Today was my departure back to the Netherlands. I packed my bag in the morning, the rest of the day consisted of wandering around town and go for some shopping. We started at the Primark, at Gran Vía, which was enormous. We were a little worried that we weren't going to be able to get it all back to NL, due to the weight restriction for the flight. After some serious shopping we went for lunch at Dunkin Coffee, which was not that much of a success. We had some coffee at Starbucks afterwards, which is odd but we didn't realize it back then to get one at that coffee shop. To find the Starbucks was quite a challenge, we had seen a lot of them on the Gran Vía itself, unfortunately we didn't remember where they were exactly. We ended up by walking way to far to a small Starbucks coffee shop. Surprisingly there are a lot of Dutch people in Madrid. We manage to get an eye on them due to the way they dress and act. Extraordinary to see that people from other countries do differ. Shopping had a longer duration than expected and our legs were extremely tired. Around 4 we had to head back to the hostel to get on our bus, which was 45 minutes late. During that spare time we went to another souvenir shop because on of my friends still needed a bracelet. It was some true last-minute shopping. When the bus was finally there we hopped on and went to the airport. Check-in didn't go as fluent as we hoped for but we got on, which is what counts. We had a quick dinner at the Burger King, who serve 0,75 L Iced Tea with a burger menu. Trust me.. it was a lot. The cashier was notably happy for a 44 mans order, we slightly expected her to be grumpy because of the 44 Burger menus that had to be made. The flight itself felt really short because we had a lot of fun, we played games and discussed the past few days. The farewell was unfortunate, I would have liked to have just some more time with all the students. The four days felt like only one, getting of the plane and heading back home was a bit somber. To see my parents and my dog on the other hand was a relief and softened the goodbye. ¡Adios Madrid!
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Today was the first day that we could enjoy the sunny weather in Madrid.
We walked around town and sat down at the Jardines del Buen Retiro. There was a big lake and the park was fascinating and surprisingly big as well. It reminded me of my own hometown park, the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, which is in comparison very poor. On our way to the Reina Sophia we payed a visit to the Crystal Palace, which was utterly beautiful. It was located in the Jardines del Buen Retiro and there were a lot of turtles in the lake in front of the palace. In the Reina Sophia we saw some famous pieces of art, for example works of Picasso. We had to do this because of the educational intent of our trips. I'm not much of an art fan so after 1 hour we were outside again, which was tremendously pleasant. For dinner we found this delightful little restaurant named La Rollerie, which served marvelous pasta and pancakes. Sitting down was a relieve considering the amounts of walking we do. That is not to be taken for granted. Our group leaders thought it would be fun to organize a speed date in the evening, unfortunately it didn't went as planned and they cancelled it. They said it will be resumed later on, which was forgotten. This withdraw resulted in more spare time so me and my friends went to Gran Vía which is a long lane with a lot of shops. We bought some souvenirs, a sweater and a little building for my collection. Around midnight we got back to the hostel, we were exhausted. It was entertaining to see that some people were selling all kinds of shoes and bags (of famous brands) on the streets, they carried a big sheet with their inventory in them. When the police came patrolling they crabbed their sheet and walked away to get back to the place they were a couple seconds later. Not so entertaining was the amount of homeless persons in Madrid, which was quite depressing. After breakfast we were planning on going to the Faro de Moncloa, which had to be rescheduled for a bit because some of the students managed to get stuck in the elevator. Me and a friend wandered around the neighborhood close to our hotel and returned on time to continue our planning. However, 4 students had the idea to search for a Starbucks, which let to them to get lost. Luckily they walked by accident to the perfect place which was on our route. We told them to stay put and I planned a route which would let them to them and eventually to the Faro. The Faro de Moncloa was a success, there was a great panorama view of the city. Unfortunately the weather was still not in our favor but that didn't bother us to continue as planned. We had 1,5h to grab a quick lunch, which is harder than it sounds. The Spanish folk tends not to adjust to the fact that you don't master their language. Everything worked out eventually so we didn't starve. Afterwards we went to the Teleférico de Madrid, which is like a big zip line across a park in Madrid, which also gives you the chance to see the whole city from another level. When we went all the way up we had to get out, at first we were horrified because we thought we had to walk all the way down again, our day mostly consisted of walking (everywhere we go we do by walking). Luckily that was not the case and we could get in again. We walked across the park to the Palacio Real, which was huge. In the mean time we also visited Templo de Debod and the Jardines de Sabatini. Our next stop was the Almudena Catedral, where we also went inside. From there we walked back to the hostel and collected the money for our dinner later on. Because we did a lot of walking our feet had to rest so we chilled in our room and went to the supermarket in front of the hostel to get some chips and cookies. Around 6 we went to Plaza Mayor, were we seated down underneath some nice heat lamps and enjoyed a well deserved pizza. Our day was still not over yet, we went to the metro to hop on and go watch a flamenco dance, which is topically Spanish. We expected a nice dance but it was not what we wanted it to be. The ladies were a lot older then the boys hoped for. After a couple of minutes the dance became boring. We left early (around 23.30) and went to our hostel, we were again tired so we dived into our beds. All in all, a busy day with lots of rain but nevertheless lots of fun. Bienvenido a Madrid Today's destiny is the sunny Madrid. My departure was at 7 am so I awoke quite early. I have many travel companions due to the 'school trip', therefore I got to stay in Madrid for 4 days to go sight seeing and develop social and cultural skills. I checked the weather forecast for my stay, guess I will be taking the Dutch weather with me... Cloudy and partly rain...Well that's a bust. No tan for me then. After the flight we all waited for our busdriver to arrive, who was late which was actually no surprise. Her take off started amazing by dislocating a lamp which was attached to the wall, great driver! We were in a doubt if we were going to make it to the hostel alive. We surprisingly did. After we dropped our bags we decided to go to a super market to get a quick lunch. It started raining heavily so we are in a big hallway of a hotel, whilst sitting on a awfully cold ground. Our plan to make a walking tour around town literally washed away so we had the idea of going to a cinema, unfortunately it was closed and we were forced to return to the hostel. A couple hours later we went to a famous art museum (El Prado), which bored most of us. Because the museum was also a bust we walked to the metro station to view the turtles and flora which is represented there. With all the bad luck we had, the route was closed so we could not watch them. We continued our route to walk to a tapas restaurant, which was around 30 minutes. We first entered a bar, we were welcomed by shouting 'Beer beer! Who wants beer?!' We didn't quite know how to react on this and we were soon escorted out of the bar. Apparently the bar and the restaurant, which where identical where located nearby each other. We visited the wrong restaurant, not like the right restaurant was much better... We got bread with some really old cheese and weird tasting beef. They also served some fried balls stuffed with God knows what. Me and my friends claimed those because they were the only one which were not awful to eat. We tried the tapas, we gave it a chance but it didn't work out like we hoped. After our late dinner we were released, but we were too tired to go wandering around the city again. After some struggles we finally found our way back to the hostel. We showered and listened to music and eventually went to sleep. |
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