¡La ciudad que tiene de todo!

This Saturday our guest blogger is Sarita! Take a look at what Sarita has to say about her first week in Madrid: 

Being in Madrid for the first time in my life has been so amazing. There seems to be a never ending amount of places to visit or explore, tons of different shops and endless architecture to see. When I first arrived in Spain, I was so tired from not having slept in about 30 hours. We did some activities in our learning groups and then we finally got into our hotel room. After relaxing, me and some friends went to visit el parque de El Retiro, which was an 8 minute walk from our hotel. When we got there, we were in awe at how big it was because even though a few of us had already been to a small corner, the park seemed endless. From fountains, architecture and statues, to tons of trees and flowers, the park is truly as good as it's talked about. We walked around the park a ton, and what caught my attention the most was the Palacio de Cristal, which is huge and gorgeous. We also saw La rosaleda, which is a huge garden of roses and flowers shaped in a certain way to create a really beautiful, and colorful shape with tons of paths through it. As we walked through the park, there were so many different people and families there and so many friendly people, who said hi whenever you walked past them. We got ice cream too, and with it being my first time ever using euros, I was nervous, but the ice cream worker was so nice and helpful, there was no need to stress. 

    After we returned to the hotel from the park, we ate dinner and I was so ready to go to bed. However my friend had other plans and she told me I had to come explore with her, and to find the rest of our group. We went to their last known location and found a staircase 5 minutes from the hotel. We really weren’t sure if we should go up it, because we were in a new city and didn’t know the community yet. It had graffiti art on the wall leading up to it and nobody was around at the bottom of the stairs so we didn’t know if our friends were up those stairs or not, but it was too intriguing to ignore. We went up the stairs and wow were we in for a surprise. There was a small park, a full basketball court that had a super colorful floor, and a place to play soccer. So many teens and young adults were there that we were able to play multiple games of basketball and even a small sided soccer game. Everybody was super welcoming and it was an awesome way to get to know some culture right from the get-go. Being active, meeting other people and practicing our Spanish all on the same day was incredible. Having met incredible people and getting a peak at everything the city had to offer was truly incredible and it got me even more excited about what’s to come.