Finally, Spain! Spain was somewhere both Evan and I had really, really wanted to visit (me even more so because I speak Spanish!) so I could hardly wait to arrive. We took an overnight bus from Paris to Barcelona and then boarded a train from Barcelona to Madrid. The bus was better than we had experienced in the past and I was able to sleep the entire overnight- no shock, but Evan didn’t sleep at all😂

Usually bus rides go by slowly and a bit painfully (a whole blog post coming up on that later) but this bus was pretty nice! We stopped in the morning for coffee and to recharge, which is something to look forward to on these 12 hour rides 🙂

Soooo we finally arrived in Barcelona, then hopped on our luxury bus to Madrid (I’m not kidding, we got first class). I did a little work on the ride and we arrived late that afternoon to a central station in Madrid!

For the first part of the trip we stayed with one of Evan’s friends from high school who had done an exchange program to study in the United States. He came to pick us up from the train station, where we took a train back to his house. When we saw him, he broke the news to us that the Spanish schedule is totallyyyy different- he told us we would be eating dinner around 10:30 which was only a trend for our time in Spain! The first night we went to his apartment to drop off our stuff, ate some wine and cheese as a snack, then headed to dinner in his neighborhood to meet his mom and her boyfriend. The dinner was great! We of course ordered tapas, but I didn’t have a picture because I was super tired. That night, I went straight to sleep and Evan and Luis went on a walk to settle some of the food that we had eaten 🙂

Day 1

The next day we began the sightseeing! We actually got to visit his gym, which was huge and super fancy- it even had a workout area up on the roof which was super cool! We ate a traditional Spanish breakfast of bread, tomatoes, and olive oil which was super filling and good fuel for the gym. Later that afternoon around 5 (remember we’re working on Spanish time) we headed to downtown Madrid. We went to La Mallorquina where we got this AMAZING chocolate pastry. It was one of my favorite things ever. This night we went to Plaza Mayor, Gran Vía, and the Royal Palace.

It was a really fun sightseeing night, and of course I got to speak Spanish to everyone. I actually got many compliments on it while I was there!

Day 2

The next day we woke up and headed to El Escorial, which was about an hour away. We actually got an “early” start by Spain standards; we were on our way by about 11:30 am! This was the biggest culture shock to Evan and I as we are both used to starting our days pretty early 😂

El Escorial was so beautiful. We spent several hours walking around inside the palace and admiring the beautiful gardens. Even the town itself is beautiful, with incredible views of the hills and surrounding area. After that, we drove deep into the woods to look at a huge cathedral and the world’s largest cross.

So for those of you who know me well may know of an inside joke from my previous travels. I grew up traveling quite frequently with my family. My amazing mother, being an enneagram 7, often persuaded us to skip or wait an extended amount of time for meals, promising that the place we would get to eat would be “worth the wait”. (For a 7 year old, not too much is worth a long wait). So being in Spain triggered this trauma for me a bit. We had eaten around 10 am before heading on our day trip. Around 3 pm, I start looking for a source of food again. Because we were otherwise occupied, food was not the first thing on Luis’s mind. So this being said, when we finally arrived at a restaurant for tapas around 7 pm, I was relieved to say the least. I learned quickly to always carry a snack around in Spain 😂

After getting food, I was happy as a lark. We went home and watched futbol (Spain LOVES their football). It was another good day!

Day 3

For those of you who have been to Madrid, you know that El Retiro is one of the city’s absolute best attractions. I really loved El Retiro. We went to walk around and see the glass building, the beautiful fountain, and people walking around, having picnics, and just relaxing in this amazing urban green space. I was so blown away by how the city planners were able to have this incredible, luscious park literally in the middle of the city! And it was booming with activity. We saw runners, walkers, people selling things, performing, you name it. El Retiro is somewhere you truly can just sit for hours admiring it’s beauty.

After this park visit, we had no idea what we had ahead of us. Luis had told us that we were going to go to dinner with his friends and then “go out”, but you truly can never prepare for going out Spanish style. We met 5 of his friends at a local restaurant with the tastiest food. We ordered a sort of sharing special, where we got tomatoes, cachopo, dessert, and 6 bottles of hard cider, which they brought out one at a time. Cachopo is absolutely incredible. It’s basically cheese, meat, and pepper that is stacked on top of each other and FRIED. I could truly eat it every day. I didn’t take many pictures that night but I did make sure to capture this meter long delicacy! After dinner (which ended around 12 am) we went to this Irish club. We danced, hung out, and played pool until not 2, not 3, but 4 am before everyone finally decided it was time to go! Our minds were truly blown by the time schedule here😂

When we arrived home around 5 am, we were both so tired and of course fell asleep immediately. We slept in so late recovering from the late night! The next day was Sunday and Luis’ mom made a big Paella and a bunch of his family came over- it was really fun and of course, all in Spanish so I got to practice.

For the second half of our stay in Madrid since we stayed for 10 days, we didn’t want to overstay our welcome. Sunday evening we had hotel reservations, so we headed there to check out the place and ended up grabbing dinner at the outlets by our hotel.

Talk to you in part 2!