Madrid

June 13th to 16th 2015

Next destination in Espana, the capital! Madrid! Fortunately, a friend from Strasbourg was home in Madrid and offered to be my amazing tour guide :D My kind, intelligent, and beautiful friend, Veronica.

Saturday, June 13th

So many people in Plaza del Sol (real tourist area)

First things first (I'm a realist ;)) CHURROS CON CHOCOLATE!

I was starving after I settled into my hostel

Sunday, June 14th

The real tourist stuff didn't start until Sunday :)

Plaza Mayor

Pescaderia! all that good food and tapas especially 

This market really reminded me of the Marché Jean-Talon

Food

FoOd

FOOD!

I'm so excited about the food omnomnom

Definitely one of the best culinary experience in Europe

Worth every penny

Palacio Real 

So Spain still has Monarchs... I had no idea

Cathedral of Almudena

The Palace from behind. It has a nice, large garden

Plaza de Espana

  

Haagen-Dazs!!! Only when I'm on vacation do I accept to pay so much for ice cream (twice)

Parque del Campo

El teleferico! First time she road it too haha. Tourist in your own city :P

The park is IMMENSE! I was flabbergasted by the size of such a park in an urban area. It's something like 16 times the size of Central Park. Ridiculous. I like it :)

This picture was sold by the people at the teleferico. I usually never buy these things but I was really compelled to this time. I dunno why ;P

Temple of Debod 

Monument imported from Egypt

More food omnomnom

Muscles and olives

Croquetas came after, so rich, so good, but we were so preoccupied with eating that we didn't stop to take a picture

always excited about food

Monday, June 15th

Palacio de Comunicaciones

Plaza Cibeles

Parque del Retiro (most famous park of Madrid)

(dat green water tho, that can't be healthy, I wouldn't want to paddleboat in that stuff eck)

Other than the water, the park is really gorgeous :)

yay a picture together :D

Inside the Palacio de Cristal

People be chillin'

There was an exhibition that aimed at bringing together African and Spanish culture

Chiiiiillin'

Modeeeeellin'

(ignore that awkward couple eeeeew)

I don't think this cookie was big enough. Needs more chocolate so clearly hot chocolate was the way to go. 

Look at us at a French café in Spain... Because we clearly couldn't get enough of it after living in France for 4 months

Where the bullfights happen :( Culture is culture, you can't (always) question it

Impressive building though :)

The exact centre of Spain

According to geopolitic theories, the most strategic place for a capital. Good job Spain!

Tuesday, June 16th

The commercial sector of Madrid. European cities with their new and old neighbourhoods 

We also walked to the Soccer stadium but I didn't get a picture :(

Before catching my flight to Paris, I decide to get a little pampered and get my nails done.

I booked an appointment at a small cute salon near my hostel. My nail artist only spoke Spanish to me and, let me tell you, if you want to practice a language you need to go to get a beauty treatment in another language. She talked more than me, of course, but we spanned subjects from basic personal info (school, jobs, boyfriends..) to religious beliefs and we shared a passion for recreational modelling. There's nothing else to do when doing a beauty treatment but talk and gossip let's be honest! Our appointment ran particularly long because the first colour I chose was glued shut. All the tactics we used to try to twist it open were in vain. Then, the baby teal colour I chose was clumpy and so she restarted a couple of nails for me. I was unfortunately on a bit of a tight schedule. I had to catch a shuttle at my hostel at 2:15 to catch my 3:45 flight. My appointment was at 12:15 but we really pushed it (until 2:05). Unfortunately, I didn't have time for my nails to dry properly. I left running, only getting enough time to catch my nail artist's Facebook and Instagram accounts and wrecking my nails the moment I stepped out the salon .... First World Problems much "Oh no, I wrecked my manicure on my purse while running to catch my shuttle to the airport in direction to Paris." I know, I really had nothing to complain about.

While running, I ran downhill in the wrong direction, and so I had to run uphill to the hostel while my hands were flailing next to me (very chic). I made it, 1 minute before the shuttle showed up. We hit some traffic and had to pick up another passenger before heading towards the airport. This was probably the most stressful part of my travels, but I made it with a couple minutes to spare (to get more food nom nom). On the shuttle bus ride over there, I had a delightful conversation with the other passenger who was from South America and searched for a job in Madrid for a year without success. Spain is in a precarious economical situation in which locals have enough difficulty finding a job, so it was especially difficult for a 40-year-old foreign woman to find something. Well, that wasn't the delightful part of the conversation of course. She was very kind and insightful. I learned a lot from her :)

I unfortunately didn't get to have a proper goodbye with Vero because of time constraints, but we still keep in touch sometimes and I followed her adventures babysitting in a French family :)

Veronica, you're awesome, thanks again! Shout out to the cool friends whom she introduced me to <3

¡Adiós España!
Voy a volver ;)

Málaga

June 8th to 13th, 2015

After coming back to Vienna from Slovenia, early in the morning I caught a bus from the Vienna airport to the Bratislava airport in Slovakia en direction to Malaga, SPAIN. Going towards more sunny hot weather.

My cousin, Mathilde was in Malaga for a couple weeks for a Spanish language immersion with the Education First (EF) school. Both in Europe, must meet up ;)!!

I bumped into some trouble transitioning from German to Spanish... Sentences came slowly to me as I tried not to say German things anymore, but coming out of the airport the I thanked the first person to help me with directions with "Danke" instead of "Gracias" (facepalm)... Slowly but surely I got used to it, except some people's accents were harder to understand than others. The real problem was finding my Airbnb with 8% battery on my phone and my host not speaking any English while trying to give directions to her apartment. I would hang up quickly not to lose my battery but I misread the street the apartment was on. I squatted at a bakery where the clerk let me use the power to charge my phone. We had a pretty good conversation about her life and mine and the places we've travelled to, so that was a good warm up for getting into Spanish again. Of course, I let her do most of the talking... From the moment I figured out where to go for my Airbnb everything went much smoother.

I visited Mathilde's amazing education house place where they had a better room, bathroom and kitchen than I had in Strasbourg my my. I got to meet her classmates. Their origins ranged from Sweden. Switzerland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria as well as many Americans and surprisingly Quebecers! It felt like exchange all over again. I once again jumped on the opportunity to speak German haha...

I was so busy having fun, I really didn't take many pictures and all the days kinda meshed into one blob in my head, so here are the highlights.

The Malaga Cathedral: quite fantastic from the inside but I don't think we were allowed to take pics

The BEEEEEACH

Let's go to the beach-beach, let's go get away

Spanish Cosmo (not really as interesting as the American one weirdly)

There is so much going on with this ice cream sandwich 

I was out for 4 hours that day. Tanning for like 3 :S (aaaaagh skin cancer) and then playing beach volleyball and swimming. I had intense tan lines at the end of that day

To cut on costs, we got to eat in a lot. The kitchen was well equipped and the grocery store food was really cheap. These girls were hilarious and energetic :) I'm happy they let me in their group for the week! I forgot how it was to speak full on Quebecer until I interacted with these beauties haha.

Gazpacho :) on my single city exploration

in front of the palace (I think, oh gosh, this was a while ago)

 

view of the stadium

view of the port

hahahah all the corrections to the translations....

view of the cathedral

A façade of the old Acazaba

must eat paella in Spain ;)

Shopping with the cousin on Marqués de Larios

The best trips are the ones that can be shared with people you care about as well as great new acquaintances. My cousin still sees her Malaga classmates in Montreal. I'm happy the bond they built continued back in Montreal. I haven't been fortunate to have made Montrealer friends on my trips... However, I think I was avoiding it because I was more concentrated on getting to know people from Europe. Friendships I still cherish ;) If everything goes well, I will be back in Germany in Summer 2016 to see my closest European friends!