*English begins in fourth paragraph*<\/p>\n
Estaba tan cansada despu\u00e9s del vuelo y lo que sucedi\u00f3 con mi equipaje que, por un momento, me olvide mi espa\u00f1ol casi completamente. Cuando llegue al hostel donde me quedar\u00eda por dos d\u00edas en Madrid, la recepcionista me pregunto para mi reservaci\u00f3n. Yo, pensaba que ella estaba ofreci\u00e9ndome una cerveza, dije ‘No gracias, a mi no me gusta alcohol.\u2019 …Soy una genia.<\/p>\n
Pero despu\u00e9s mi suerte cambio dr\u00e1sticamente, porque en eso momento mi amiga Mary llego. Ella no hab\u00eda tenido un problema con el equipaje como yo, pero yo hab\u00eda tomado una taxi y ella hab\u00eda tomado el bus entonces yo hab\u00eda llegado antes de ella. Despu\u00e9s de saludarnos, Mary, mi papa, y yo, fuimos a ver la ciudad y a almorzar.<\/p>\n
Madrid me recuerda <\/b>de una mezcla entre Nueva York y Grecia. Hay los anuncios cubriendo las ventanas de las cuadras mas grandes como NY, pero tambi\u00e9n tiene la arquitectura vieja y elegante como en Grecia. Es una mezcla perfecta entre lo viejo y lo nuevo. Solo era un jueves pero La Plaza del Sol ya estaba muy repleta. Vi todos los tipos de personas en la calle; turistas como yo, empresarios caminando con prisa, ancianas sonriendo, ni\u00f1os gritando con risas, pobres pidiendo dinero, todo.<\/p>\n
The last couple of days have been a blur. I am currently sitting in my new bedroom in Oviedo, trying not to give in to the call of the bed behind me (I must finish blogging!). For those who couldn\u2019t read the above paragraphs, I\u2019ll give you the run down. I was pretty tired after the flight and mix-up with my baggage so my Spanish was not at its prime. When I got to the hostel where we would be staying for two days in Madrid, the receptionist asked me for my reservation. Unfortunately, the Spanish word for reservation is \u2018reservaci\u00f3n\u2019 and the Spanish word for a beer is \u2018cerveza\u2019. In my befuddled state those two words sounded exactly the same, so when I was asked for my reservation, I responded with \u2018No thank you, I don\u2019t like alcohol.\u2019 Yeah, I\u2019m off to a great start\u2026<\/p>\n
Madrid itself is quite beautiful. It reminds me of a mix between New York and Athens, Greece. There are advertisements all over the biggest squares just like New York, but among the modern day structures there are many buildings with beautiful Greek-like architecture that invoke feelings of ancientness and solemnity. Walking among Madrid, you feel the bustle of modern-day city life but also the insignificance of all of it compared to the ancient structures and civilizations of the past. Madrid is the perfect mix of the old and the new.<\/p>\n
Although it was only a Thursday, the Plaza del Sol (which happened to be right outside my hostel) was already quite crowded. I was quite surprised by the level of diversity I saw. There were people from all over the world and from every walk of life; tourists like myself, businessmen and women talking loudly on their phones, old ladies smiling at passersby, young kids shouting with laughter and homeless sitting in darkened doorways. During the day, there was a feeling of busyness and a little chaos but during the night, things slowed down and almost everyone outside was dressed up and smiling.<\/p>\n
The food situation in Madrid is quite interesting. The first restaurant we ate in was right off of the Plaza del Sol. The food from this particular restaurant was, in all honesty, quite disappointing. The pile of the sandwiches on display were made with a white, wonder-like bread that had no crusts and looked so processed that the pile looked like a cake with different layers of frosting. Later in the day, however, we found a Greek restaurant that was quite delicious and fairly priced (we got free chicken too, although I claim it was because our waiter was hitting on Mary). For dinner, we found another restaurant and had the chef\u2019s choice of turkey with cheese sauce, which was quite good. The first after-dinner ice-cream was so delicious that Dad decided to get more at another place, but the second was so disappointing that he threw it away after a couple of bites. Thus, the food situation in Madrid is a mixed bag. Here\u2019s some of my observations: most of the food near really touristy areas is very expensive and not that good (definitely explore!), coffee here is actually more of an espresso with milk, and water isn\u2019t a given drink during the meal so you must ask for it.<\/p>\n
So there you have it! I hope y\u2019all enjoyed reading and found the tips helpful. I gotta go now and figure out how to walk from my host mom\u2019s house to the University tomorrow so I\u2019m not late for class. Also, I just wanted to let everyone know that my suitcase was found and returned to me so I finally have a change of clothes! https:\/\/aguafiestasblog.com\/2017\/09\/03\/la-belleza-de-espana\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
*English begins in fourth paragraph* Estaba tan cansada despu\u00e9s del vuelo y lo que sucedi\u00f3 con mi equipaje que, por un momento, me olvide mi espa\u00f1ol casi completamente. Cuando llegue al hostel donde me quedar\u00eda por dos d\u00edas en Madrid, la recepcionista me pregunto para mi reservaci\u00f3n. Yo, pensaba que ella estaba ofreci\u00e9ndome una cerveza,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":496,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oviedo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/496"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14785,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions\/14785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}