Hola Madrid!

Hola Amigos!

Well, I am very happy to report that we survived our second trip!! But before I tell you all about our adventures in Madrid, let me quickly fill you in on our week leading up to it.  Even though we were still completely exhausted from our trip to Prague, we somehow managed to have a very exciting week! I took a trip to Palazzo Pitti with my Art History class and got to see the beautiful palace where the Medici family lived along with hundreds of famous paintings that belonged to them,   I learned how to cook spinach and ricotta gnocchi (still dreaming about it) and delicious Italian chocolate cake in my food and wine pairing class, Staci and I survived our first blackout in our apartment (who knew that if you turned on the washing machine while you were using the oven it blows a fuse?!) and still managed to finish cooking our dinner in the dark (thank god for iPhone flashlights!), and most importantly – the Raifaisens came to visit Florence!! I got to spend the afternoon with them on Tuesday and we took a hike up to the Piazella Michelangelo where we found an absolutely picture perfect view of the entire city.  That night, we went out for dinner to Cuattro Leoni, a delicious restaurant across the Ponte Vecchio.  We tried an arugula and avocado salad with pine nuts and cheese, fried pasta balls with prosciutto and whipped cheese, lasagna with artichokes, penne with Bolognese sauce, and the infamous pear ravioli.  As you can tell by the pictures, everything was delicious! I was so glad I got to see them before I left for the weekend, and it got me very excited for my family to visit!

Okay, back to Madrid! I had no idea that Madrid was such an enormous city (it is actually the largest city in Spain).  Although it was a little rainy our first day there, it was still beautiful! It is a very vibrant city, and many of the areas reminded me a lot of New York.  Since it is such a big city, you would expect a lot of people to speak English, right? Wrong.  To our surprise, barely ANYONE spoke English the entire time we were there.  Including our friends! Since they are so used to speaking Spanish, they have gotten into the habit of speaking Spanish to each other even when they don’t have to.  Luckily, my Spanish came back to me pretty quickly and I was able to remember a lot more than I thought I would (shout out Sra. Pels Staples High School slash Sasha Berns). Once I got the hang of it again, it was a lot of fun to be able to speak Spanish in the restaurants, the market, and to the taxi drivers.  But we were VERY lucky to have our friends Melissa, Amy, Rachel, and Sarah as our personal tour guides for the weekend! And our friend Melissa was nice enough to let us stay in her apartment with her! Although we had a somewhat interesting sleeping situation since her room was very tiny….

Doesn't Staci look comfortable?!

We were lucky enough to have 3 exciting days of sight seeing, Spanish food, and crazy Madrid nightlife.  Here are some highlights:

Puerta Del Sol: Sol is located in the very heart of Madrid – literally though.  Not only is it one of the busiest places in the whole city, but there is also a square in the center of it that is the exact center of all of Spain! There are many different restaurants, bars, and fun people watching in this square.

Gran Via:  This is the street that reminded us most of New York! It is a very large street with many different stores, restaurants, shows, and beautiful buildings.  It was gorgeous during the day to walk around, and at night when it was all lit up!

Plaza Mayor: This is another one of the main plazas.  For some reason, there were a lot of different street performers there – some even popped out and screamed to scare the people walking by.  Staci and I were of course among the people who screamed and ran every time we walked by one….

Markets:  Definitely one of my favorite parts of the whole trip (so out of character for me, I know).  There were two different markets in Madrid: Mercado San Miguel and Mercado San Anton.  Although they were both very different than the market here in Florence, I loved them! These markets are a lot more modern looking, and they serve more prepared and cook foods rather than the fresh produce and food in Florence.  No matter what time we went to the Markets (we went about 4 times in our three days there…whoops) it was PACKED! It was always filled with people trying out different foods and drinks and socializing.  It was so much fun to walk around a look at all the different types of foods.  Luckily, I was there with a lot of friends so we were able to get a bunch of different things to try! 

Churros:  These deserve their own section in the post because they were THAT GOOD.  Churros con chocolate.  Four different types of chocolate: white, frozen chocolate, café, and dark. Oh. My. God. No other words are necessary.

Royal Palace: This was so cool.  Palacio Real is the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family in Madrid.  It was magnificent on the outside, and we also got to go inside to see some of the actual rooms in the palace.  The rooms inside were so gorgeous; each one was even more extravagant than the next filled with huge chandeliers, gold, marble, and jewels. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside…but that didn’t stop us! We decided to take the “No photo” rule as a challenge.  While Staci distracted the guards, I managed to snap a few pictures with my iPhone!

After the palace, we headed over to the Reina Sofia Museum to see Picasso’s famous painting, Guernica.  It is a huge mural created in response to the Spanish Civil war as an anti-war symbol.  The “no photo” rule was also an issue in this museum…but we were up to the challenge.

Afterwards, we went to check out the Prado Museum, which has thousands of pieces of artwork all over Western Europe.  The highlight here was actually a painting that I learned about in my Art History class last week! It was called The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.  Very trippy, but very cool.  This one had a little bit more security detail on it, so it was a struggle, but I got the picture.  However, I only managed to get the middle panel of the painting – so look up a picture if you want to see the whole painting!

Parque Retiro:  After a long day of Museums, we were ready for a break.  We couldn’t have asked for a better one than Parque Retiro.  This was by far my favorite part of Madrid.  We were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny day with completely blue skies to enjoy the park.  This is one of the largest parks in Madrid, and it is filled with beautiful green trees, grass, flowers, and people.  Inside the park we also got to see the Crystal Palace, a large building in the middle of the park made completely of glass! 

TAPAS!:  You knew this was coming….SPANISH FOOD! Tapas. So many tapas.  This was a very nice change of pace from all of the Italian food we have been eating here (don’t worry, we were very ready to start eating it again when we got back..).  The first tapas meal we had was lunch at Lateral with our friends Amy, Melissa, and Sarah. My favorite by far were the famous spanish croquettes (fried cheese with ham) and the patatas bravas (potatoes smothered with a delicious spicy tomato sauce-- Jealous dad?!) - we ate a LOT of both of those over the weekend!

Spanish Tortilla

Avocado and salmon tartar

Patatas Bravas

Spanish Meatballs

Vegetable Tempura 

Salmon and melted Brie

Croquettes

Quesedillas

We also went to Fatigas del Querer:

Potatoes with ham and fried egg

Patatas Bravas

Seafood Paella

Prawns with garlic sauce

And El Tigre (you pay 6 euro for a large sangria or mojito plus all you can eat tapas!):

Night Life: Madrid is CRAZY! On Saturday night we went to the famous club, Kapital (apparently the largest club in the world?). It has SEVEN stories, each with a different theme! I had my latest night out ever here…we stayed out until 6 a.m.! Yes everybody, Staci Gitkin made it out until 6 a.m.  As you can tell she was very happy about it! 

Party animal!

And we of course had to end the night (or morning..?) with kebabs!

Overall, we LOVED Madrid! A huge thank you to our friends who took care of us! But as always, we were thrilled to get home and see Santa Croce again.  

Santa Croce with a Full Moon!

Since I was speaking so much Spanish in Madrid, I forgot how to speak Italian! I think I said “hola” and “gracias” to at least 5 different people already.  And doing my Italian homework was even more of a struggle than usual. But all of the Spanish speaking and tapas eating got us VERY excited for our next trip to Spain in two weeks: BARCELONA! But we have one major adventure first…our first visitor.  JAMIE KORN is making her Florence debut in THREE DAYS! I am counting down the seconds.  I hope you’re hungry Jaim….

Italian Word Of the Day: Spagnolo: this means “Spanish” in Italian!

Arrivederci!

Jordan