Normandy

More traveling!  I went to Normandy for the weekend, a region in France which would be any french student's dream come true to visit. It was definitely one of my favorite weekends yet!!!! This was a trip I signed up for with my program, so there were about 40 of us traveling together. There were only 7 of us from the Wisconsin program, and the others were students also in the ACCENT program just from other states.

What was coolest about the weekend was that we saw so many places, we stayed in one city, but then traveled to 4 other cities to explore. On Friday we left Paris bright and early and drove 5 hours to Mont Saint Michel!!!! Mont St Michel is something all french students learn about in school because it's such a famous monument in France. It's a huge medieval castle basically on an island.

amazing

One of the coolest parts of Mont St. Michel (and all of Normandy) were the tides!!! At Mont St Michel specifically, the tides come in and out every 6 hours. When we arrived the castle was surrounded by sand, and when we left it was covered in water like in the picture. 

before the tide

That night we arrived at our stunning hotel in the city of Saint-Malo, France, about an hour from Mont St Michel. Saint-Malo, home to a seaport, is surrounded by water also and adorable and quaint. Full of narrow roads and cobblestone streets. Another great part of Saint-Malo is the wall. There's basically a mini great wall of china surrounding the city, which was built during the 100 Years War and is the only "original" part of Saint-Malo, the rest was destroyed during the war. You could walk on the wall, around the whole city in probably 30 minutes.

wall on left, city on right

view from on top the wall!

another view

this was the busiest part of the city; also where our hotel was

Friday night we were released to do our own exploring, after being given tons of suggestions of where to go and eat. Since we were right on the Atlantic Ocean, everything was seafood of course. I went out to dinner with the other Wisconsinites and half of us ordered mussels  ( not me ). After dinner we hung out at the bar on the first floor of our hotel, trying the spiked apple cider that Saint-Malo is famous for!

Saturday morning we had a brief walking tour of Saint-Malo and we caught all the beautiful ocean views. Afterward, we took our tour bus about an hour to another adorable city called Dinan for the day! We had a brief group tour then were given a couple hours for lunch and exploration. This was one of my favorite parts because this city was also very charming and along a river.

aw! 

just soaking up the sun and the cuteness

For lunch, we were instructed to try une gallette, an unsweetened crepe and of more substance than a crepe with nutella or something. We chose a restaurant right along the river and dove in (to the gallettes, not the river).

Yum! After lunch we did more exploring. 

When we returned to Saint-Malo, it was about 3:30 PM and we had the rest of our day to explore! We went to the beach! Like Saint Michel, we got to experience the tides at Saint-Malo, the beach was massive because the tide hadn't come in yet, but at around 5:30 PM we were told the beach would be closing since all the water was approaching. Before the tide came, all these huuuuge rocks were visible, and you could walk to this little castle house thingy, but after the tide came the pathway to the castle was covered. So before we climbed all over the rocks and had a really great time! 

view of Saint-Malo from little castle…where the sand is gets completely covered by water!

cool rocks

Later that night we went out for pizza and then walked along the wall and the beach. Then stopped along to ocean to take in the sounds of the waves. Here's a pic of the gang!

The next day was basically why I signed up for this whole trip: the Normandy landing beaches. Saturday night was finally when we had to set our clocks ahead and then we had to meet up for breakfast at 7:00, so really 6:00..   everyone looked pretty rough that morning. We drove two hours to Omaha Beach, which is also where the American military cemetery and memorial are. Apparently, some of the Normandy beaches still have small canyons from bombings and trenches, but the beaches we saw looked like normal beaches. Very peaceful. The land around the beach, which was covered in grass, was, however, super rough and canyon-like. 

What came next was completely unreal. I had mentally prepared for a moving and emotional visit, but I didn't expect how heavy and strong the power of the sights would take over me when I saw the cemetery and memorial. Seeing over 9,000 graves of the young americans who died. Especially when the dates on the graves are mostly all within the same week. Something interesting that I didn't know prior to the visit was that this land is considered U.S. soil. There are American flags and "United States of America" engraved on the walls. 

This last picture is part of a wall listing all the names of soldiers who were never found. Between this wall and the gravestones in the cemetery, a couple people in my group saw their last names. I can't even imagine what that felt like for them. It was crazy to me to even see "Wisconsin" next to someone's name. After Omaha beach, we made our way to another beach part of the Normandy beaches in Arromanches, France. Another normal-looking beach, but there are still pieces in the water from a man-made bay created around 1940. We had an hour here for lunch then we were on our way back to Paris. 

On a happier note, this weekend was amazing!! I love the little cities of France just as much as I love Paris and I can't wait to see more of it! 

random updates

We just had midterms and spring break isn't for a month! My mind is so full of planning European excursions… as of right now I'll be in Italy for a few days and then my mom is coming to Paris for 10 days!!!!!!!!!!! :) Being this far away for this long has really made me appreciative of family and friends at home. I LOVE ALL OF YOU WHO READ THIS THANK YOU FOR BEING YOU! <3

It's really freaking me out that this whole thing is halfway over already :( I can't imagine going back to reality and being stressed out all the time with real college. So scary! I've already been looking into many ways I'll be able to come back, I learned from the UWM professor that's with us in Paris that UWM offers 1 or 2 year-long programs to come to France and teach English. It's not considered studying abroad because most students do it after they graduate. We also had a "mixer" with UW-Madison alumni who now work and live in France. Although it wasn't at all what I expected, we were told it'd be lots of people with dinner and it just sounded really great and dinner-party ish. In reality, we were in a conference room where an overly enthusiastic lady acting like we were 12 years old introduced us to 4 UW-Madison alumni and they talked about their lives. Okay, it was actually really interesting, I was just pretty disappointed we didn't get food. But what they had to say was soooo good to know. Unfortunately, it didn't seem very helpful to me, because none of them had the goal of ending up in France like I do! They just kinda ended up here with good luck in their careers. One man who's been here 10 years is a medical writer and his summary of being here was "living here is awesome, working here sucks." He repeatedly said that France is not the U.S., don't expect it to be the U.S. He further explained by saying people here aren't motivated like Americans are, they don't work as hard as americans do, they don't know or care about their job like Americans, and businesses are very slow and unorganized. I've been learning so much and realizing how much the U.S. runs everything. We are the Walmart of the world. It's one thing to learn about the U.S. being the most developed country and whatnot in school, but it's another thing to see it in real life. Half the time I'm very proud, but mostly I hope we don't come off as cocky as we sound.

Fun story for you about more ways people try to get money from you on the street. I was sitting on the metro, minding my own business when two 25ish-year-old guys get onto the metro with a karaoke system. They start singing sarcastically and dancing very dirty, using the poles in the metro car and all. My friend then points out to me that their pants have Velcro down the sides…. Yup they went there. Within seconds they're doing a striptease to the music. They were being so goofy and sarcastic I was laughing soooo hard, everybody was. Then they casually walked around the metro car in their underwear holding out a cup for money. 

In one of my classes where we always have field trips, we just went to Le Palais de Justice where all the court cases are heard. Lawyers wear black graduation gown type thing during court. We sat in on about 4 different hearings for a few minutes each. Then afterward my teacher explained what they were talking about since this was a whole new set of vocabulary I know nothing about and could barely understand. It was fascinating. 

As far as real-life goes, not everything is glitz and glamour for me. I had a little hair dye party in one of my friend's apartments with a couple friends who also wanted to update their roots. We bought cheap box dye and got to work! It was so fun. If only I could afford to have my hair done at a glamorous Paris salon. Another "real life" thing I'm still doing is NETFLIX. Well unfortunately Netflix doesn't work but trust me, I've found other ways to watch shows. I've already watched all eight Harry Potter movies, two show series and I just started my third. So there's that. I'm still normal. 

Fun fact about my new European knowledge: I'm a master at military time and I'm starting to understand the metric system! 

I'm still in Paris

I haven't said much about Paris in a while because I've been traveling so much! Trust me it's still ah-mazing. The initial "omg I'm in Paris" thing has worn off. I almost wish it was still like OMG LOOK AT THAT OMG LOOK AT THIS! WOW OMG! But at the same time, it's a relief that I adjusted well and still love everything! I'm very busy with school..exams and papers and such (I have to remind myself I'm here to go to school..). It's weird to see everyone at home on spring break and I only just started school a month ago. 

The Jardin du Luxembourg is right by my University, and I've been there about 3 or 4 times in the past week or so to study/have a picnic/do homework. It's perfect. 

This picture doesn't exactly capture the mood because you can't see the millions of people who are actually here. There are groups of people every 5 feet trying to soak up some sun on their lunch break. It has been so packed every time I've come. And I love coming here because it's one of the few times I've seen Parisians forget their "class," and by that I mean they're all lounging around, taking off their sweaters and scarves, pulling up the bottom of their pants to expose pale legs, laying down on benches, sleeping, eating, laughing, being LOUD for once. It's so interesting. Who would have thought Parisians are actually just like you and me?? 

This was my first weekend in Paris in a while and it was sooooooo nice, I forgot how crazy the weekend get here. Tourists everywhere. There's nowhere better to people watch than the streets of Paris. The other day I was waiting for my friend outside of a store, probably only 5 minutes by myself, and 3 groups of tourists with maps and hats and sunglasses asked me for directions. Love it. 

I'm not sure if you remember me talking about Galaries-Lafayette, but it's a department store filled with designer brands that I wish I could actually shop at. But a few weeks ago my friends and I signed up to go to one of their fashion shows! So we went to it on Friday, and it was pretty cool if you think wearing socks with sandals or mixing cheetah print and camouflage looks good. Everyone in the audience was so obviously tourists as well; taking selfies in front of the runway and whatnot. Another really strange thing about it was at the end when they had all the models come out in their last outfit, they played a line spoken by Obama to a techno beat. He was saying something about accepting all races and backgrounds, and they just played it over and over while the models stood their to our applause… 

After the fashion show we kinda just wandered around, and the fun thing about wandering in Paris is that you always find something awesome. Like the Moulin Rouge..

 

The last time I saw the Moulin Rouge was my first day in Paris, so being jet-lagged and zombie-like I couldn't exactly appreciate the significance at the time. Again, tourist-central. My friend and I were trying to take pictures and we were asked by probably 5 groups to take theirs. 

Random things:

I went out to dinner on Friday night to an Italian restaurant and paid 20 euros (~$27) for wine, pasta, and tiramisu. This is an awesome and rare price for restaurants here! It was delicious, and a nice treat because I hadn't been to a restaurant in Paris in a couple weeks! I was feeling great about it until the next day when I did some grocery shopping, got enough for about two weeks, and that cost also 20 euros…. merp. 

Another weird flavor I found…tastes just like a McDonald's cheeseburger. Yum? 

I can't believe I haven't talked about dogs yet! Paris is so dog friendly and you'll see them everywhere. I mean everywhere. They're welcome inside, outside, and anywhere public. There are always dogs on the metro. I've even seen a couple people holding cats, maybe going to the vet? Gotta get there somehow. This dog in the picture was inside H&M. Also, dogs in Paris tend to be "purse dogs" and I think this is because Paris is so condensed and there's not much room for exercising a big dog. But what was interesting was that in Madrid, we saw tons of big dogs, probably because they have more space! 

Amsterdam

I've been in three different countries in the past week; I'm exhausted.

I took a bus with a friend for a short weekend trip to Amsterdam. A fun surprise was that we drove through Belgium and stopped in Brussels!
My friend has some friends in Amsterdam, and other friends of hers were also visiting Amsterdam from Germany, so there was this whole group who knew each other and then me (I played it cool, guys). It was really nice because instead of wandering around the city, they were able to show us some cool things and hang out. On Friday night, one of them hosted the whole group at his apartment for a little dinner party and it was so fun! He made homemade garlic bread and homemade pizzas.

In the two days we were there, we walked about 10 million miles (like usual) and saw about 3,000 rivers,. the saying that Amsterdam is the Venice of northern Europe is correct because every single block is a new river. 

  my favorite picture that I took!

 We also saw about 50,000 bikes, (my friend's friend told us before we arrived that he'd lend us a bike so it'd be easy to get around..we laughed, not getting why he'd lend us a bike..but then we soon figured it out upon arrival) literally everyone in Amsterdam BIKES EVERYWHERE. There are bike lanes and sidewalks, it's really intense. Bike racks hold like 100 bikes, and the bikers are super aggressive. They will honk at you if you get in their way. I only saw about 10 cars. I was even asked twice if I wanted to buy a bike. 

We went to the Anne Frank house. I feel stupid because I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the house.  Unfortunately, you weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so maybe that's why I didn't take one outside either. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect of it, but I definitely wasn't expecting what it was. They had built a new building around the entire house, and on the inside of the house is no furniture at all. They kept it empty to give the lasting impression of houses being raided during WWII, which is effective because I could feel the emptiness and loss that the family experienced just by being in the empty rooms. They had some original objects like the walls in Anne Frank's room still had her posters and pictures hanging up. The whole thing was very a moving and emotional experience, I'm really glad I got to go there, even after waiting almost 2 hours to get in. We wanted to go to the Van Gogh museum but that was another 2 hour wait :(

part of the line to get in 

On a way different, note.. my friend's friends walked us through the Red Light District. I didn't really know what this was before being in Amsterdam so it was shocking, to say the least. The red light district is a concentrated area of legal prostitution, strip clubs, etc. Apparently, there are Red Light Districts in lots of capital cities in Europe, who knew. Her friends were shocked that we had never seen prostitutes before, so there's another huge difference between European vs. American laws..Hah. It didn't seem real.

It's kinda pretty in a weird way

This area of town was definitely the central area for nightlife. I couldn't take one step without someone running into me and mumbling "excuse me" in random languages. So walking by a million bars, LOOK WHAT I FOUND

Cafe Wiener. no big deal

I heard a huge variety of languages in Amsterdam, more than in Paris. Mostly Dutch obviously, which is not cute at all. I missed french :( After Dutch, there was a lot of German. That was hilarious because I've never heard anyone speak german other than my family, so it suddenly was like real-life german. 

And also, like every other place I've been to so far, everyone speaks English. At this point, I'm just becoming amazed by how many people speak English fluently. It also makes me feel like I'm missing out on something. All these people probably learn English from when they're little, why don't Americans learn a second language as if they need it to survive in life? It makes me wish I could have started french at a younger age so it would come easier to me, as English probably does to Europeans.

 

My favorite part of Amsterdam was definitely the intricate architecture.

 

An observation is that all the dutch people looked very "northern;" big beards, big coats, heavy accent. I imagine this is how southern states view us midwesterners. Other than the cold and windy weather to remind me it's still winter, it was another fantastic weekend abroad! After two weekends of traveling though, I'm pretty excited to be able to stay in Paris this coming weekend and soak up the sun next to the Eiffel tower :)

One last thing… I finally found Dr. Pepper! Only at the train station though, nowhere else in the city. This is the only time I've seen it since I've been abroad; thank you Amsterdam!

Madrid

Warning: this blog post contains an overload of photos.

If you couldn't tell from the title, I went to Madrid!!! Arrived Thursday night, and left Sunday night; 

definitely not long enough :( In three short days I fell in love with Spanish culture, Spanish people, and Spanish food. I knew pretty much nothing about Madrid prior to this weekend, but I went here because one of the friends I went with had friends that live there that we visited, so that was really cool. Thursday night we get into the airport, took the metro into town (it was exactly like the Paris metro, so we felt like experts already) and then found our perfect hostel. 

our room with four beds for the four of us; it was so comforting to have our own room!!

The hostel could not have been better. They (thank god) spoke English and were so welcoming. The hostel provided activities almost every night for the people staying there. They also had free breakfast, free sangria and free paella one night, which is a spanish dinner dish I tried multiple times this weekend YUM.

This is the street our hostel was on; quaint and cute

We got into the hostel around 11:00 pm, super excited after having just walked a little bit on the streets of Spain, so of course we decided to go explore. Prior to the weekend, we had heard from people that there would be bar/club promoters everywhere offering you free drinks/free entrance so they fill up their bar..well we definitely didn't anticipate for them to be EVERYWHERE. The second we stepped onto a somewhat busy street, there were Spanish guys shouting at us, "chicas! chicas!" and then mumbling something super fast in spanish and handing us coupons to their club. We said "no hablo espanol" about 1000 times in 10 minutes because that's how many people were shouting "chicas!" at us american girls walking down the street. It was hilarious, I couldn't stop laughing because all I was hearing was "chicas! chicas! and then couldn't understand anything else they were saying. A few of them spoke english and one pointed out a bar right down the street after we asked where we can get cheap food. Well we get there, sit down, look at the menu, and realize we are at 100 Montaditos, a chain Tapas bar in Madrid that we had found in our research and was a place we definitely wanted to go! How ironic. 

This place was awesome. And after the bartender did this cool trick with the drinks, we figured we'd like it here. All drinks that were this size were only 1,50 euros ($2) and all food was also 1,50 euros. Tapas bars are on every corner in Madrid; they are bars where when you order a drink, you also get a plate of food. Here, at 100 Montaditos, you paid for the tapas and chose what you wanted, but at other ones we went to, the drinks were a tiny bit more expensive, like four bucks, and then you'd get free tapas. The menu here had about 100 options (makes sense since the name) and we got a couple little sandwiches and nachos. Very small, but it's meant to be a snack with your drink. However, after a while, a table of about 12 Americans sat next to us and soon realized we were speaking English and we got to talking. They had just gone to dinner and then came for drinks, ordered a ton of tapas, and realized they were too full. So they gave us two full plates of food. That was amazing. So we basically got dinner that night for 10 bucks total for 3 of us. :)

Side note: luckily the bartender here spoke English so he could explain how the place worked to us. But sometimes the spanish people didn't speak english at all so we couldn't communicate. But a couple of times we said we speak french too, and then we'd talk in french with people who didn't speak english, and that was seriously awesome. Being around spanish speakers was exciting for me because I'm somewhat familiar with the very basics of spanish, so I tried out the whole "Que pasa?" and when someone asked if I speak spanish I said "mas o menos" (more or less) and they got a huge kick out of it and said that's very advanced haha go me. 

random beautiful building we passed

Ok. Friday. First day in Madrid!! We didn't exactly have a plan for the day, we kind of just wandered and found things we should do and it worked out perfectly. I have a lot of pictures of buildings that are incredible but I have no idea what they are.

Starbucks right next to TGI Fridays… almost thought I was in the states

Gran Vía, a street known as the Times Square of Madrid. Madrid definitely has the "big city" feel so basically I loved it

 Our hostel was right in the center of Madrid, a five-minute walk from Plaza del Sol which is a very popular, and touristy plaza in central Madrid. This was awesome because we could walk everywhere and it didn't take long

There were street performers and people in costumes like this every 50 feet 

Okay finally to one of the best parts: Mercado de San Miguel…an indoor market (it was on the travel channel)! We came here for lunch on Friday and it could not have been a better decision. Here we tried our first Sangria, fried chorizo, empanadas, fried peanuts, and I can't even remember what else because we ate so much. The place was jam packed. 

what is this. ew.

biggest strawberries I've ever seen, they were delicious

Empanadas, 5 of them were like 5 euros or something awesomely cheap

After lunch was more wandering and exploring to see random unknown places. I'm sure being here would be any spanish student's dream, just like me seeing Paris and knowing what every single road and building is called. I felt bad not knowing what we were even seeing :(

Buildings were colorful and fantastic

random park we hung out in, soaking up the 70-degree weather

candids sometimes turn out well :) Here we are just chilling, exhausted after walking 5 hours straight. The people watching in this park was pretty amazing. Madrid, like Paris, is a very dog friendly area so as girls we were just ogling over all the cute dogs in the park. 

As I said before, street performers were EVERYWHERE and obviously, these were the best ones. Another great thing about Madrid was the spanish music was played literally everywhere as well. We rarely heard American music, so that was sooooooo fun to hear spanish music. Lots of dancing and happy people.

Friday night was when we met up with my friends Spanish friend. The four of us girls, him and his girlfriend and another of his friends went for food, a beer and to a club. When in Rome, right? It was so fun! and also super interesting, us american girls asked them a thousand questions about spanish and madrid in general.

perfect opportunity for us girls to let out our excitement with some dancing at this concert-like atmosphere

Lunch on Saturday! Paella!! I didn't know what paella was before but my friends were so excited for it, I knew it must be awesome and they were right. The one on the left is a vegetarian paella and the one on the right is a mexican paella so it had various types of sausage. It was delicious. 

This was our first time eating at a restaurant and our waiter didn't speak english so it was super fun. We sat outside and soaked up the sun. Sitting next to us was a couple speaking English but with heavy accents, after a while they asked where we were from and then we ended up talking basically our entire lunch! They were awesome. The man was from Scotland, and his girlfriend was from London. They were so friendly, and when they found out one of my friends is going to be in London for part of spring break, they exchanged information so they could show her around! We also talked a lot about what to do in Madrid, and what they thought of the U.S. which was HILARIOUS. This became a fun theme for my friends and I in Madrid, We asked everyone we met from other countries what they knew about the United States. 

Ok quick break to tell you all the hilarious things people said about the United States..

How the world views the U.S.: 

1)  At the hostel we met a group of guys from Denmark. About 8 of them are between ages 16-28. What they said:

-"America has a lot of weapons"

-"Grand Theft Auto"

-"the Seahawks won the Super Bowl"

-"prisons are terrible"

like WHAT! This is not at all what I expected to hear. Grand Theft Auto?? Do they know the video game or do they think we actually do that? they probably thought we were carrying guns in our purses or something. I was laughing so hard

2) Random guys on the street asked where were from, we responded "united states" and all they said was "I like the Broncos" 

3)  "I like the Milwaukee bucks"  

4) The friend of my friend who lives in Madrid, he was a camp counselor in Michigan and he loves the United States, something he said he really loved was Walmart. I thought that was awesome 

5) Another person thought Wisconsin was in the middle of the United States and it was very hot there..

6) The couple I was just telling you about that we sat by at lunch… the man from Scotland said he worked for an american company and was always traveling there. what he said:

-"well the thing about Americans is that you guys work really hard, but you play harder. You really know how to party." (something funny I found was that he said "you guys" just as much as I do) 

-"are you guys in sororities at your university? are they just like the ones in American Pie?" 

- "americans are so friendly"

Figured I should end on a positive response. But that's all I can remember right now, and probably one of my favorite things of the weekend was just hearing what people thought about americans.  But anyway back to Spain.. 

We went in this very famous chocolate shop which is famous for churros with chocolate. It had tons of photos on the wall of celebrities that had visited this shop. So obviously we tried the churros! I've never even had churros in my life, so it's pretty terrific that my first ones were in Spain. The chocolate with it was a very creamy, warm, hot chocolate tasting, delicious treat. 

:) 

Spotted a group of about 15 Luigi's on the street

all small roads were this cute

This is what 70 degrees looks like.. most restaurants offered outdoor seating!

Speaking of 70 degrees.. 70 degrees in Wisconsin = summer. 70 degrees in Spain = winter. Coats and scarves were worn by every spanish person. Maybe their weather app that morning didn't say the same thing as mine…but literally every person was staring SO HARD at my friends and I because we didn't have coats on and we all had bare legs and flats or sandals. We definitely looked like we didn't belong. And it's not like they were just wearing a light jacket, they had parkas on. I'd like to see what they wear in Wisconsin winter. 

Saturday afternoon we went to Parque del Retiro, which was the biggest, most beautiful park I have ever seen in my life. There were a million people there.. tons of people were having a picnic, lots were running and most were just hanging out doing nothing. There was a huge pond in the middle of the park where you could rent rowboats, and around the pond were tons of vendors selling little trinkets and jewelry. The park also had little snack shops (we saw about 5 in the couple hours we were there, that's how big the park was).

so many trails, it'd be hard not to get lost

saw about 5,000 fountains

this was the pond, if you can even call it a pond, more like a small lake. We sat on the stairs where you can see all the people in the picture for a couple of hours..I got tan :) 

Happy tourists :)

Look how many people are here

 After the park we were exhausted, and that's an understatement. We were zombies. But we had planned on going to a famous art museum, Museo del Prado that afternoon because it was free from 6-8. Apparently, lots of people knew it was free at that time because the line was about a mile long. But we made it!

It's hard to tell what this picture is above, but it was sooooo bizarre. The one word I could think of to describe it was trippy. Lots of animals/people combined into one body. So this museum was pretty interesting.

Other than the bizarre pictures, everything else was just really creepy in a cool way

Unfortunately, we were too zombie-like to actually enjoy the museum and we only stayed about an hour. But that night, after regaining energy with a quick nap and shower, we had big plans to go to a Flamenco bar for dinner and a show; spanish music accompanied by singing and dancing. A better description of flamenco dancing would be the emoji on your iPhone of the girl in the red dress with her arms in the air.. I know you know what I'm talking about. We had found so many that looked awesome. Some were super expensive like $70 for dinner and the show. But a friend had recommended this specific place that was only 10 euros to get in to watch the dancers. Online it said they were open from 10 pm - 6 am, so we kinda thought we could go to these flamenco places whenever we wanted. Well we got to the place we heard about and there was a live band singing Route 66…were we in the right place? Yes. Was there flamenco? No. :( Apparently, it was only Sunday nights at that place. We explained our situation to the bouncer and they gave us our money back!! They were so friendly and nice about it and gave us two other flamenco bars to try. At this point it was about midnight and when we looked both of those up and they both said closed online. It seems we missed it. The shows seemed to start around 8:00-10. We were soooo disappointed. All day we were looking forward to seeing them dance and hopefully learning how! This is what sucks about only visiting for the weekend, there's no room to make mistakes but we had no idea how these places worked. 

Something that was positive about the night was El Tigre, another famous tapas bar we had heard/read about. We went there and ordered sangria for all of us and were handed a cup that was half a liter!! it was HUGE. Then handed three plates of tapas. The sangria was 6 euros each. The plates of food included spicy potatoes, fried cheese, garlic bread with various types of meat on it. Everything was delicious. And once we finished our first three plates of food, they brought us 3 more. So dinner that night and sangria were only about 8 bucks for me. This was super cool because we could try all the sausage, ham, and pork that Madrid is famous for. Another crazy thing.. we were just hanging out, stuffing our faces when the people next to us asked where we were from because it was obvious both of our groups were speaking english so we're destined to talk. We were both from the U.S., then some of them were from Wisconsin. Then my three friends said they go to UW-Madison, and the other people were like "no way so do we" like seriously? What a small world. They were all studying abroad as well. We meet sooooo many study abroad students everywhere, it doesn't even seem weird to me anymore. Half the people I meet seem to be students from the U.S.

Here is what we had, already half eaten 

Sunday was our last day. :( We only had a couple hours of exploring before we had to go to the airport. In a few short hours we saw Las Ventas, a bullfighting stadium, which was beautiful. Unfortunately, it was 10 euros just to walk inside, so we admired it from outside.

We also went to the last remaining Egyptian temple in Europe which was really awesome and beautiful. Unfortunately here as well you and to pay to go inside. Since we're college students on a budget and time restraint, we took pictures and left. It was also on a hill, so it gave us a chance to see a great view of Madrid. 

Finally, we had to head to the airport and return home. After a quick lunch we left Madrid. :( 

my favorite picture from the weekend..notice the snow on the mountains in the background

Overall, this weekend was incredible. I wasn't expecting Spain to have as much of an effect on me as France does because I know nothing about it, but it did. I could see myself staying in Spain just as much as I could in France. It was BEAUTIFUL. The people were so friendly and happy (that's the one thing I liked better than Paris), the food was some of the best food I've eaten and the spanish music just completed my life. I loved every second. I'm really hoping I'll have a chance to see more of it someday! Similar to when I left Lyon, I was still happy to go home to Paris. Madrid was certainly more of a "big city" and way way more laid back, but Paris = classy and sassy, and that's what I love most <3