This past weekend, a group of us had the chance to go to Madrid, the capital of Spain! It was a lot of fun and very different from Barcelona. Even the metros looked completely different. While we were there, we went to the Prado Museum, Plaza Mayor, Retiro Park, the Glass Palace, and even toured the Royal Palace. The first night we went and ate delicious churros with chocolate at the San Grines Chocolateria. The next night we had the chance to eat at Sobrino de Botin, which was founded in 1925 and is the oldest restaurant in the entire world! Also over the weekend we decided to take a train ride from Madrid to Toledo which was only about a half-hour trip away. Toledo was beautiful! We hiked up to Mirador del Valle to witness exquisite views of the city before hiking back to the center of town where we enjoyed manchego cheese, for which Toledo is apparently known for.
When we arrived back to Barcelona from Madrid and Toledo, the next day we went on a group trip with the rest of our class to Girona and Tossa del Mar. We had tours at each place and then had free time to explore the towns and do some shopping. It was a really fun week. We got to see and experience a lot. It was also really exciting as I have never been to Europe before and really had not done much traveling, but here I was having adventures and exploring Europe with some friends.
One thing that I have known about myself, but I have learned is extremely evident when traveling is that I like to be organized and have a schedule. Trips I have previously taken with my family have been leisurely and consist primarily of relaxing or doing one big thing a day.? On this weekend trip though, we wanted to pack as much as we could into our short time. Because of this I found myself trying to create itineraries for what we were going to do each day and trying to map things out. The days just seemed so much less frantic to me when we had a plan beforehand of what we were to do as opposed to when we woke up later and then sat around trying to figure out what there was to do.
This upcoming week will come with many new adventures as we are traveling to Granada, then Malaga, and then to Seville. Seville is somewhere my grandparents have gone and told me about, so it will be fun walking down the street and imagining them being in the exact same spot decades ago. It would be nice if COVID did not prevent us from traveling outside of Spain. We would have enjoyed seeing other countries, but there are many diverse places here, and still so much that we can do and see within the country. Even after spending five weeks in Spain alone, we will not get to see everything, so we will definitely stay busy and continue exploring.