¡España!: Slowly Adjusting

As I woke up this morning, I had to remind myself I was in a foreign country and not in the U.S.. Today, Sunday, has been a great learning experience for me. We woke up and went downstairs for breakfast, the hotel had little doughnuts, fruit, fresh juice, and croissants out for people to eat. As for there main breakfast foods out, the Spanish eat raw ham or jamón. Me and my roommate were a little hesitant and stuck with the food we are use to eating for now, but later she did try the raw ham and said it tastes like country ham with a lot of fat so I figured my next encounter I will try it. I have been continuing to branch out and get out of my usual eating habits of plain foods. Today at lunch a group of some girls found this really cool place with Italian food and decided we would split some pizzas. Since lunch is the Spanish main meal of the day we figured we should get some wine to start us off. In Spain they don't ID anyone for getting alcohol because it is just so widely accepted to have a meal and a glass of wine or beer. We chose a Spanish rosada wine, which is like a blush wine. It was VERY good, I am not a big blush or red wine drinker so it was good to let someone else order for me and I just made myself drink it, and came to like it! 2 girls then ordered a margarita pizza and the rest of us split a hawaiian pizza and if you know me I usually only get cheese pizza or pepperoni and pick the pepperonis off. This time, I told one of the girls to pick for me and I would not take anything off and will eat it. The Hawaiian pizza was cheese with tomato, pineapple, and ham. It was amazing! The pineapple gave it a nice sweet taste and if you have ever seen real Italian pizza, the thin crust, that was how that pizza was. Hopefully I am not getting my readers too hungry reading this, but I feel so proud of myself for trying new things so far and only more to come. Except last night when my roommate and I were so tired and decided to run to the McDonalds right next to the hotel and eat dinner really quick. Of course we had to sit there and eat it since it is rude to the Spanish when you take things to go. We had a pretty funny encounter there, in Spain they do not have like numbered combos and you just have to say what you want off the menu and we both wanted chicken nuggets. We get up in line and say "numero nueve" and the guy goes "huh? en el menú?" Of course we were like why is he questioning us, turns out since there are no numbered combos we thought the 9 piece nugget was number 9 ha. We both sat down and starting laughing at ourselves. We did get a lot of people watching done while eating. I tell you what, the Spanish love McDonalds, that place was packed the entire time we were in there eating. We also just became intrigued by how young the boys and girls were in there hanging out with each other at 11:00 at night. I know when I was that young I was not allowed out on the town that late! But everything is just so different over here, it is probably more accepted.

Also today, we got to take a tour of the Museo del Prado, we were broken up into groups of 14 and were given these headphones and a radio to go around our necks. Then a woman had a microphone and walked us around and showed us the most famous works of art throughout the museum, we were not allowed to take pictures or I would have posted these beautiful works by Goya, Greco, and Velaquez. She spoke mainly in Spanish for us but would occasionally speak English for us which helped, but I understood 50-60% of the Spanish that she did speak and understand what she was saying. She went into great detail on each work of art like why there were bright colors and the meaning of the people looking like ghosts and every little detail that went into each painting by these great artists. I would like to go back one day and go through the entire museum myself to look at the rest since we just looked at the main ones. The museum is huge though! There are 3 different ones in the whole place and the one we went into was huge, it would take hours to go through. We were then let go to go get lunch which I already told you about but at 2:40 we had to meet at the Palacio Real, which I told in the last blog it was once the place where the king and queen live. Now they only hold state dinners there and the king and queen live in a smaller place some where in Madrid. The king and queen have authority but chose to pretty much step back and let the president (i believe that is right that it is a president and not a prime minister) rule Spain. Kind of like the royal family in England, Queen Elizabeth has rule but she chooses to kind of step back and let the prime minister make decisions and appears in public. The king and queen here appear in public also, but not like the queen does in England, one of the girls here said she had a friend tell her that he walked in a book store and the queen of spain was just sitting down reading a book on her own, not bringing attention to herself. The Palacio Real was amazing and so beautiful. It is so cool to think where I walked through that old kings and queens had lived there and walked where I was walking. I think my favorite room was the red throne room where their thrones presided, there were gold lions on the side and it was just so cool to get to take a tour there.

After Palacio Real, we decided to go to SOL which is a main area where there is a metro and shopping. Since we had been walking all day we decided that we would rather shop later on and spend our money later and we were dead tired so we made our way back to the hotel WITHOUT using our maps! That was a major accomplishment. Now I am here resting, for the rest of my day we are resting and eventually going to eat later on then a group of us is meeting in the lobby at 11:30 to experience the night life of Madrid! It is also one of the girls 21st birthday so we want to celebrate. Meg Appel, I know you probably just popped up while reading this when I mentioned the night life, stay tuned for updates on what the clubs are like here. Then tomorrow morning we head to Toledo where the Flamingo dancing is apparently at its best! Will have plenty of pictures for my readers! As for now, here are some pictures of what I saw today.