Our First Day

First, I'd like to say that our internet connection here is absolutely awful and so I apologize for delays in posts.

Here are some pictures of our room:

After a bit of unpacking, we hit the streets of Madrid.  Our first stop was a little coffee shop near the museum section of town to get some caffeine.  The top floor of the coffee shop was entirely covered with different size bottles of wine.  Pretty cool:

Our next stop was the Real Jardín, just south of the Prada Museum.  It wasn't a very interesting garden, but admission was only 1.60 euros.  Here are some pics from the garden:

After the gardens, we walked around for a while.  We walked North past the Prada Museum and then slightly West to a small restaurant to grab lunch (Cerveceria Los Geronimos).  Here's a picture of Tim and Kevin trying to figure out how to cross a street:

And here's our lunch:

This was definitely the saltiest/oiliest lunch I've had in a long time.

After lunch we winded West through the streets to the Royal Palace and the adjacent Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Almudena.

Plaza Mayor

Plaza Mayor

The beautiful cathedral

The royal palace

It was quite nice (lots of great Plazas), but me and Tim were about to die of sleep deprivation, so we made our way back to the Hostel to take a two hour nap.

After our nap, we met Cipriano at 5 PM in the lobby of the hostel.  Cipriano, Kevin and I all went for a jog through the city, which was quite beautiful.  Unfortunately, jogging through such crowded streets can be quite aggravating/dangerous at times, and we almost got hit by a bus.

After returning from our jog, showering, etc... we looked for a dinner place.  The place we picked was a tapas bar and we had several delicious tapas dishes and some Risotto.  We also had a Spanish wine, called Muga.  It was some blend of several types of wine that I wasn't too familiar with.

Dinner!!!

It seemed like most of the people in the restaurant were Americans tourists - we need to look for more authentic places in the future.

After dinner, we left to grab some cervezas at a local bar.  We initially picked a small irish pub near our restaurant, but CP voted it down.  However, after a lot of travel and some ice cream, CP relented and we had a pint.

After leaving the bar, we went directly home and passed out.  CP had to find his key, which he had lost at this point.

Madrid has been awesome.  To me, it has a bit of a small town feel - it lacks the intense hustle and bustle of Paris and other European towns and even some of the grandeur.  However, it has a lovely charm about it.  In the coming days, I hope to visit some of the museums and learn a bit about the history of the city.