With Katie in Madrid

Okay, so I am officially in Madrid with the dear sister. We had a ridiculously fun night on Wednesday when I got in. After dropping off my stuff, we decided that the appropriate introduction to the city was a night out in Sol, so we met up with Carla from Australia, Ryann, Alex, and a girl from the Netherlands. Thanks to Ryan´s shameless flirting and marriage proposals to Argentinian bartenders, we all got about $40-50 worth of free drinks wandering around the streets of downtown Madrid. We were having so much fun that we decided we should not take the last metro at 1:30am, but rather wait for the metro to reopen at 6am. It was a great idea until about 4, when the salsa dancing, drinking, and walking were all starting to make bed sound like a great idea. Luckily, the Chocolateria de San Gines caters to the drunk, tired people waiting for the metro by offering chocolate con churros for 3.50 €. Delicious.

Yesterday, we touristed straight from about 1pm until 9 or so, and saw pretty much all the main landmarks. Palacio Real is probably the only one that is really famous in the US. I think there are actually more well known things in other Spanish cities. We did enjoy a bottle of Lemon Fanta, which I really dont think we have at home. In the Plaza de Santa Ana, we stopped to admire the Spanish Theatre and decided to go to the Bruja de Salem (Salem Witch Trials) show tonight. Today our attempted visit to the Spanish Armada display at the Naval Museum was thwarted by our failure to bring passports. Yes, it is ridiculous that you need a passport to get in. No, the security officer did not care that I have my number memorized.

In a very strange but extremely cool coincidence, we ran into Christina Leaton and Maggie Puryear eating lunch downtown. What are the odds?? We did not even realize that we were all in Madrid. So not only were we all here, we happened to be on the same street at the same time. W and L is everywhere, I guess. Okay, well, Katie and I are going to go do some more touristing, but I fly into Casablanca tomorrow so I will write from there.