Alright, it has been much too long since my last blog update so this one will probably be a long one! So last Friday we went to an art museum called the Prado museum. It was pretty cool...I suppose :/ It was huge and there was a ton of art in it and we spent about 3 and a half hours in it. I guess I just got museum fatigue or something. After the museum, a group of us found this huge park to wander through. It was so nice because it was sunny and much warmer than it had been while we had been there so far. There were some cool fountains throughout and there was a building called the crystal palace. It was all made of glass...SO cool looking! There was also a huge pond with row boats that you can rent and ride around in. We decided not to go on them that day, but we are planning to spend another afternoon there and take a picnic lunch and rent row boats!! That night a few of us bought ingredients to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and we went to our teachers house and made them, and surprisingly they turned out excellent!!!

On Saturday we had train tickets to go to a city called Cuenca! Its about a 2 hour train ride from Madrid and we were supposed to leave Madrid at 8:50am but our bus was late picking us up, so we got to the Alcala train station late, so the next train to Madrid put us there at about 8:50 and we got to the gate of our other train at 8:53. It was quite a site I'm sure to see 4 girls full-on sprinting through the train station throwing our bags through security and running all the way to
Us walking to the park!
gate 15 which was, of course, at the very end, only to find out that the train was no longer there and having about 30ish passengers and employees just looking at us with pity knowing exactly what had just happened. Then we had to attempt to, between the 4 of us, come up with enough words in our small Spanish vocabulary to explain that we missed our train and ask where we needed to go to find out about changing our ticked to the next train. We were sent to three different places before we got to the one that could actually do it for us, and it cost us 4 Euros each to do and didn't leave until 12:23. Needless to say we had time to kill yet we didn't want to go
Playing on the swings!!!

too far with the risk of again missing the train. We looked at the list of destinations that the metro goes to and pointed to one randomly and went there. There wasn't a whole lot to do there, it was more of a residential area, and to be honest I don't even remember what it was called. We wandered the streets and took pictures of some of the cool graffiti we saw, because if I have noticed anything in the country of Spain, it is the ample amounts of tagging talent that is so prevalent. They are constantly cleaning the streets and there is no litter to be found anywhere, yet they could care less about the walls that are completely covered in graffiti. We were able to make it back to Madrid with plenty of time to catch our train, and because we left so late we were only going to have about 4 hours in Cuenca. We got there and made our way up to "The Hanging Houses" or in Spanish "Las Casas Colgadas" which gives Cuenca its fame. They are these house that are on the edges of cliffs and the whole little town is built on this mountain. It has narrow steep streets with cute little houses and restaurants everywhere! I loved it! And once we were
Mark and I having fun with fountains!
there we decided we needed to come back for our free weekend that we had coming up the next weekend!
So, this weekend we went to Cuenca! We left on Thursday right after class and spend Thursday afternoon until this afternoon there! We found some really cool places to hike around there. One mountain we hiked and at the top was a huge statue with Jesus at the top and Mary at the base. And from up there, we could see the entire town of Cuenca, it was definitely one of the coolest things i have ever seen!! We found a cute little cafe to eat lunch at and we knew enough Spanish to be able to order something that we
The Crystal Palace!!
liked and we understood our waiter and all!! We were proud of ourselves. We wandered through the town and looked in all the fun shops throughout, and just happened to stumble upon a mall! We weren't even looking for it, it's like it came to us! Next to the mall was a McDonalds so we went and got McFlurrys with KitKat. McFlurrys here, we have discovered, are waaay better than the ones in the states! They give you not only a ton of Kitkat, but they also put hot caramel on it as well!!! It tasted SOOO good. For dinner last night we went to this delicious Italian restaurant in the mall. We loved it so much that we went there for lunch again today. One thing
Huge pillars...seemed like a good photo op!
about Spain is that the main meal of their day is lunch, and they eat it around 2 and have their siestas (naps) right after. So everything, but restaurants, close from 2-4. When we were eating lunch today, we were really enlightened on the importance of lunch here. We each ordered a standard plate of pasta like we would have in the states. While we were there waiting for our food and then eating our food, we were noticing the people around us each having what seemed to be 2 whole meals with wine, then a dessert and then a cup of coffee. The first "meal" wasn't even just a like a salad or appetizer seeming thing, it was like a plate of pasta and then a personal pizza, or a
Some cool architecture, no real significance.
plate of pasta then more pasta with a different sauce. Between our plates of pasta and the bread they gave us, we were having difficulty finishing our meals and we were appalled at the thought of not only having twice that much food, but adding on a dessert and coffee to the end of that as well. I don't know how America got the labels about being fat and lazy because from what we saw today, these Europeans eat a ton, and they get a whole 2 hours in the middle of the day to close down for eating and sleeping. I guess I should just be saying, I don't know how these people stay thin. It was a very fun weekend though, but it is nice to be back in the good ol' Alcala!!
Making cookies!!



















Soo delicious!!!!!!!!















The start of our venture into Cuenca!!





















Narrow streets of Cuenca!!!!!!
















You can kinda see the town from here
















This is the center of town where everything is!!














That is Cuenca, and the red bridge is a really narrow bridge that is really high off the ground. You have to walk across it to get into the little town!!



Sorry for the lengthy post, lots happens in a week!!!