Madrid

  Madrid, Spain
Wednesday, June 25, 2008

¡ESPAÑA! 

I officially made it to Spain on June 25, 2008.  The flights weren't too bad.  I talked to people on my flights.  To Frankfurt, I talked to a guy named Will from South Carolina.  We talked a lot about his southerness.  He was really surprised when I said that I knew of no one who owned a gun.  He said that he only had 3, and that was considered barely any in his city.  Then, on the flight from Frankfurt to Madrid, I talked to a man named Tony.  He was older and was leading a group of high school students through Europe.  He was raised in Portugal, but spent the last 35 years in Richmond, VA.

Frankfurt Airport was all right.  For being the biggest airport in Europe, I wasn't too impressed.  It's rather dark.  But, security is efficient and everything is written in German and English.  And they have free newspapers, not that I read them.

Unfortunately, I lost my luggage when I got to Madrid.  Interestingly, at least 3 other people from my flight lost their luggage as well.  I gave the man the address of the hotel I'd be staying at in Madrid and he told me that it would be sent either that day or the  next.  (we conversed in English, this was too important for me to try and muddle around in Spanish).

I met up with the ISA (international studies abroad) group.  People who were going to Valencia, San Sebastian, and Barcelona were there.  Notably, I did not pass through customs in the Barajas airport.  I got no stamp in my passport.  Although I did for Germany.  I don't know why. 

Lots of grafitti

I just walked straight out the doors.  Then, we all got on a bus and headed to the hotel.  My first impressions of Madrid while driving on the high way was "wow, there's a lot of grafitti." Overall, I didn't see anything too exciting.  Notably though, almost all the windows in many buildings had balconies, even the poorer looking ones.

So, we got to the hotel (Husa Paseo del Arte) and my room was on the fifth floor (room 505).  I met my 2 roommates: Erin, from Tulsa, OK and Erica, from northern California (though she goes to UCLA).

Hotel room

We were all impressed with the room, it was very nice. It's apparently a four star hotel.

Hotel room

  The bathroom was rather interesting.  The shower door was glass and it only covered half the length of the bathtub.  The shower head was actually one of the removable shower heads that's attached to a hose(like this: http://www.tilerenew.com/images/accessabath_shower_bg.jpg).  The toilet looked the same with one exception.  Instead of a handle to flush the toilet, there was a button on the lid of the base that you'd press (kind of like this: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_YWXZVN_pxKU/Rj91F5f8IlI/AAAAAAAAD-I/h6356qVdCE0/DSCN0014.JPG).  And the water only fills up a little in the bowl.  When you flushed, water jetted out from the sides of the bowl.  All of these things are done in an effort to use less water, which is much more expensive in Spain than in the U.S.

I took a quick nap.  I had been told repeatedly by people to not go to sleep, just take a quick nap.  Since Spain is 6 hours ahead of eastern standard time in the U.S., it would be better for us, they said, if we didn't go to sleep until it was night time.  After I woke up, I realized I was very hungry and surprise, my first meal was...McDonald's (sorry, Uncle Pete).  I was starving and that was the closest and fastest thing I had available to me.

At 7pm, they took us on a tour of Madrid.  Honestly, I was not all that impressed by the city.  As in, seeing it once was fine with me.  I think a lot of it has to do with living in Washington D.C.  I'm used to big, impressive, yet old-fashioned buildings.  Of course, there were some impressive ones.

Bus tour

  But, the big difference on the whole, that I could see, was that the buildings had a lot of balconies.  I thought Madrid was rather dirty.

Bus tour

One thing that really stands out in Spain are the pharmacies, which were everywhere in Madrid.  They are all marked by a cross (in the shape of the one signifying the Red Cross) and have green lights that light up in different patterns.

La farmacía

  The pharmacies here are very small, about the size of a family room.  They sell lotion, medicine, shampoo, creams, etc.

At the end of the bus tour, I was nearly asleep.  It was around 8pm, and I went right up to the room and fell asleep.  Erica and Erin went to a bar.  They came back, waking me up around 1 am, I didn't fall asleep until 4am again.