A weekend in Madrid

Hey all....haven't had a chance to update the blog recently.  Lo siento!
Last weekend Siobhan, Alexa and I as well as our two friends Daryl and Amanda traveled to Madrid.  Our program was hosting the excursion, so we decided to go hop on board for the free ride. Instead of returning the same day, we booked rooms in a Best Western so that we could stay the night and attend the Real Madrid v Levante U.D. game.
As it always seems to go, the trip was awesome but there was a few low moments lol.  To start, the bus left 30 minutes later than it was supposed to. And why you ask? Oh thats simple....because there really is no such thing as punctuality in Spain.  Everyone kind of shows up when they feel like it.  Nevertheless though we did make it to Madrid in a little less than 3 hours and after all I should not complain as I mentioned above we did not have to pay for the bus.  After arriving in Madrid, we decided to first find the hotel and drop off our overnight bags.  Well we did not do a whole lot of research into the hotel before booking it.  We knew that it was a little out of the way as it was located near the Barajas airport, but did not realize it would take us an hour to get there by Metro.  We had to change lines 3 times, got off at the wrong stop only once, but in the end made it to the hotel and checked in.  Bonus was that unlike NYC you only pay for the Metro once ( 1 euro) and not every time you change lines.  So while it took us an hour, it was very very cheap :) Also, breakfast was included and the hotel had free wifi (and for those of you that have been reading religiously..cough cough it better be all of you...this was a big PLUS in my book). Not to mention that it was only 10 minutes from the airport so we had to do very little traveling in the morning to take a bus back (one of the buses back to Salamanca leaves from the airport..the other in the way south of Madrid). We thought we were being very clever with this arrangement and were very proud of ourselves for doing all this without parents.
After relaxing for a little while Daryl, Alexa and Amanda took off for El Prado museum.  Siobhan and I having already visited this lovely establishment, decided to make our way down to the Real Madrid stadium and walk around.  We found a Corte Ingles 10 minutes from the stadium (Spain's version of a mall) and walked around for a bit.  The best part however was stopping into a Hollywood themed restaurant and having "American" food.  It was nice to pick what and when I ate for a change ;)  After dinner though things went a little down hill.  The girls were late meeting us at the stadium.  With 15 minutes to go before game time, we were finally about to make our way inside.  I was finally starting to relax (and to be honest starting to lose the murderous feelings I felt towards them for being so late lol).  Unfortunately as we approached the ticket scanner, our tickets would not scan.  I was freaking out at this point obviously.  We were told (in Spanish of course) to go to Gate 37 (we were at gate 14) and simply get new tickets printed for us.  Ok awesome..the man at the gate did not seem worried and we thought ok lets go get our tickets and then take our seats...no problem. WRONG! There are no people at the gate, just a machine that prints out the tickets.  Unfortunately though you need the credit card the tickets were purchased with to print the tickets.  We of course did not have it as our program director had bought them and we had paid him back in cash.  I am frantic at this point.  We quickly make our way to the next closest gate and (in Spanish) try to explain the problem.  We went through 3 people before someone understood. Luckily this wonderful wonderful man (I could have kissed him really) seemed to have had this happen before.  He folded our tickets to make the other barcode able to pass through the scanner.  Running with happiness we return to our appropriate gate to finally check in.  The freaking tickets now do not scan again.  And thats when I snapped.  The poor man that tried to tell us that we had to go back to Gate 37 and print new tickets.....before he could finish telling us to do what we already had tried to do....I starting yelling at him rapid fire in Spanish and told him to keep trying to scan the tickets because it had worked before.  They worked and we were finally inside.  Yes I admit I was a TOTAL bitch to this poor, unsuspecting man but I could only take so much.  And hey at least I yelled in Spanish..that should count for something.  Alexa and Siobhan were thankful but a little embarrassed.  Siobhan said and I quote, "Yo I wanted to apologize to him....you yelled at him and it was not his fault. What were you thinking...he was SO cute."  Apparently if he had been ugly no one would have had a problem with my behavior lol.  With 3 minutes to game time we took our seats.
The rest of the night was AMAZING.  Being at the game was one of the most awesome experiences of my life.  Never have I gotten to see such beautiful soccer up close.  And the atmosphere in the stadium was indescribable! Real Madrid won 2 - 0 and I captured the second goal in a pic! The rest of the night went off without a hitch.  We made it back to the hotel and snuggled into bed.

In the morning we woke up and had a really great breakfast.  We packed up our stuff and headed to the airport to catch the bus.  We were feeling good, now appreciating how close we had stayed to the airport (which was a 30 minute Metro ride from the stadium).  We walked into Terminal 1 and went to buy the bus tickets.  Only one problem, we could not find the kiosk.  After asking about 5 different people and getting a different answer 5 times, we finally found an information stand.  Bad news...while you can take a bus back to Salamanca from the airport on Sundays, you cannot buy the tickets there. Yeah I know...makes perfect sense to me too.  Not accepting defeat...we realized we COULD buy tickets for the train and take that back instead (it takes the same amount of time).  So we bought our train tickets, got back on the Metro for 30 minutes, got on the train and made our way home.  We made it home! We were so excited when we stepped out onto the streets of Salamanca.  And then God had to give us one more obstacle.  I kid you not the moment we stepped out of the train station and onto the street the skies opened up and it POURED! Alexa, Siobhan and I (forgot to mention Daryl and Amanda stayed behind in Madrid, opting to return later in the evening) burst out laughing.  That was all we could do.  After the events of the 2 days in Madrid it almost seemed like a perfect ending to the trip....a 20 minute walk back to the house in the pouring rain.  We treated ourselves to a nice, warm cup of coffee on the way home lol to ease the pain ;) Drenched we came back into the house, put on comfy pjs and relaxed for the entire rest of the day.

A crazy weekend, but I would not take one moment of it back.  I will forever remember that trip and am so happy I got to share it with friends :) Parts of the trip might have been miserable in the moment, but in the end at least I was able to have such a cool opportunity :) Although I have been a little homesick the last couple of days, it is these experiences (good and bad lol) that keep me going.  Studying abroad..its a once and a lifetime thing and I am so grateful for it.

Love,
Tayler