Madrid and Toledo

This weekend was the Madrid and Toledo excursion with CIDE (the study abroad program at our university). We left Friday morning on a bus for Madrid. It took about five hours to get there but I didn’t really mind because that’s about how long it takes from me to get to Ole Miss from my house.The one thing i noticed while driving to Madrid is that there are not many towns in between the big cities. Every now and then you would see a village but it was just a lot of dry desert like scenery for most of the ride. When we got there we checked in to the hotel and had about an hour to rest. Our room were nice, the standard hotel room set up, and a nice bathroom. We had lunch which was an experience in itself. The dorm food is pretty terrible (and keeps getting worse) so everyone living in the dorm freaked when we saw the buffet. We stuffed ourselves all weekend at the hotel knowing when we came back the food would stink again. After lunch we went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). On the way there we experienced some extreme traffic. I guess I knew there would be traffic considering how big the city is but I had never really experienced anything like it. We saw an suv try and pass a bus, and instead it side-swiped it and the suv had the side of car ripped off. We finally arrived at the palace after being in traffic for almost an hour. We had a guided tour which was pretty cool. After, we walked to some different plazas and looked in some shops. We headed back and had dinner at the hotel. I was lame and stayed in because I knew a lot of people were planning on going out Saturday night so I decided to just go out then. I was woken up a lot though because apparently its cool to have parties out of the trunk of your car at the train station (which was next to our hotel). Kids literally popped there hatch-backs up, mixed there drinks and socialized. It was kind of unsettling because of course they know we are not from there and love to taunt…

Saturday we drove about and hour and a half south to Toledo (pictured above). I think I kind of liked Toledo more than Madrid. Toledo is such a historic city. It was once the capital of Spain! It was also occupied by both the Romans and Muslims. Because of this history it has some interesting sights. The architecture is a mixture of Roman, Muslim, and Jewish styles. It even has its own name, its called mudejar. We drove to a scenic lookout point which had breathtaking views. After we made our way into the city. We got to go on a tour of the cathedral. I really liked it. It is the second most important Catholic church after St. Peter’s in Rome. It had beautiful stained glass and altars. It had the largest tabernacle I’ve ever seen. It also had great carved marble and wood works. We had lunch in a little restaurant before heading back to Madrid in the afternoon. Amanda, Danyel and I went back to the plazas we had been to before to look for souvenirs but didn’t really find anything. I took a nice nap before dinner and then laid around until we left to go to Teatro Kapital at 12:30. That is one thing I am definitely not used to - the night life. Everybody starts going out when we are usually going in in Oxford. The place was awesome though. It was seven stories and each floor had different music and a different style. It was fun exploring each and dancing with the girls.

We had an early wake up call and had our last buffet breakfast! Like I said before, we took full advantage of the food at the hotel. We went to the Prado Museum. We had an awesome tour guide who kept things interesting. We saw a lot of stuff by Goya and Vasquez and many other famous artists in Spain. After lunch we headed back to Bilbao. For some reason the bus ride back seemed like it lasted forever! I started to go stir crazy. It was the weirdest thing, when we could see Bilbao I felt so relieved. I loved our trip but it felt so nice to be back in Bilbao. I felt more in my element for sure. It was comforting, and that was something I didn’t expect to feel.