tinto.

GUESS WHAT?!

We decided to surprise you and give you not only one, but TWO blog posts today =) On Monday, we went to El Parque del Buen Retiro (or just El Retiro). The park was built as a park for the royal family in Spain around the 17th century. It served as a "retreat" at the time, and judging by the amount of people there on a weekday with cafes and vendors on every corner, it is still very much a retreat for the Spanish.

The entrance of the park (from the inside facing out).

Us and Genifer at the entrance

(thanks to Jessica and my flash for the great picture hahah).

Being silly.

The artificial lake built inside the park. If you look closely you can see people in rented boats rowing around the lake. It got pretty crowded in there after a while.

An aerial view of some of our group members waiting for the metro.

After our classes on Tuesday, we just relaxed at the dorms. At night, we felt like having some decent food, so after some restaurant searching, we took the metro to downtown Madrid and went to a modern-day tapas restaurant called La Musa. Here are some highlights...

The "Parrilla" dish with steak, chorizo (brit's faaaavorite), chicken, and grilled veggies.

I keep forgetting to take pictures of food BEFORE we actually eat them.

This dish was breaded and fried green tomatoes with shredded goat cheese, arugula salad, and fig jam. We had another huge combination plate of tapas (with some Asian and Mexican fusion dishes) but we demolished it before I remembered to take a picture... =) typical us.

After dinner, we took the metro to the center of Madrid because we had heard about an amazing place called Chocolateria San Gines, that served melted hot chocolate and fresh churros (VERY different from what we'd normally have at home). This place is open from 7 in the evening to 6 in the morning and it's in the cutest alley!

So crowded around midnight!

A snapshot of Britt and her churro con chocolate!

Wednesday evening we were supposed to go shopping in one of the shopping districts in Madrid, but we decided to stay at the mall next to the metro station in Principe Pio instead.

The Starbucks barristas are worse here than at home. They misunderstood Brittany for Pretty... at least it was a cute misunderstanding =)

A booklover's heaven! Why can't we have one of these at home?!

Thursday night, most of our group had already left either for Pamplona, or any other individual weekend trips. We had fancy schmancy paella night here at the dorms, where we had some GOOD food for the first time. They served us some salads and tapas and then two different types of paella (the first time we've had it here so far!). We also had some amazing homemade sangria, then took the bus to a place called MAGIC (lol) in Villaviciosa.

Besos from Espana. We'll talk to you all very soon!

PS. i realize the subject of food is prevalent in these posts. i can't help it. our whatever food at the dorms is never worth mentioning. but when we actually have some GOOD FOOD, it's definitely worthy of an honorable mention in our blog!

=)