Friday, October 7

This morning I felt really refreshed, and Kristin and I packed up and headed downstairs for the breakfast buffet together. Everyone was thrilled by the variety and plentitude of food at breakfast, and we had fun eating together as a large group and preparing ourselves for the day. Around mid-morning, we all headed over to the cathedral for a tour led by our professors. I was feeling much better than yesterday, and the cathedral was incredibly impressive, so I thoroughly enjoyed that visit.

After all of the large group activities in Toledo were finished, Corinne, Danielle, Jenna, and I headed back to our hotel to pick up our things and make our way to the train station to catch our train to Madrid. We made a pit stop to pick up some mazapán, a little pastry made out of almonds that Toledo is famous for. We ended up munching on our stock of little pieces of mazapán for our whole weekend in Madrid.

We were a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find the train station in Toledo, but luckily we found some escalators on the way out of town that took us right down the hill towards the station, and on the way we ran into a very kind Spanish girl who offered to show us the way, as she was headed to the bus station right down the street from the train station. We had fun talking to her and easily found the train station with her help. When we arrived, we quickly made it through security and found our seats. We were impressed with how smoothly everything went and with how nice the Ave (high spped train) was.  We ate lunch (leftovers from what our Senoras packed us for the weekend) on the train, and within 30 minutes, we arrived in Madrid.

It took us forever to find the tourist center in the train station, but after about 4 sets of misleading directions we found it and were able to walk away with a map, but the people there would only let our group take exactly one…we’re in a crisis, you know ;) The train station in Madrid was just about a 10-minute walk from our hostel, which was pretty easy for us to find, and we were extremely happy with the place we stayed in. It was called Sol Hostel, and it was relatively cheap, very clean, spacious, and quiet, and easy to find. It was a little far away from city center, but it was in what seemed to be a safe part of town, and we didn’t have a single complaint during our whole time there.

This evening the Prado (Madrid’s most famous art museum) was open for free for a couple of hours, so we headed to that part of town after settling in at the hostel. We got there a little early, so we decided to check out the garden that was across the street from it. Unfortunately, the garden was pretty unimpressive, but we had fun taking pictures before getting in the massive line to get into the Prado. We looked at art together for a little while and then split up to go at our own paces. Danielle and I browsed for a bit and were pretty ready to go after the two hours of free admission were over. The other girls weren’t quite finished, so they decided to go back another time this weekend…Danielle and I will find something else to do during that time ;)

It was getting late after the museum, so we stopped at a café on our way back to the hostel for dinner. The food was alright, and we all enjoyed the brownie-like dessert. Unlike Sevilla, Madrid is getting cold this time of year, so we all froze on the way back to the hostel. I thoroughly enjoyed having a hot shower and some relaxing time with very little to do before happily going to sleep.