First off, sorry it has taken so long for me to update my blog! Since arriving here, we have not had very regular access to internet, and until today we had to pay for it at internet cafes and in our hostel. But that’s enough of that. 
Getting to Madrid was not particularly difficult, but the flight was really long and I wasn’t able to sleep very comfortably on the airplane. Once I got to Frankfurt, I never got lost, but it is seriously the biggest airport I have ever been in. I felt like I walked a mile before I found Anne (luckily, I had no luggage with me!). Seeing Anne was a huge relief because I knew that if anything were to go wrong, at least it would go wrong for both of us! The flight to Madrid was short and easy but the fun didn’t really start until we got all of our luggage and started making our way to the Metro. The Metro in Madrid is a great system; it only costs 1 Euro to go anywhere and all the stations are interconnected. The only downfall (and it is a big one) is that it seems like there are a ton of pointless staircases–I felt like we went up and down, up and down way too many times. That was NOT fun with so much stuff. But luckily once we got off the Metro finding our hostel was really easy and there was an elevator up to the floor that the hostel was on! 
After dropping off our stuff, Anne and I went out to explore Madrid a bit. The hostel was located really close to the Palacio Real, which is one of the coolest buildings in the city. It really made me feel like I was in Europe while we were walking around the plaza listening to a Christmas choir and looking at statues of old kings.
The next day we decided to go to El Museo del Prado (so we walked there in the pouring rain–thank God for umbrellas!), which is a huge art museum filled with pieces by El Greco, Goya and Velasquez, among many others. Not surprisingly, it seemed like nearly all the painting were either of Jesus, a saint, or a member of the royal family. Definitely some awesome stuff, but you can only look at so many paintings of saints. Later that night, after a long and very necessary nap, we explored the Puerta del Sol, the main part of town, and sat for a while and drank a beer (legally!). There are always tons of people in Madrid, partly because about over 3 million live there are partly because the area we were in was really touristy. The only time we could easily walk on the sidewalks was when it was raining. Overall, Madrid is definitely not my favorite city, but I think it is certainly worthwhile to spend a couple days there. The next day, our last in Madrid, we pretty much only had time to get up and make our way to the train station, which proved to take longer than we thought. We got there in time (barely!) and were off to Granada!!!
(the internet is going really slowly, so i will add pictures later!!)
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