I'm a bit mixed up with the days, but will keep posting when I can. We have trouble getting online each night, as there are other large EF groups staying at our same hotels. This one in Granad we all had to be in the lobby. The kids are able to use my laptop and my mom's iPad to CALL any landline or cell phone for 3 cents per minute. They can also add this feature to their own skype account using a credit card and/or a checking account, however it will just be easier to use these two devices. :-) IF WE CAN GET ONLINE. :-)
Today we are off to La Alhambra (a Moorish castle from the 1200's) then we travel by bus to Seville for two nights.
This is what we did a few days ago... I will fix typos and organize the days later. We are up early-leaving the hotel, and to bed late (getting in to the hotel). Last night we watched an Easter Procession of the Virgin Mary through the streets of Granada!
We slept until 7:15, breakfast at the hotel at 8:00am, departure at 9am for the Plaza Espana, (statue of DonQuijote, Sancho Panza, y Miguel de Cervantes). We also got a panoramic view of the city of Madrid seeing things such as the the Arch of the city, welcoming visitors from the east in Barcelona, the three water fountains beautifully decorated with satues representing the 3 Mythical people of earth water & fire, the Parque Retiro, the Atocha Train station, the Prado Museo, the Catedral, the Gran Via (5th Ave. of Madrid), and of course, the Palacio Real.
Then we had an one-hour tour of the Palacio Royal, which is the Royal Palace built buy King Charles the III. It very much reminded me of the Palace of Versailles in Paris, and it was in fact modeled after the French designs.
The tour continued on the bus past the Plaza Mayor and back to the Puerta del Sol, where Amaya, our tour guide walked us to a restaurant for lunch. There we ate boiled pork chops (in a red sauce), sliced potatoes, sautéed mushrooms, followed by desert of rice pudding. The girls were then very excited and anxious to be let on their way for 4 hours of FREE time and shopping. Remember, Madrid is very much like Paris, so you can only imagine the damage they did on the Gran Via. J
The weather on this day was GREAT. It was 75 degrees and sunny. We shopped, and shopped and shopped, until we needed a break. Some of us sat for a while in the Plaza Mayor having a soda or a snack to rest our walking feet. The Plaza Mayor is the red, square court yard, where bull fighting used to take place in the 1700’s before they built bull rings.
Then we met back at the Puerta del Sol (the zero marker) at 7pm to walk as a group of 37 for Tapas. Our Tapas dinner was located in a dungeon-like building. There we ate the set menu (not common when eating tapaps, but was the case with our large group) of bread, chorizo (sausage), calamari (squid), jamon y queso (the Spanish cured ham and cheese), and tortilla (an omelet with onions and potatoes).
We ended our time in the Puerta del Sol on Palm Sunday. This was like being at Labeau Field during pre and post game activities! All Madrillenos were out with their families, enjoying the night life of the square. We took the Metro back to our hotel. It was two stops, change platforms, then two stops to change lines, 10 more stops until our stop at Las Tablas. It was several students’ first timee on a subway and we noticed how much cleaner the metro trains and stairwells got as we headed to the outskirts of the city where our hotel was located. We stayed at this hotel (Castellana High Tech) for two nights. We packed at about 11pm, made phone calls, and hit the pillow for a good sleep before our 6:15am wake-up calls.
