It was €26 for a drink and the show. We walked down to the place where it was at and we were luckily still able to make reservations. Then we went back up into the main part of town and went on a hunt for some cute outfits for the night. 

I stumbled on a store called Blanco, which I fell in love with. They had everything that was my style and it was all in my price range. I found a cute black, white and sea green dress that I decided to get for the evening. Bethany and Amy didn't have as much luck. 

We went back to the hostel and got all fancied up. When we walked in two of our new roommates were there. We greeted them and learned one of them was teaching English as a second language in Spain and her friend was visiting her. They were both from Chicago. The girl who was teaching English also said she went to Allegheny college after I said I was from Pittsburgh. Small world!

At 9:30 we went to the flamenco restaurant called Las Tapas. The three of us ordered sangria for our free drink, which is officially my new favorite drink. I also ordered a brie cheese tapas with onions. It was scrumptious. 

Soon enough the lights dimmed and the spanish guitar started playing and Spanish music lyrics were being sun by a man. Two women flamenco dancers came on the stage and started dancing away. I really felt like I was in the heart of Spain when I was sitting there in the audience. The two woman dancers were phenomenal and when the male dancer took the stage he blew the other two away. The way they moved their feet so fast and created a beat to add to the music was amazing. Also, how fast they could move was amazing too. The dancing reminded me of a mix between the irish jig and hula dancing. The moved their arms around while moving their feet super fast. 

It was also interesting to watch the man sing because I've heard the music played before in Spanish class in high school, but I've never seen in in person. There were times he was tomato red because he was singing so hard.

Overall, it was worth every penny. 

After the show we took the metro to an area of town that people told us was good for a young crowd nightlife. We ventured around a few bars, but what caught us off guard was that a lot of places asked us for our IDs. We had no idea that Spain had a drinking age of 18. We never get carded in Italy, so we're just used to not carrying around or IDs, so that was a bit different.

After a long day we headed back to the hostel and I was overjoyed to crawl into my bed. 

Fun fact:

I've never seen Dunkin and Starbucks this competitive before: