Madrid

Well, I was expecting to have three posts done by this time. So I'll do my best to catch up.
As you may have gathered, I am in Spain! And I've been here for about a week.
I am part of a tour group. Everyone is great. Though I am the youngest by far, which is funny.
We're visiting a lot of amazing places.

We started out in Madrid. Mom and I arrived a day early, which was great so we had a day to adjust before all the activity began. That was a very long day, flying from America. We had a stop over in New York. I saw the city from the plane. I had never seen it before. I don't think I have even been east of Nevada, except for a trip to Yellowstone when i was really little.
The day of departure was a short day, since we were flying against the sun. I wasn't able to sleep on the plane. We arrived in Madrid on the morning of the next day, and were determined to stay awake as much as possible. We went walking around the city.
We met up with a couple other early arrivers from our group. I had met a couple of them before. Everyone else arrived the next day. Our group is eighteen people.
We've been so busy that it's all I can do to keep up with my notes. And the internet the last couple days might as well have been non existent.

Spain is actually different than I thought it would be. And by that, I thought that Spain would be a lot more different than America. Maybe because I have never been anywhere out of the America besides Asia. It's kind of funny that I don't stick out like a sore thumb here. I certainly did in China and Japan.
I am incredibly grateful for my three years of Spanish, even though I've forgotten a lot of it. I want to go over all of my notes from high school to refresh my knowledge of the language. Thanks to my freaking advisers, I didn't really get a chance to before I left. I should do it when I get home.

There are street performers all over. Some are people in interesting costumes. And there are musicians. And they are all fantastic.
Aah, one thing that has always gotten in the way is the siesta. Things close for several hours in the middle of the day, for a break. It makes it hard to visit places.
Our guide is named Adrian. He is the only one near my age. He does a great job too.
We have visited chapels, monasteries, and palaces. They have such amazing histories, and fantastic architecture. I've been taking tons of pictures. Though I have no way to get them on this tablet to share with you. The ipad is such a pain to type on. XD. It's a pain for everything.


Oooh, we visited the oldest restaurant in the world!

The royal palace of Madrid was incredible. And it had a huge armory.


And the Prado museum had so much art that you could easily spend a day or two taking everything in. We only had between two or three hours. Mam and I walked through really quickly and managed to see everything, even though it was brief. There was a lot of fantastic stuff. We had seen some of it in my humanities class in college.

The food is freaking fantastic. When we get lunch, there are three courses. And we're stuffed by the end. I haven't really needed to get dinner at all.

Oooh, something only I find interesting. They have loquats here! They're called nispero. I haven't seen loquats for sale since Nagasaki, where they are called biwa.
Biwa, nispero. I am becoming fascinated with this fruit. They so big and juicy here. I hope I can find more. I at a whole box muself, and then bought another box to share with the others, and spread the joy of biwa/nispero.
Okay, ill try to get part two done soon.

I hope you're all having fun at Fanime! Take pictures for me.