A chill couple of days in the big city of Madrid!

- Rachel -

Madrid, Madrid, Madrid... The days we spent in Madrid were extremely enjoyable. Not because of the city itself, more because of good company ( Zach and Sasha). Madrid is your typical big city with the hustle and bustle of working people and metro traffic. There are a lot of monuments, museums, and other sights to see if that’s what you're in to. And while Zach and I do take pleasure in these sights, wedecided to enjoy Madrid more as locals rather than tourists. A friend of mine from high school, Sasha, is currently studying in Madrid so thankfully she had room to host us and show us around during our time in the city.

Our first day we went next door for breakfast to a cute little cafe that Sasha recommended. Nowhere but Spain can you get a café con leche (coffee with milk) and a "tostada con jamón y tomate" (toast with ham and tomato) for 1.50 Euro!! Not to mention the .40 cent cañas (mini tap beer) everyday here as well! Like viva España! The rest of the day we spent meandering around las calles (streets) of Madrid walking through Plaza Mayor, watching the sunset at Palacio Real and sharing a plate of churros with delicious hot chocolate.

One of my favorite parts of the day was talking in Spanish with Sasha as we roamed the city and watching Zach get irritated because he didnt entirely understand.. lol. Oh the joys of knowing two languages ;)

Anyways, that night Sasha took us to a place called "El Tigre" which is a tapas bar. If you aren’t familiar with Spanish tapas they are basically appetizers that come in just about any type you can imagine. My favorite being Croquetas de patatas. This place was AMAZING! All you have to do is order a drink and you get plates on plates of tapas! Zach and I each got  one liter mojitos for 6 euro each and no shortage of rum ;) After you get your drink you are served a never ending array of tapas! :0 And don’t worry, no need to buy another drink because the tapas will just keep coming until you're LLENA (full)! The place is filled with people of all ages just looking to have a good time with friends and enjoy some good drinks and FREE TAPAS! A few of Sasha’s friends joined us at El Tigre, so we spent the night laughing and talking about who knows what in both Spanish and English. As bad as this sounds it was pretty funnny to watch Zach while we all spoke in Spanish.. he was a little lost haha but was a good sport about all of us switching languages every couple of minutes. For only taking two years of high school Spanish, he surprisingly picks up on a fair amount of the conversations, but still can't actually form a basic sentence HA. Like I told him...he should learn Spanish!! But yea it was a good day overall :)

Rachel