Travel Journals

(In Madrid, I was required to write travel journals for each day I was there. I have five of them, I'll post a new one everyday.)

Madrid, Day One, June 24th

I'm not sure what I was expecting upon first arriving in Madrid. I awakened from the sleep lulled on by the bus and found that there was a city outside the windows. From the first glimpse, I could see that Madrid would be nothing like Bilbao. The towering, metropolitan city, with its modern architecture, packed streets, busy sidewalks and numerous American corporations, it was the absolute opposite next to modest little Bilbao.

Truth be told, it reminded me of America, and not in the refreshing way. While the large, bustling city was fantastic in its own right, it didn't quite feel like the escape from America that the rest of Spain had provided so far. But I was being judgmental, really. I was hungry, tired, and the hotter weather in Madrid was going to take some adjusting to.

Reminding myself to keep my judgments reserved until I knew the city better, I went along with the group into Hotel Regina, pleased to see a rather regal, modern place and a comfortable room. After arriving, a group of students and I set about to explore the city, determined not to be lazy on the first day here. All the construction going on reminded me of home.

In Reno, there are two seasons: winter and construction. It looked similar in Madrid.

After an unimportant excursion in Corte Inglés – I'm not much of a shopper, and once you shop one place, you shop everywhere – the group and I went to the Museum of Architecture. This was a much more interesting visit, and I delighted in looking at the exhibits. I looked at prehistoric, protohistoric, egyptian and medieval items alike, and I remain consistently fascinated with all the information history has to offer. I thought that I was going to look forward to exploring more of Madrid's museum, getting a taste of the history.

After the museum, the group and I returned to the hotel, where I met my roommate Adrianna, a friendly girl joining me in the Bilbao program. The rest of the night was unexciting, and after dinner, us weary students returned to bed. I was looking forward to seeing more of Madrid, and hopefully coming to love it as much as I had grown to love Bilbao.