5 years later...

Katie as King Philip III "The Swinger"
and O.D. our tour guide

It feels like we've been here forever!  So I've been slacking on the blogging and thus these next few posts are going to be "back-blogs".  So today was Thur. 8/18!

We took a super long, but free!, tour of Madrid!  We saw a great portion of Madrid and learned about it's history.  Normally I'm not a history person, but some of the stuff he told us was really fascinating.  For example, tapas were created when a king wanted people to have something to eat (instead of spending their only money on getting drunk- not very socially beneficial) so he made it a law that every drink had to come with a small appetizer.  Sadly, it's no longer a law-- but the idea still persists!

local cuisine stop #1!

After our tour we followed O.D. and some of the group to a place of local cuisine!  We're a pretty non-seafood group, but we decided that we had to give it a chance and thus the food above!  I had seafood paella which was Spanish rice with mussels and clams and crab.  And it was pretty good!  We also had our first experience with Spanish alcohol.  The girls all got sangria and the boys got beer.  I think experience was enjoyed by all!

Our seafood adventure! (yes we did actually eat that stuff!)

Today was also the day the Pope arrived in Madrid for World Youth Day so everything was absolutely crazy.  Lots of people and commotion.  There were also protests against WYD.  O.D. explained to us that Madrid decided to take money from education and put it toward preparing for this event, which made many youth upset.  Apparently yesterday the protesters were heckling WYD youth participants.  Today they protested in a square, but were partitioned by police.  The Pope had a planned appearance this evening and we decided it was worth trying to attend.  Wrong.  There were literally thousands upon thousands of people there.  I LOVED the atmosphere.  Normally, I'm not a crowd person, but there's something about a large, diverse group of youth gathered together for a larger, constructive purpose that makes me smile.  I was literally beaming at times.  That being said, not everything was fun and games.  We soon figured out it would be impossible to see the Pope so we decided to leave.  Bad idea.  Ever tried to get out of a mob of thousands?  Not easy.  Especially when they all speak different languages.

A small sample of WYD craziness

  It took us girls over an hour to get out of the crowd (a distance of a couple blocks).  Along the way we managed to lose the boys, but we knew nobody was alone so we just kept plodding.  Funny story, apparently the boys knew we would go to the museum (no phones remember) because they got there at 8:45pm and stood outside looking for us.  We left at 8:45pm and just missed them.  They showed up at the apartment a few minutes after us.

We ventured to the Chocolateria before turning in for the night to enjoy some doughnuts in melted dark chocolate.  Good day.