Thursday, December 16, 2010

This past weekend was my last weekend of traveling in Europe, I went to Madrid, Spain with a couple of my friends from Butler University and one girl from Australia. It was a trip I was sort of looking forward to because there weren't many big "must see" things there so it was more of a relax and enjoy the culture type of trip. We also knew two guys who were studying there so they told us quite a bit about what places we needed to eat and what else we should do. It was an overall nice trip where I ate quite a bit of good food and enjoyed getting to speak a lot of spanish. I was very caught off guard by the fact that the people in Madrid spoke absolutely no English. Luckily though 3 of us at least took spanish in high school and I took spanish last year at college as well. The first night we went to eat at this place call the Museo de Jamon, which directly translated is the Museum of Ham. To be honest it looked and felt like a spanish Bob Evans, they served mostly breakfast food and there were sooo many old people everywhere. The food was delicious and relatively inexpensive which was good as well. One of my other favorite places we went while in Madrid was a tapas bar called El Tigre. Now if you don't know Spain is know for many different things, one of them being Tapas. Tapas are basically free finger food when you order a drink at a bar. El Tigre was a place that was known for there tapas as well. So four of us went there and ordered a couple drinks and with that we got two heaping plates of random fried finger foods. They were absolutely delicious too! The cool thing about it too was that the cooks at the bar just made whatever they wanted and then the waiters threw some on a plate randomly and brought it to you so the food changed randomly throughout the night. The place was absolutely pack too and the way it was set up was that the only tables were like ledges along all the walls and everybody just stood. This made it very interesting for the waiters to bring the food and drinks to you but entertaining to say the least. One of my other favorite kind of experiences was in another bar where we stopped because everybody wanted to get some Sangria (which Spain is also known for). We were all chilling in the bar talking and watching soccer and I randomly starting talking to this guy in Spanish, well as good of spanish as i could and then come to find out later, He was German. He was studying in Spain and also spoke english so we then started talking in english which we were both fluent in. I just found it funny that two non-spaniards first met and spoke spanish until we discovered that we spoke a different language better haha. The other "interesting" thing about this trip which i tack up to laziness was the fact that we missed our flight home on monday. We showed up to the airport about 4pm with the thought that our flight left at 6pm. The person who had all of our tickets was meeting us at the airport because he went to Seville the day before to visit a friend he had there. Well once we got to the airport we were in for a surprise. The last flight home that night on a discount airlines was 3:40 pm, apparently our tickets said 06:00 which since we're in Europe and they're in military time means 6am. The guy who printed our tickets and such hadnt thought about that. So needless to say 24 hours later, a night in the ariport, and about 100 euros later i found myself getting off a train in Maastricht and walking straight to my class haha. Sorry if this last story is a little lack-luster i'm slightly exhausted from all the studying for finals and such. I currently only have about a week left in europe and two finals and a presentation. But as long as i can make it through next tuesday i'll be fine and can enjoy my last two days here! Hopefully all of you are having a wonderful Christmas season and Hope to see you all soon!

Much Love,

Devon Latimer

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