6/23/2010
So it’s been far too long since I’ve updated, but Madrid is way busier than I thought it would be. Since we’ve got class from 8:30 to 1, it means we barely have time to run any errands and take a siesta before we go out for the night. Now that classes are almost done, I’ll try to stay on top of it more.
Since it’s been so long, I have to go all the way back to two weekends ago, when we went to a concert series called Rock in Rio. This should be a whole post itself, but I’ll just post the highlights.
· We went with our Spanish roommate Tomas to drink beforehand at a tailgate thing. Tomas apparently only found out my name was Jonathan the day before, and thought my name was actually Jordan. So whenever he’d talk about me, he’d say “Michael Jordan” and do a basketball move
· Also, apparently Tallahassee sounds like a Japanese karate move to people from Spain, cause Tomas and his friend Juan kept doing Tallahassee karate chops to each other.
· Spanish people are crazy drivers. We were going almost 140 km/hr on the highway. That’s only like 86 mph, but the speed limit was 110, as was half of the traffic
· Juan bought ribs for us to cook and BBQ sauce from an American store. It was kinda assumed that as Americans, we would know how to grill and BBQ, which was left to me. Luckily, the ribs turned out awesome, and everyone was impressed by my American cooking. They also bought us some Bud heavys and were throwing around a football (an American one) so it really felt like a tailgate
· Rock in Rio was supposed to have John Mayer and Bon Jovi that night, but John Mayer is a pussy and went home sick, so it was only Bon Jovi. This made tickets really cheap and I was able to scalp one for 60E.
· Beer vendors at the concert were wearing mini kegs as backpacks
· Spaniards knew more Bon Jovi songs than we did
· Bon Jovi is still Badass.
· We didn’t get back til 5:30 am, and we had to leave for Segovia at 8:30. That was a fun day being touristy.
After that, we had a marketing test on Wednesday, then nothing until Friday when we left for Barcelona. The night before, however, we all went out to a club called Joy till 6am again. Everyone who went to the club decided to skip class that day, but I was determined to go, so I just didn’t go to sleep and went to class. Needless to say, it was interesting. After class, we went straight to the airport to go to Barcelona.
The weekend in Barcelona was a whole trip full of craziness, and it started before we even got on the plane. One girl in our group, Emily, didn’t realize that we would need passports to get on the flight since we were staying in Spain. Foreigners, though, always need them, so she had to rush to get hers and almost missed her flight. While we were waiting for the plane, which was delayed for a while, we went to the duty free and bought some champagne and liquor to drink in the hostel. Instead, we starting popping corks in the middle of the terminal, hitting some moderately crossed dressed European dude with one in the process.
Barcelona was awesome, plain and simple. The pictures can tell the story pretty well, so I won’t go into too much detail. We did the tourist thing and went on the double-decker bus for both days. The coolest tourist parts were seeing La Sagrada Famila (Gaudi’s Church), Casa Batllo (Gaudi designed house), and Camp Nou (Stadium for FCBarcelona). Besides that, the highlights include:
· Popping Champagne bottles in the airport terminal, and having Javi hit the somewhat crossed-dressed man with a cork
· Landing in Barcelona and realizing that we had no map, no guidebook, and weren’t really sure what our hostel was called
· Angry Jonathan making an appearance and getting pissed at his roommates
· Unknowingly paying 30€ each for pitchers of Sangria
· Going to the Icebar on the beach, where everything, from the walls to the cups, was made out of ice.
· Losing a bet to England fans at a bar after they scored first.
Now I’m only a week behind on updating, so the next post will include a trip to Sevilla and the best concert of my life, Muse.
