Making a mess in Madrid, and taking on Toledo

So that night we went out in Madrid, to a famous tapas bar called.... of course now I'll forget. Well, it was famous :) You buy a beer and get a full plate of tapas with it. Which is totally the way to go because you get sooo much food. Which I am going to tell you all about, because that's really my main goal for Spain: to eat and eat and eat and eat. We had croquettes.... which are like cheesey-hammy puffs that have a bready fried outside and yummy creamy inside. We had jamon y queso, jamon on bread, jamon, jamon, jamon. (Ham, ham, ham.) Those were really the only ones I remember due to the fact that I ate almost ALL of them. OH and these delicious potatoe wedges with this spicey sauce that was reddish? and was probably the best thing invented to eat with potatoes (the Irish really need to figure that out.)

We spent the night in Madrid, dancing and drinking Sangria and Tinto Verano. The next morning we got up and took the bus to Toledo. The bus ride was pretty short, and we took a bus tour of Toledo. It is totally old style buildings in the "old town" section, which is up on a hill, that is surrounded by a river that acts as a natural moat. The new section is more modern and we didn't go there really at all. We went to a church with another of Greco's famous paintings, and went up on the hill where he painted the view of Toledo, that is a really famous painting we saw in the Prado.

Our tour guide was really funny, but we had like four hours free time in the afternoon. We were starving by that point, but couldn't find anything cheap and ended up at another one of the stupid restaurants that you pay too much for a less than yummy meal. I got fried calamari, which was such a bad plan. Then we walked around in the tiny streets and tried to figure out how to spend four hours of freetime without spending all our money.

The night in Toledo was interesting, we ended up at a club that had a fake alligator in a tank. That should just about explain how the night went.

The next morning Rachael and I were almost the girls that got left in Toledo. The hotel room phone was in the bathroom, so with the door closed we didn't hear our wakeup call. And my phone had died the night before so the seven alarms I had set to make sure I woke up obviously failed. Gloria ended up banging on our door yelling that they were leaving. I am pretty sure I leave things in EVERY hotel, so the fact that I got everything together and didn't even forget Teddy (who loves Spain) is an accomplishment. I rolled over my toe in the process, and am 100% sure that I broke it, which wasn't my smoothest move, but are we really surprised?

We took the bus six ish hours to Santander (this is Sunday now) and I slept most of it. But the last hour I was awake and watched it get greener and greener. The villages are AMAZING in the north, everything is green here with little white buildings with red or brown roofs and cows all over. I am in love with it. I wish buses were free because I'd just ride busses every weekend through the northern area, just looking at how green it is. I need to figure out a cheap way to get out there and find places to hike. I also want to go sea kayaking in the bay, but, like everything else, haven't figured that out yet.

Six hours later, we pulled into the school, which is yellow :) I take that as a very good sign.

So now begins my six months in Santander :)