fun under the sun in madrdi!!

Madrid was wonderful! The weather was absolutely gorgeous. It was sunny and warm our entire time there. We only needed to wear a lightweight sweater during the day. Absolutely perfect! Besides the weather, we fell in love with the city itself. It helped that we were right off Gran Via (the big shopping street), so we were right in the middle of it all. Everything was just a short walk away. We only bothered with the metro to get to and from the airport.

The town was really clean. At least where we were anyway. I'm not kidding. There were these horses and some kind of reenactment in the Plaza Mayor, and there was a cleaning crew that cleaned up right afterwards even though they kept coming back. They just cleaned once again.

We did quite a bit of shopping. We found Zara and Mango to be just as expensive as in France (despite Maria telling us it would be cheap), but we fell in love with some of the other stores. While carrying bags from one store, we kept getting stopped and asked where the shop was. We're cool. I bought two skirts, a pair of black flats (for 7 euros!), a cool blue velvet shirt, a navy blue sweater/dress thing, two shrug type things to wear over things, and a new scarf. I'm in love.

Don't worry, we did manage to spend some time outside of the shops. We went to the palace (which was unexpectedly closed all week for official ceremonies), the cathedral, the Debod Temple which is a 2000 year old Egyptian construction, and saw a lot of the town squares. We also spent an afternoon at the Retiro Park. We ordered a pitcher of sangria there and enjoyed the sunlight. We did an incredible amount of walking. Not kidding. Our poor feet. But the city and the beautiful architecture was worth it.

Between the two of us, we had very minimal Spanish skills, but we kept trying, and the people were just so nice about it. They helped us along, and even understood our horrible mispronunciations. So nice. We even made friends with the non English speaking reception guy at our hostel!

I highly recommend the city as a place to visit. So worth it! I never had plans to go there, but then we purchased the tickets on impulse during an easyjet sale. I'm so glad we did! It's definitely now one of my favorite cities.

Madrid photos!

Tomorrow, it's my birthday, so we'll be partying it up Chauny style :-P Then, off to Venice!!