Eurotrips and Such: Spain

So as I said in my preview post, I recently returned from 2 weeks of touring in Europe. I went with a tour group of about 40 people to Spain, France and Italy. I haven't decided yet if I want to give the name of the tour group I went with. I'll know by the end of this post. I'm not sure how to go about this so I think I'll break it down by country and give you my highs and lows.

 Spain:
This was by far my favorite part of the trip which is good because that's what I was most looking forward to. We went to Madrid, Barcelona and a little town called Zaragoza. To be honest I thought I would like Barcelona the best but it was somewhat disappointing (largely because of the hotel location). Madrid however was a very pleasant surprise. The good thing about Madrid was that our hotel was in a very good location with tons of little shops and restaurants all around. It was also walking distance to a lot of things like the Prado and Reina Sofia Museums. In fact, the Reina Sofia was located directly behind our hotel, all you had to do is walk out the back entrance and there it was.

Where the row boating took place at Retiro Park.

We were also very close to Retiro Park where we had a fun and interesting day of row boating, the mafia and bunnies. A crazy combination I know, maybe I should explain. The row boating is pretty self explanatory, you pay a few Euros and rent a boat for 45 minutes, nothing complicated. After the boats we went walking around the park and ran into an older (maybe 30s-40s) Spanish guy named 'Carlos' with a rabbit on a leash. Her name was Lolita. He pretty much showed/followed us around the park for the next few hours. The most interesting thing is that he barely spoke any English and we barely spoke any Spanish which was actually kinda fun. The good news is that he showed us a cheap place to eat and we found our way to another part of the park with a little lake with swans, turtles, frogs and a waterfall. While there we asked for a picture and he said he couldn't because he was in the mafia. Red flag much? Not that we ditched him right away. We saw some other tourists and offered to take pictures of them when they told us to ditch Carlos because he was probably a pick-pocket. Soon after that we ditched him when he told us to follow him through the park somewhere and we walked in the other direction. All in all, it was a good day.

Lolita

Barcelona was cool but I honestly liked Madrid better. For starters, we got upgraded to a 4 star hotel in BCN which sounds like a good thing but it turned out not to be. The only REALLY good thing about that hotel was that the breakfast was more like what we have in American hotels, ie. eggs, fruit, meats, etc. The other hotel breakfasts mainly consisted of bread in the form of croissants and pastries. My main issue is that this hotel was far away from everything, which was really annoying considering that our previous hotel was walking distance to everything thing. As if the 10 mile trek up the hill to the hotel wasn't bad enough, there was absolutely nothing fun or even remotely interesting to do nearby. Correction: There was ONE really good Italian restaurant down the hill with the best pizza I've ever had in my life. Otherwise that place was a bust.Other than that, La Rambla/Las Ramblas/La Ramblas or however you say it is a pretty cool little area. Lot's of shops, restaurants and bars. It's really busy and always full of people. I think the most interesting part was the big food market La Boqueria (I think). There's all kinds of animal parts, fruits and other food for sale in there. I recommend trying the coconut smoothie. Very good.

Smoothies in the food market, they have all kinds of flavors.

Of course no visit to Spain is complete without a little Sangria.....

Not sure why the pic came out weird after I rotated it...whatever.

If you're planning a trip to Spain, here are the places I recommend:

Madrid
-Retiro Park
-Royal Palace
-Gran Via
-Debod Temple
-Hotel Mediodia (nice central location in my opinion)
-Plaza Mayor

Barcelona
-La Ramblas
-The beach (obviously)
-La Boqueria

That's all for now, the next post will be about my brief encounter in France.

(ps: Hold tight to your purse, pick pockets are rampant in Spain and it's ALWAYS crowded as hell)