Two words (or one... I´m not sure...): Jet. Lagged. Monday (Sept 5th) was by far the hardest day. We´d all been in Spain for 24 hours now, but none of us were quite used to the time difference yet.
We were all to meet in the lobby of our hotel at 9:30am, so we all got up around 8:45. Once in the lobby, our official walking tour of Madrid started. We had be warned the day before about our tour guide, Juan. Jauma had told us that some girls have tended to... fall in love with him. The way he said it was hilarious! He said, "Juan... *sigh*" Soooooo funny. Anyhow, so our walking tour lasted about 3 hours. We ended up eating at this restaurant around 1:00pm. After lunch, we were free to do as we wished until 5:30pm, when he had to be back at the hotel for a mini orientation. I napped for a bit (jet lag sucks) and then went with my friend Elle to the statue of Don Quijote to take the same picture I have from 10 years ago. Oh my gosh! I ws so frustrated when I realized that the park we had been sitting at the day before was RIGHT NEXT TO Don Quijote! I could have taken the picture a day earlier and spent that afternoon exploring other parts of Madrid. Oh well... As Elle said, everything happens for a reason, right?
5:30pm rolled around and everyone met on the first floor (**side note** the bottom floor of the hotel is always considered to be Floor 0) of the hotel for our orientation. Jauma talked for awhile about safety related things. Apparently he wasn´t supposed to be our director person... a woman was. So when he got to the females traveling alone part, he was a little awkward. But again, managed to get through it with a sense of humor. He told us that Spanish boys think American girls are much more approachable because Spanish girls always turn them down (usually rudely, too, it sounds like!). So he told us that if a guy tries to hit on us, it won´t hurt his feelings when we say no (firmly) because they´ve already been told no 10000 + 1 times. LOL.
Our orientation thing ended around 6:45pm-ish, then we were on our own for dinner until 9:30pm. I ended up with 3 other girls (Nora, Elle and Kami) at the Plaza (pronounced Pla-tha) Royal for dinner. We just order to plates of tapas and shared it since none of us were very hungry. We just sat there and chatted until about 8:30pm and then headed back towards the hotel.
At 9:30pm, everyone met back at the hotel to head over to a live Flamenco show! Oh my god, it was amazing!! I never fully realized how they really do use their ENTIRE bodies. And the woman´s outfits! I love the dresses! The show started at 10:30pm and finished some time around midnight. We were all so exhausted by the end (and I´m sure the sangrias didn´t help...). I have lots of pretty pictures from the show, so be sure to watch for those soon.
We all got back to the hotel and crashed immediately.
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