MIS PADRES EN ESPANA

The bus ride from Salamanca to Madrid seemed to take forever. All I wanted to do was see my parents. Instead, I was sitting on the bus watching some Spanish dubbed movie with Mathew Perry and Bruce Willis. Ugh, get me to Madrid faster. The busses are only allowed to drive 100 km/hour, so it seemed like we just trudging along. Eventually I did make it to the bus station in Madrid. I got off the bus grabbed my suitcase from under the bus and headed for the escalator. As I got on the escalator, I saw my dad going down the escalator. It was the best sight of my life, my real dad, not my padre Luis. My mom was waiting at the top of the escalator. Of course, as soon as I saw her, the tears started coming. It felt so good to be with parents, and I was so proud of them for navigating through the Madrid subways all by themselves.

After our hugs and kisses, we headed back down to the metro to take us to the center of the city. I wanted to show my parents the Plaza Mayor. I still had my entire luggage with me, so I had to drag it through the metro and then through the city. This would not be first time I would be dragging my luggage through a Spanish metro and through the center of the city.

The Plaza Mayor was filled with street performers as usually. My mom was awed at the creative characters that were performing on the Plaza. We walked around the Plaza for a while taking pictures. After passing several café’s on the Plaza all asking us if we wanted to sit down, we settled on one café and my parents got their first taste of café con leche.

After leaving the plaza, I decided to show my parents El Corte Ingles. This just happens to be the most famous department store in Spain, equipped with everything from a music department to a grocery store. We walked through the grocery store part. I wanted to show my parents some of the strange things that are considered food in Spain. As we walked into the grocery store, we randomly saw Emily Barge, another girl in the program that was visiting her French friend in Madrid. I convinced my parents to buy me some peanut butter; because this is one of few places you can buy the glorious stuff. Also peanut butter is like 4 euros a jar, and I did not feel like dropping my own dinero. With peanut butter in hand, we headed back to the metro to go back to our hotel.

We were spending the night in the Hilton right next to the airport since we were leaving bright and early in the morning for Madrid. We had a bit of difficultly finding the hotel, and ended up walking across a highway and through a medium to get to the right side of the road. We should have taken getting lost on the way to the hotel in Madrid as a sign for what was to come in Barcelona! The hotel was very modern. There were these chairs shaped like hearts, which were a lot cooler to look at than they were comfortable. We ate a late dinner at the Hilton and then my jet-lagged parents passed out.