Pit Stop Madrid

After Seville we took a train into Madrid. We were only here that afternoon and evening so very few photos but some of the best stories are from here! We started off starving and went to Mercado de San Miguel in a beautiful glass walled warehouse space with stalls and stalls of tapas. They had every kind of tapa you can think of and we tried a hefty amount of them while sipping on sangria and vermouth.

The Puerto de Sol plaza was full of larger white males all in blue jerseys and we thought wow they can't be Spanish. We come to find out Real Madrid is playing Schalke a German team that night in Madrid. The whole city was teeming with people in jerseys. So that evening we met some Australian guys in our hostel and went out to a fabulous tapas dinner with them, the ones where you order a drink and get a free tapa- excellent! Then we all headed to an Irish pub to watch the game and yell at two teams we didn't know anything about. The game even had 7 goals and 50/50 possession so it was a really excellent exciting game. Then we had some wine out of a real leather skin and walked back toward the hostel.

But, as we were walking I heard my name. Coming down an intersecting street was a man I played soccer with in Cincinnati starting my freshman year in college! He was visiting family in Palestine and was over with a friend to watch some soccer matches in Europe. This guy was always so nice to me and actually passed me the ball, big deal for the only girl playing. It was really amazing to get to run into him (in another country nuts!) and catch up! He was always someone I admired so it was fun to get to introduce Joshua to him.

But for Madrid that was about it. Not too much sightseeing but a lot of culture packed into 3/4 of a day. Next morning we walked to the train station, which was adorable and had turtles. We watched the turtles for awhile but I became to distressed because some kept falling onto their backs and waiting for them to flip back over was stressing me out :) Joshua rolled his eyes at me :)

Next up our longest stay in a city the whole trip- Barcelona!