Day 1- Madrid

Just came back to the hostel after a pretty long first day in Madrid. After dropping my bags off here this morning, I walked about half a mile to Plaza Mayor, the historic "center" of Madrid. I've been pleasantly surprised at how easily walkable Madrid is, I was planning to take the metro from a stop near plaza mayor to meat Sean this afternoon, that's the directions he gave me because the metro stop was the closest landmark, but when i looked at the map it was only a little over a mile away so i decided to walk there too. I've noticed that most of the buildings here, at least in the section of Madrid that I walked through today are mixed use. Apartments, Condos or offices might occupy the top floors, but the ground floors are almost exclusively shops and restaurants, which makes walking much more enjoyable.

Before I left plaza mayor to meet Sean i tried to visit the Cathedral de St Isodoro, there I almost wandered into the catholic middle school that it houses before realizing that the part that was generally open to the public was closed for nap-time, apparently they take their naps pretty seriously here.

I finally met up with Sean at a Starbucks near the university (NW of plaza mayor) and from there we went to a bar/restaurant with several of his friends from the study abroad program. Apparently they had befriended the bartender here over the semester and they brought him a few small gifts. Unfortunately they all still have exams tomorrow, ever the procrastinator, Sean is currently writing a 7 page paper in Spanish or studying for one of the 2 exams he has tomorrow, so was alone again for the rest of the afternoon/evening.

After leaving them, I went on a tour of the Royal Palace (W of plaza mayor), which was okay, but would have been much better if had it cost less than 8 euro and if they had allowed me to use my camera in the palace. I missed out on another cathedral that faces the palace today, because it closed at 4:30. I did get to see the armory at the palace though, which was really cool because they had weapons and coats of armor that dated back to the 15th century.

From the palace walked back past plaza mayor, but this time i swung to the south of it just to see some different streets, I eventually would up over near two of the art museums (SW of plaza mayor), one of which was closed, but the second was free since it was after 6, so i took a quick walk through it, even though I'm not much of an art person.

I was pretty tired by the time I finished up at the art museum so I came back here to shower before going to dinner. I found a nice little restaurant just outside of plaza mayor where you could get a sandwich and a beer for 1 euro each, by far the cheapest i've seen either one here. i'm back at the hostel now obviously, i may go downstairs to the bar below the hostel for a few minutes when i finish writing this, but I'll probably turn in pretty early tonight since I haven't slept much at all the last two nights.