Spain, where even the homeless and taxi drivers are hot.

Spain almost started off and ended in disaster.  Mallory had a few friends in from Florence the night before we left.  We were going to take them out for a while but be back home by 1:00am at the latest.  Well....1:00am turned into 3:00am and then that turned into about 4:00am before we all got into bed.  I set three alarms for 7:00am the next morning.  I slept through them all.  At around 7:15 I was literally shaken awake by the prostitute screaming "GET UP! YOU HAVE TO GO TO MADRID!"  So what did I do? Did I run to the cab station? Did I call Mallory and Maried to make sure they were up? No, I got in the shower.  Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  Then as I am getting dressed I was frantically calling the two of them while brushing my teeth.  Maried and I had a conversation that went like this:

Me: Maried are you awake?

Maried: Yeah, whats up?

Me: We have to get on a plane in an hour an a half.

Maried: Yeah, I know.

Me: What are you doing?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Maried: Nothing, is someone brushing their teeth?

Me: I AM! WE HAVE TO GET IN A CAB NOW!!!

Maried: Okay, someone should call Ellen.

Me: THIS IS ELLEN!

Maried: oh, I will see you at Mals in 5 minutes.

So then I called Mallory, who hung up on me and rolled over and went back to sleep.  As I am running out the door to try and wake up Mallory, my roommate Stefano stops me and asks me where his shoe is. Really? Could he not see that I was leaving? So then I found myself on my hands and knees in my roommates room looking for a shoe, that wasn't even mine, under their beds at 7:00 in the morning. Apparently he HAD to find that shoe right then.  But no worries, we found it.  

Meanwhile, Maried and Mallory woke up and we got into a cab at 8:10 for our 9:20 flight out of Bologna.  I still have no idea how we did it but we made it on the plane with only one casualty, my gloves.  And we got the first row on the plan and promptly passed out even though Mal thought it was the most turbulent flight she had ever been on but somehow managed to sleep through the entire flight. She only woke up to grab my arm and tell me how scared she was. Senza problema. 

Madrid turned out to be amazing.  I had no idea what to expect but it was awesome.  Maried booked us a hostel right in the middle of Madrid on an adorable street close to Tapas bars, discos, and the main attractions of the city.  The first day we strolled down Paseo de la Castellana which led us to Real Madrid's stadium, Santiago Bernabeu, where Maried got her Real Madrid jersey and we picked up the tickets for the following day.  

After that we went out and got Tapas with our roommate at the Hostel.  She turned out to be a 35-year-old Australian who lived in London and acted like she was 16.  Not fun.  But the food was sent from heaven.  Well thats what I was told.  Most of it consisted of meat but the potatoes and bread with cheese was delicious.  We also got our first pitcher of Sangria.  

Later that night, we grabbed a drink at a bar before we headed out to a disco called Kapital, a seven floor disco with go-go dancers, lights, and tons of different lounges.  Needless to say, it was crazy and the night was just starting when we got there at 2:00am.  Unfortunately, our heels we all wore ended our night a little early and we crawled home.  

Standing in Plaza Mayor

Note: Every single Spaniard from the ages of 18-42 were beautiful.  Not joking.  None of us saw one bad looking man the entire time.  Hence the title of this post.  If you are looking for a place to study abroad purely for the eye-candy, Madrid is the place to go.  It even made me rethink my choice of learning Italian.  Okay, not entirely, but for a moment I was praying that I could remember even one word that I learned in high school Spanish.  All I could remember was adios.  So therefore, I didn't meet one of these beautiful men because I couldn't even say Hola.

Plaza Mayor

The next day we just wandered around being lazy, seeing the city and eating bocadillos, a spanish sammie (aka sandwich).  Then we went and saw REAL MADRID play Mallorca.  It was sweet, but a lot more tame then the first soccer game I saw in Italy.  Spaniards are a lot more civilized when it comes to soccer.  Real won and we celebrated by getting paella and another pitcher of sangria.  The next day we went to the market, Mercado San Miguel, and ate lunch and then headed to the huge park in Madrid, Parque del Retiro.  It was beautiful. We were so in awe of the park that we lost track of time and realized that we had about 2 hours before our flight took off.

Maried and Mallory at Palacio Real

  

We literally ran through the park and jumped on the metro only to get off at Terminal 4 at the airport when we should have gotten off 2 metro stops earlier at Terminal 1.  At Terminal 4 Mallory bitched out a metro lady for not understanding her while Maried and I just watched.  Mallory thought that the only way she could communicate with the woman was talking to her in English with a Spanish accent:

Metro Lady: You don't want to understand me.

Mallory: I want to understand you, but you don't want to understand me!

After paying her off, aka the ticket machine, we made it through to Terminal 4 only to pay again to get back on the metro to terminal 1.  Just FYI, Ryanair flies out of Terminal 1 in Madrid.  So now we were running through the airport HomeAlone style and checked into our gate at 4:00 for out 4:20 flight.  Again, I have no idea how we did it.  So we ended out trip how we started it, me almost in tears, running  for our flight and passing out the plane.  Senza delirio.

Baci xx