Six Days in Spain

A very relaxing and fun vacation with Susana, Laura, Nyugen, and Hyeji.

Uno

After catching a 5am train to London Gatwick, we boarded an EasyJet plane to Madrid early in the morning.

After we got off, we went down the list of things to eat which Cristina gave us since she’s from Madrid. We stopped by a local shop that had cocido madrilèno. “A traiditonal chickpea-based stew from Madrid, Spain. Prepared with vegetables, potatoes, and meat.” It is also the national dish of Spain. We also had tortillas de patatas which was a potato omelet. The cocido was just ok, but the omelet was delicious, as you will see later on.

Our hotel in Madrid was a lot better than I thought. It was pretty much a small apartment and the five of us stayed for 2 nights. It had these crazy small elevators that we could barely fit in. We were situated in the downtown area so there was a lot to do. The streets were always packed (even at 6am) and the subway system made it easy to travel everywhere.

After dropping off our stuff, Nyugen felt sick so the four of us went to a big park in Madrid and rode the cable car up to the top. We chilled at the park, took some random pictures, and I drank an horchata! That thing is pretty amazing. I didn’t know what it was at the time but now that I’m googling it, but the definition of it is: “Horchata is the name of several kinds of traditional beverage, made of ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barely, or tigernuts. Nonetheless, it was delicious.

At night, we walked around many beautiful plazas trying to find a restaurant called Lateral. This tapas restaurant was very busy and in the Spanish culture, people don’t eat dinner until around 9pm. We got there around 8pm so we got a seat after 15-20 minute wait. We ordered many tapas (pics below):

Most were very yummy but I wasn’t used to their jamon or salmon as much.

We then went back and changed to go to a club called Kapital. Let me tell you, this is probably the best club I will ever go to in my life. The place had 7 stories. The first floor had a huge stage where their hired dancers (who looked very funny) would dance, a big dance floor with poles, and a giant lounge to sit and chat. The second floor was a different type of music, the third was a karaoke bar, the fourth was R&B music, the fifth was something else, sixth was something I forgot, and the seventh had no dance floor, just a place to eat and drink. Honestly, at first I was a bit skeptic about going because it was 15 euros. However, it came with 2 free drinks that were 9 euros at the bar. The drinks they make here are crazy, I felt it after one drink. They would pour half the cup with alcohol and the rest with something else, and then fill about 20% with actual non-alcoholic mixers. This is so different compared to what I’m used to in Brighton where the drinks are around 3 euros and they barely put anything in it.

The clubs in Madrid open at midnight and end at 6am. Normally, people don’t show up until 2am. I love their culture. Hyeji, Susana, and I had a blast floor-hopping and we stayed until about 5am, and then left. Actually, if it wasn’t for me, the two of them would’ve stayed until it closed. Such party animals!

We met a lot of cool people there and I don’t think I will ever go to a club like this in my life because US clubs all suck compared to this. Yes, even the ones in Vegas and Miami can’t compare (not that I’ve been to them). While we were walking back around 6am, everyone was on the streets. It was more filled up than 6pm which is pretty amazing.

What an amazing first day in Madrid!

Dos

We planned to wake up at noon, but that failed obviously. Instead, we got up at 3pm and left for Retiro Park. It was a pretty modern park with some random statues that I don’t know the history of. Laura, Susana, and I rented a boat for 5 euros for an hour to row in a small lake.

We then walked across Sol (center of the city) and ate calamari sandwiches for lunch. Because I’m not a big fan of calamari in general, it was just okay. But I’m sure it would’ve been good if it liked it in the first place.

After our stomaches were full, we headed towards a famous shop called San Gines Churreria in Plaza Mayor where we had chocolate con churro. You can never eat too much! It was SO DELICIOUS. The dark chocolate they put in a cup and you dip the churros in it. It pretty much just melted in your mouth. I loved it.

Then as the sun’s about to set, we hit the Royal Palace and Aludema Cathedral. We sat there and watched the sunset but it wasn’t as spectacular as New Mexico. The sky was yellow instead of pink and purple, I found that really weird.

Because we walked so much that day, we called it a night.

Tres

After we checked out of our hotel early in the morning, we headed towards the spa and massage. Well, it didn’t happen. That day the spa over flooded and since we had to catch a flight, we couldn’t reschedule. It was really sad because I was looking forward to my first real massage!

Instead, we chilled at a café, ate some more tortilla de patatas, and headed to the airport towards Barcelona.

Upon arrival, it was so easy to tell the difference between these two cultures. Madrid had more actual Spanish people while Barcelona had a lot more diversity. Barcelona also spoke Catalan, which was very very hard to understand. Luckily, most people spoke English.

Our hostel/hotel was situated right above Montjuic. It was all of our first experience in a hostel. However, because there were five of us, we pretty much got the whole room. All we had to do was share the bathroom with the other rooms, which didn’t turn out that bad. The place was cleaner than my dorm at Sussex, which is really sad haha.

I had an amazing mango and milk smoothie for lunch and we headed towards a flamenco show, which was in the city center.

While we were walking around, we came across this awesome food market. It had so many different things, from meats to vegetables to street food. It was closing, so they offered Susana and I three fresh fruit juice (they had like every fruit I could think of) and two small containers of already cut fruit for less than 2 euros!

We took that, then decided to head to dinner and catch a later showing of flamenco. At first, we wanted to eat paella, but because only two of us were hungry, the waiter kicked us out so we went to a small café and had crepes instead. At least he saved us money haha.

The flamenco was in a small room and it had people playing guitar in the background while a woman and a man did all sorts of cool things. I can’t really explain it but it was a very fast paced flamenco and much better than the youtube videos I saw before. The show lasted 30minutes.

It was getting late, so we explored the area around our hostel. It was pretty much an Asian town. Our hostel owner is Korean and all the restaurants nearby were Chinese. Actually, this is how we got around Barcelona, by speaking Chinese. There were so many of them everywhere! It was much easier to understand than Catalan Spanish haha. We ate some tapas for midnight snacks at a Chinese place. So I guess it was Chinese-Spanish style food?

Cuatro

We woke up as early as we could and headed towards Montjuic. It had 7 museums, the 1992 Olympic Park, and a castle. It was kind of cool because the first part of our walk consisted of escalators that took us up the small mountain. But after reaching the museum, it was all walking from there. We went to the Olympic park and got lost climbing to the other side of the mountain for the castle. This was pretty much the start of 1-2 ice cream treats every day.

At night, we went to eat the long awaited paella. We went to a pretty fancy placed called La Taverna. It was SO AMAZING. The paella was a lot better than I expected (and I expected a lot from it). The seasoning was just perfect. We ordered a seafood one and a squid ink one. I was being so adventurous that I ate all these random seafood that I never do back in the states haha. The squid ink had a very interesting taste but was too salty. That was the only setback, we got really thirsty afterwards. All in all, this was my favorite meal in all of Spain, which I guess is why they have it at every restaurants and it’s a famous dish. We spent about 18 euros each at that restaurant, so it definitely was not a cheap meal. At the end, they gave us a cool mint mouthwash that they filled up in nice looking shot glasses with mint around the rims. We thought it was alcohol at first haha.

After dinner, we met up with Drance, who just arrived at Barcelona with his mom and sister. They went to sleep so we walked A LOT all the way towards the beach area called Barceloneta. It was so pretty at night. I could have stayed there forever just sitting, talking, and just looking at the night sky/ocean.

Sadly, this was cut short as we realized the subway had closed so we had to walk an hour back to our hostel. My feet hurt so much after that day. I didn’t bring tennis shoes since I liked my boots too much and we had to pack light haha.

We actually really wanted to go out that night, but all of us were tired and passed out right when we got back.

Cinco

This whole day was dedicated to the beach.

An interesting thing that happened was a strike that hit all of Southern Europe. The metro and bus had closed down. Most of the shops were closed and the open ones had graffiti all over. It was a very interesting and a bit scary experience. A lot of the phone booths were shattered, a police car burned, angry people were marching everywhere. We pretended to not look like tourists (me being an Asian with a big camera, it was very hard needless to say), and walked to the beach as quickly as we could…which wasn’t that quick because it was far away.

I had this amazing waffle with chocolate and then we began our tanning. It felt so nice to be by an ocean after years of living without it. If only Rochester wasn’t that cold, I would go to the great lakes more. This day was just so relaxing. What I realized was that European culture is very open with a lot of things. Although there were nude beaches (and we really wanted to check it out, but got lazy), a lot of girls were topless at Barceloneta as well. Many just changed in the middle of the beach and no one cared. I like this relaxing/carefree lifestyle that they have. US is always so concentrated on self image that individuals get so closed off about certain things. I had a mojito at the beach but it was way too minty.

At night, we met up with Drance and his family again. Because the riot was still going on, we went to a restaurant as quickly as possible and had dinner. We ordered paella and tapas again. This time the paella was only 9 euro, but it definitely was not as good. The flavoring of the rice was not as rich and it was a bit dry. But for the amount we paid, it was worth definitely worth it.

After dinner, we took a long walk back. Our feet were pretty much dead after we got back. Stupid riots.

Seis

This was the end of our amazing vacation. We checked out, took our stuff, and went to lie on the beach. I had a foot massage for 4 euro by these Chinese ladies from Shanghai. We stayed there till 5pm and headed towards the airport for our 11pm flight. We were hoping to get a standby on an earlier flight so we can catch the train from London to Brighton but every single flight was packed (I’m guessing because of the strike the previous day). I had my last tortilla de patatas and finally headed “home”.

Adios Espana :)