Madrid

Sarah, Allie and Jess

After waking up at 8am, the group enjoyed a delicious breakfast of fresh pastries, fruit, eggs, bacon, and more. We departed for our first activity of the day; a bus tour of Madrid with our tour guide Mati.  During the tour, we were able to stop briefly at the plaza de toros, which is a famous bull ring. It holds 35,000 spectators and is the largest in Spain. We were able to take pictures with the statues of famous bullfighters and the Dr. Fleming who they have a statue for because of his discovery of penicillin .  Our tour ended at the Prado museum fora guided tour of  many of the museums incredible paintings by painters such as Velazquez, Goya and Morillo which many of these, the students had seen at one point in school. Next we had an hour and a half to explore the center of town for lunch.
Sara, Allie, and I found ourselves at an adorable little café where we indulged in fresh fruit smoothies and tried tortilla española. Afterwards, we went on the metro as a group (stunningly clean compared to NYC) and got off at Bernabéu which is the home of the soccer team, Read Madrid.  Touring the stadium was awesome although many of us are not big soccer fans. The self guided  walking tour featured trophies, huge digital displays and an opportunity to walk on the field, go in the dressing room and sit in the  press room. In the evening,  we went for dinner at two different spots tried a variety of tapas  before moving to the oldest and most famous chocolatería for chocolate and churros. Usually the groups would eat in the restaurant, but today because it was such a beautiful evening, we sat in between the Royal Palace and the Cathedral to enjoy the beautiful sunset (at 10pm). It was another incredible day!


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