Cheers to a great trip

Well, today was our last full day in Madrid before we depart back to the United States. It is crazy how  fast time flies when you're on vacation and constantly busy. However, even though it'll be bittersweet leaving Europe, it'll definitely be nice to get back home. This was definitely a trip to remember and Europe is for sure a place we both want to visit in the very near future. Much like I have said before, visiting another part of the world really opens your eyes to new cultures, people, events, food, drinks and languages. Being able to spend a week over here and being surrounded by the Spanish and Portuguese cultures, has been rewarding and fulfilling for the both of us.

Today was a pretty low-key day since we needed to pack and rest up for our 10 hour flight to Atlanta tomorrow morning. We saved getting souvenirs until today and spent the morning walking around the city to various shops in search of good deals. In the end, we found some really good ones and checked off everyone on our respective lists. As if walking around all morning wasn't enough, Kenzie decided that we should walk even more after lunch! She looked up this interesting thing called "Geocaching" which is basically like scavenger hunt to find specially marked boxes. Inside the boxes there are supposed to be little items and a log book for whoever finds it to sign their name and home country. Oh yeah, did I mention we had to do all of this without data? Yeah, that definitely made the search 10x harder, but we were determined to find at least one of these boxes. If not having any data to access the app and have it direct us towards the boxes, nearly all of them were in Spanish. Look, I am no Spanish aficionado, I can pass by and make it work, but reading directions and a description of these boxes just wasn't going to happen. The first box was supposed to be right around this famous building, but after searching through the plaza across the street and the perimeter of the building, we couldst find anything. I can't even imagine how suspicious we looked as we paced up and down the street searching the perimeter of this building. After we admitted defeat at Box #1, we took a gamble and decided to give the all Spanish one a shot.

Let's just say the all Spanish one didn't end up very well at all. On top of our previous 2 problems (no data and all directions in Spanish), this box was all the way across the city from our location. Seeing that we didn't have anything else to do before dinner, we set off on our trek to find the elusive Geocache box. After walking for like 5 hours (just kidding, it was like 45 minutes), we conceded yet again and decided to walk back to the hotel. Yup, we laid a big ole goose egg on this little adventure, but, hey, it was worth a shot. Trying to navigate a foreign city with no map or data was very interesting, but sometimes you just have to go with flow and let things just play out. Even though we didn't find any of the boxes, it was really nice to get out and explore the city on last time. It was really cool to actually get the city down enough to travel without a map and feel confident that we knew where we were going.

Sadly, I think I have Madrid down better than I do Chicago. At least in Madrid I know where "Gran Via" is and various other streets or calles as they are called here. Ask me where Huron or Clark is and I literally will not be able to tell you. Don't worry I know where 4 of the most important streets are in Chicago - 1) Spaulding Ave because it's where my apartment is 2 & 3) Kedzie and Foster because those are the main ones on campus 4) Southport Ave because that's where Kenzie lives. Other than those and maybe a few more (like Michigan Ave), I still struggle with navigating Chicago if I'm not on the el. In due time I will eventually get the City of Chicago down, but I would like to pat myself not he back for getting Madrid down pretty well in less than a week.

Dinner tonight was incredible! We decided to go to Mercado de San Miguel which is a huge indoor market with all sorts of food scattered through different aisles.
It is quite fancy on the inside and each vendor had a permanent station/work area where they prepared and served the food. The building had 4 walls and 3 of them were floor to ceiling windows that allowed you to look out in the surrounding streets. With so many different food and drink options to choose from, we had to limit ourselves out of the fear that we would love indulge and be miserable all night. To start, we decided to get gnocchi and cheese tortellini (both were 3 Euros each and not very good). After that, we decided to get a ham and cheese calzone because Kenzie spotted it, however, the lady only accepted cash and we literally only had 1.5 Euros left, so, we awkwardly walked away as she was heating it up for us, oops! We began our search for another meal and settled on a cheese croquette (basically a fancy cheese kurd) because it was only 1.5 Euros. Having had our fair share of food, we needed a nice beverage to wash it all down and relieve our parched lips. Since we are in Spain, sangria was our choice! However, this vendor had a 10 Euro minimum for credit cards, so, on top of our drinks, we had to buy a plate of olives and pickles which were kind of nasty. The sangria was a wild berry one and tasted so good! You would think by now our stomachs would be full and no more food could be consumed, but it that were the case, you don't know Kenzie and I haha. Desserts caught our eye the minute we walked in and we displayed an incredible amount of self-control to not order them right away. When it came time, Kenzie ordered chocolate gelato & a dark chocolate tart, while I got  dulche de leche gelato & a delche de leche dish. I know, dulche de leche overload, but it is honestly the best ever! The tart and dulche de leche were neatly packaged up for us because Kenzie mistakenly asked for it to go, but it was a good thing because we were so full. Directly to the left of our table however was this paella vendor and the smell of it was mesmerizing me and I made the decision that I needed to get some, so, I did and boy was it delicious! Supposedly it is a very popular Spanish dish and I can see why. The food crawl was not quite over yet, because before we got back to the hotel, we stopped at Twin Pizza one last time because it was so good and then chowed down on that and our delicious desserts. We are gonna sleep really well tonight.

As our trip draws to a close, I would like to thank each and every one of you who have taken he time out of your day to read our blog posts. If you haven't noticed, Kenzie and I have switched off every other day writing a post. I'm still bummed that it wasn't my day yesterday because I had so much to say about the Real Madrid Tour! We didn't plan to do this until the last minute, but I'm really glad that we decided to because it has been really great to unwind at the end of each day and just share a little bit about our day. It has been hard for us at time writing these blogs because we have so much to say and so many pictures to share, but we don't want to write up a dissertation length blog for you all to read! We hope you have enjoyed our blogs and thank you again for following along As We Travel. Kenzie will provide the final blog tomorrow and give her parting words for you all. Fear not though, we will be continuing this blog on future vacations that we will take. Future ones currently scheduled are as follows: Andrew - India (May 19-28) / Andrew, Kenzie, Tim & Paige - Puerto Rico (07/01-08).

                                            Goodbye Madrid, thank you for the memories!

~Andrew & Kenzie