day 2: exploring madrid

On this morning, aka Saturday, most of the group arrived at the hotel around 1030am. I switched rooms and, after they got settled and changed we were able to explore. A lot of kids, and the program director, got delayed due to flight/weather issues so it was kind of a free for all day.

Me and five other girls (Ayana, Sarah, Janeen, Chelsey, and Tristin) all decided to head to the city center to explore. We caught a bus and then two metro lines.  Super cheap and really easy. Good to get the hang of everything so when I come again it'll be a breeze. I definitely wanna come again with Rob. It's just not possible to see Madrid in two days (one after the flight in and one before our flights out).

But from what we did see it is beautiful!!

This was our view right off our metro stop
at Gran Via.

We walked around to plaza de independencia and puerta del sol. We explored lots of shops and took lots of pictures! We didn't even get to see half of it though-so tragic.

This was a fountain we walked past on one of our wrong way detours.

Love the buildings.  Kept up old world with a modern touch. 

One girl was looking for a phone charger and we ran into
this cow in front of a store called Ale-hop.

We read one of the maps in the wrong direction and found this in the
middle of a roundabout.

Around 130 we stopped for lunch at a little café near the last picture.

The menu of where we ate

Here I had my first glass of spanish sangria

For food I had a mini baguette sandwich with bacon and cheese, and I totally forgot to take a picture of that for ya.

After lunch we kept walking some more and then headed back around 5. Riding the metro back was easy but we messed up on our bus route. Tristin told him the stop name when we got on the bus but apparently your supposed to press "stop" when its coming up. We didn't do that and he didn't stop. Then his next stop wasn't for like 15km and into another little town. Luckily we were able to stay with him and he did the return route also. That was our main excitement of the day.

Once we were back we all showered and relaxed. Since not much was near our hotel we just stuck around here and did dinner and drinks at the hotel. Now it's the next morning and we're about to leave for our train ride to Sevilla. :)