Madrid in 24 Hours

I told myself that I couldn’t leave Spain for the semester and not visit Madrid (since we hadn’t really gotten to see much of the city, other than from the inside of the airport and the train station), so we had planned to explore for the next 24 hours! By this point, after nine days of traveling, I was absolutely exhausted (partly just from lugging our heavy bags all over Europe!), so Katie and I decided to do a bus tour that would take us around to all of the big sights. I saw the Palacio Real, the Cathedral, and the Museo del Prado to name a few; Katie saw the inside of her eyelids. :) However, in her defense, she wasn’t sleeping during the whole bus ride, only a part of it haha! We decided to get off at one of the stops to grab a late lunch, and once I saw the Hard Rock Café, it was game over for me. I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to eat more than a scrumptious, bacon cheeseburger. (It’s a surprise I don’t weigh 500 pounds.) I had been craving American food for a long time, and I was finally satisfied; it was wonderful. After lunch, we hopped back on the bus and rode around the city for awhile longer. By mid-evening, Katie and I decided to head back to our hotel and rest before doing anything else because we were both exhausted, so much that Katie could hardly hold her head up anymore. We laid down around 7:00, with full intentions of getting up and going to dinner later that night... well, I’m sure you can see where this is going. Five hours later, we accepted the fact that we weren’t going anywhere else that night, changed into our pj’s, and went back to bed. On the plus side, since we had a full night’s rest, we were able to get up and moving decently early the next morning. Our first stop was to one of our new favorite stores, Primark, at one of the malls in Madrid. We did a little shopping before heading back into the center of the city. We wandered through the Plaza del Sol and walked down to the Mercado de San Miguel. The market was ginormous and offered so many different varieties of tapas, fruits, nuts, sweets, and drinks, among many others. After we wandered through the market, we decided it was time for some lunch, so we continued down the street to eat at the Restaurante Sobrino de Botín, the oldest restaurant in the world! We walked in to get a table and eat before heading back to Sevilla, but we were heartbroken when they told us it would be at least a half hour wait, and we knew we would never make our train in an hour and a half if we stayed. Completely disappointed, we eventually found another restaurant that didn’t look nearly as good, and grabbed some lunch before heading south. It was one of the best weeks of my life, but I was happy to be heading back to get some rest after a very tiring week of travels. Plus, we were going to be able to see the end of Feria, which I will blog about next! :)