madrid

yesterday, we had the entire day in barcelona because our train to madrid did not leave until later....we finally made it to the olympic sites in barcelona where the 92 games were held..it was so amazing to be looking at the huge stadium for track and field and imagine myself being an athlete performing in that huge arena...it made me wish i was a professional athlete...anyways, saw various footprints in the stone outside the olympic sites of random professional athletes such as pete sampras, michael jordan, nadia cominici (sp?), raphael nadal, michael johnson, and many more...we later took a ride on a lift that took us up to see great views of the entire city...we saw a castle too that used to be a prison that overlooked the ocean...my mind is going blank right now of the name.

we finally made it to the train station at 7pm to madrid and the ride seemed quite short.i read a bit in hebrews, then read the rest of the time in my book the scarlet letter...i am determined to finish it, and i will. over half way done! it is quite dark, but interesting if you´ve ever read it...

ANYWAYS, we arrived and made it to our hostel, the area kind of seemed a bit shady in the beginning, but we got inside and it was very nice, and later we found out, that it just opened a week ago! anyways, it was soooo nice because marci, jodi, and i shared a room to ourselves (btw, marci HAS not received her bag, and today they finally called her, they being american airlines, and said that her bag is at the barcelona airport...well, too bad, she will go back to barcelona, pick up her bag, and just check it again..the past few days she´s had some unpleasant convos with the airlines because they basically were doing NOTHING to help her and couldn´t tell her where her bag was).

after we checked in around 11pm, we went out for dinner because we hadn´t eaten yet and everyone was out and about at 12am...love it.ANYWAYS, we got all clean and a good sleep...we took a free 3 hr tour of madrid today; saw the palace, the oldest restaurant in the world, a few cathedrals, and had some good eats at this cheap little cafe. our tour guide was great and knew a lot.we felt like since we only have a full day in madrid, it was perfect to take a tour, get greatly informed, and not waste time of trying to figure stuff out for ourselves...plus it was FREE, we tipped of course! we are a bit tired right now, but tonight we are excited because we are going to a bullfight..only on sundays, so we were lucky to be in madrid on a sunday! we leave tomorrow afternoon for sevilla and i am quite excited since my good friend jill spent a semester there in college and loved it.anyways, time is flying quick with marci here, and after she leaves i will be half way done with the trip.crazy to believe, but i am excited to return home to the good old us of a.i do miss it, but am so thankful for my adventure here.i am learning a lot about myself and about people.it is so great to experience the world in a different environment than the "norm"...i keep forgetting to say, but we have noticed so many european trends...the mullet(mostly guys, but girls too), gypsy pants,smoking everywhere, and many things that i can´t think of right now...ok, adios mis amigos.miss you all!