Since ESSEC chooses to cancel classes for the smallest of occasions, we took the opportunity to book a trip to Madrid and Toledo in Spain and then Lisbon and Porto in Portugal for the week!
We flew out on Thursday to Madrid and spent the day walking around the city, beginning in Gran Via. After grabbing some falafal at Maoz, a local vegetarian joint to Madrid, we walked through Sol, Plaza Mayor, and made our way through the heart of the city. After doing some intense exploration, we decided it was time to do what Madrid was famous for: drink sangria and eat tapas! So we got on the metro and set off for Alonso Martinez, where we were told the tapas bars were excellent! When we settled in on a cute little cafe called EMYFA, we discovered quite possibly the best sangria we have ever had. One pitcher/10 glasses later, we were on our way to loving Madrid a whole lot more! Mana consumed every last spanish olive (so yummy!) while Sahil attacked the potato crisps and we went straight to dinner from there.
While food was a bit challenging for Sahil given that he's vegetarian, we found a restaurant that overlooked Plaza Mayor and ordered a few tapas with another pitcher of sangria! While the sangria here was okay, the asparagus was our first shock of really bad tapas! Apparently, asparagus in Madrid is quite different from the States. While we are used to the crunchy green vegetable, they know it as the white vegetable that becomes mush as soon as you touch it much like Gerber food for babies. We learned our lesson though - no more asparagus in Spain! After dinner, Mana used the 3 years of Spanish she learned about 14 years ago to converse for 45 minutes with the two very sweet waiters from Peru and Ecuador. We learned about the political challenges Latin Americans faced with local Spaniards and they shared all of their struggles in terms of being treated equally Spain. We shared our stories from our honeymoon in Costa Rica and Panama and became fast friends with them, making the bad asparagus worth the visit to this restaurant with kind waiters!
After an exciting first day in Madrid, we decided to head to Toledo for a day trip on Friday. We didn't know what to expect except that Toledo had one of the most beautiful cathedrals in all of Spain. After an hour bus ride from Madrid to Toledo (where Sahil slept the entire ride!), we were very pleasantly surprised. Toledo is a beautiful town on top of a mountain with breathtaking views of nature! We loved Toledo, especially after having explored more of a commercial experience in Madrid. We made our way up the mountain and took a tour of the cathedral and monuments as well as took in the beauty all around us. After 5-6 hours of exploration, we decided it was worth the trip and beautiful, but there was definitely much more activity in Madrid so it was time to head back. When we returned to Madrid, we hit up one of Sahil's favorite places in Madrid: Principe Pio, which is pretty much a much fancier version of Grand Central Station in NY. After getting some fantastic steals on party clothes, we made our way to Plaza de Espana where we got some beautiful shots of the lit up founains and saw the Palacio Real at night. Afterwards, we discovered The Wok, a trendy and fun asian restaurant full of locals and spicy food! After a delicious meal, we decided to walk through the city and have a low key night in anticipation of our friends' arrival the next day to Madrid.
On Saturday, we were really excited to meet up with one of Mana's closest friends form her year at LSE, Asha, and her boyfriend Josh! Mana hadn't seen Asha in 7 months since Asha's last trip to NY and we hadn't seen Asha and Josh together since our wedding in July 2008! We met in the afternoon and headed straight to Plaza Mayor since the sun was out, the spanish guitarists were playing in the courtyard, and sangria was calling our names! After many drinks of sangria and local beer and some really tasty tapas as well as great catch-up time, we headed back towards our hotel for a mini-siesta when Josh realized he had to buy a pig for a friend back home. Interestingly unique to Madrid and perhaps all of Spain is that it is common to find pigs hanging from a stick in the windows of most stores. 220 euros later, we grew from four to five and Josh named his dear pig Javi, short for Javier. We headed back, took a short nap, and got ready to paint the city red that night!
After some champagne, wine, and chocolates, we headed out to Moncloa, which was recommended to us by the hotel as a young, fun, and local area full of restaurants and fiestas. We found a FANTASTIC tiny restaurant called El Tendido and ate great food! The funniest part of our dinner was when Josh and Mana devoured the first plate of tapas that came our way thinking it was meat. At the end of our dinner, while poor Sahil was still wondering where his dish was, we realized that the first plate was actually Sahil's breaded mushrooms! We then ordered another plate and watched Sahil enjoy every little slice of that delightful dish!
Afterwards, the four of us (we left Javi at the hotel) headed to a local bar playing AMAZING music and pretty much danced and drank the night away. We continued until 3am when we finally headed back to our hotel.
On Sunday when we woke up, we took some time to recover, but had a REALLY tasty french toast of sorts with honey before making our way to Plaza de Espana for lunch. While Josh and Asha ate paella, Mana and Sahil had tasty tostas and a delicious egg dish with potatoes and vegetables. We then walked towards Sol and had one last pitcher of Sangria together before saying goodbye to our friends as they headed home to London!
We enjoyed our last night in Sol, said goodbye to Spain until our next trip to Barcelona in 3 weeks when we meet Sahil's parents there, and got excited for Part 2 of this excursion as we headed off to Portugal the next day!
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