madrid, day one

The first stop on our whirlwind trip was madrid. We arrived at the madrid airport around nine am and left the madrid airport to go to our hotel around 12pm. I'm pretty sure it takes a certain personality and lack of spanish speaking ability to spend three hours in the airport of your destination but at least we had fun.

Our goal was to actually leave the airport once we landed, like normal people would but after going around in circles we decided to take a break from attempting to find the exit. It just wasn't going to happen and we were hunger so I convinced dorene to have breakfast with me at mcdonalds. I had never gotten a mcdonalds breakfast sandwich before and I guess for some reason I felt like having my first one in the madrid airport mcdonalds would be ideal.

After our sandwiches and coffee "con leche" (thank god dorene knows random spanish words because I was too busy asking the lady for a cafe au lait) we stopped by the zara in the airport. There we realized that zara actually was cheaper in spain and set off on a mini shopping spree. Soon we noticed that dragging all our luggage around while attempting to try on shoes just wasn't working so we decided to actual find the exit this time so that we could shop at cheaper zaras sans our carry ons. After consulting the airport map for a fourth time and using the process of elmination we finally found the airport exit, talked to the tourist information, bought our two day madrid metro pass and were on our way to our hotel. I took advantage of being a tourist and took a picture of us while in the metro to commemorate the fact that we made it out of the airport.

Once we got to our hotel we set off to our first must see or I guess in this case must eat tourist spot, a cafe that serves churros with melted chocolate to dip the churros in. Both my cousin sima who went to madrid earlier this year and dorene's friend jackie who studied in madrid told us about the same churro place so we knew we needed to try these churros.

We each ordered our own because I love churros and anyone who loves churros knows that the concept of sharing churros just doesn't make sense. They looked delicious but sadly they weren't as amazing as I thought they would be. The chocolate was too bitter for me and the churros really needed sugar and mmm cinnamon. I love cinnamon. The best part of the whole churro experience was this twisted churro we found.

I made dorene break it off with me like it was a wishbone and then she noticed that the two pieces when flipped over made a heart. How cute is that?! 

Once we were done eating and taking pictures dorene wanted to take a picture of the actual cafe we went to in order to show her future kids. (She likes to talk about her kids a lot when traveling, I just go with it.) So in the picture I made sure to put a thumbs down so that her children know "auntie roxanne" (a name dorene has already assigned) wasn't the biggest fan.

After feeling oily and craving milk we started wandering around the churro place. We saw something called a ham museum where I saw my first set of hanging pig thighs. The place was packed because they were selling cheap ham sandwiches and beer but at the time dorene and I were still digesting the churros.

We also came upon this square filled with people dressed up as random fake disney characters who were selling balloons to little kids. I was really bothered by the fact that they were fake and weird looking and taking off their fake mickey heads in front of kids. Poor spainish kids. They need to go to disneyland paris! Disney really should hire me as their international lover. I get a little too excited when I see anything disney related overseas, like this poster for beauty and the beast in barcelona.

After semi running out of the scary sqaure we stumbled upon this old spanish castle. We started taking pictures from outside of the gate until we decided to go inside since it was only three euro, go student ids. Best three euros spent ever! 

The castle was beautiful inside. All the rooms were decorated differently and beautifully. We saw gorgeous chandliers and furniture. There was a room where the wallpaper was actual embroidery and another with a table that sat a good 60-80 people, I'm bad at estimating. Sadly photos weren't allowed in the castle, which killed me, but dorene convinced me that she could hid me and I attempted to take a few pictures all while having a mini heartattack.

We were allowed to take pictures outside so of course we did. I ended up buying a few postcards to be able to show my dad what it looked like on the inside. It really was my favorite castle yet, at least the inside was. As dorene and I said, it was a very home-y castle.

After our castle visit we walked around a bit more. Dorene's camera ran out of my battery so she went a little artistic crazy and took pictures of everything and made me pose in half of them.

For dinner we went to a paella place sima had told me about. We ordered a cava sangria which is made with white wine and champagne. Our waiter opened the bottle of champagne in front of us and filled the pitcher. Pretty much right after he left I felt the need to stir the sangria in order mix it up. Bad freaking idea. Apparently champagne bubbles up and spills all over when you mix it! Long story short, we wasted all our of napkins, a quarter of sangria and laughed/cried for a good ten minutes. The best part was our waiter wondering why our table was so wet when he brought the paella.

We ordered chicken paella even though seafood paella is the more authentic spainish dish but since I'm not a fan of eating shrimp that can stare back of me we got chicken.

Dorene offered to serve me first but I refused telling her I'm picky. She then took some from her side and I took some from mine. The entire time I kept complaining about how unbelievably salty the rice was and dorene kept telling me it was fine. Turns out my side was the beyond salt infested side while dorene's was perfect. Unfortunately we made this discovery once I had pretty much finished eating. Moral of the story, never mix sangria but always mix paella.