Orientation in Madrid

So I finally made it to Spain! Yesterday I landed in Madrid, after barely making my connection from JFK to Madrid, only to find that all of my luggage was left behind in New York. Thankfully my luggage arrived at the hotel today, which was perfect because I was starting to feel very smelly! Anyways...my orientation group is about 15 - 25 girls who are either studying in Santander, Salamanca, or Bilbao. From noon until 5:30 yesterday we had free time, so the girls who had all arrived and I all went out for lunch which was fun! I realized that I'm pretty good at understanding the drink menu, but that was about it... last night we took a bus tour of Madrid and three of my Bilbao roommates went out to dinner with my and we had fun eating paella and drinking sangria.

This morning we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel, and went to the Prado museum...it was fun and interesting to see all the pictures that I learned about in my spanish classes in real life! This afternoon we had free time and my roommate and I discovered that our favorite part of the hotel are the electronic shades in our room, which is definitely helping us recover from jet lag. Our group then went to Reina Sofia museum to see Picasso and Dali art, which was for sure more of my style of art. We were able to see the Guernika picture which was huge and amazing, and even more exciting because my group is visting Guernika next Friday.

The weather is a lot colder than I planned, but I'm still enjoying the people (or most of them) and being able to have a lot of free time to walk around and explore the city! Tomorrow we are going to Toledo for the day and Sunday we're finally heading to Bilbao!

written by

Laura Hanson on January 8, 2010 from Madrid, Spain

from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España

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