These last 3 days have honestly been the craziest few days I think I've ever experienced. In fact, so much has happened, that I'm going to break this post down into days.

Day 1-
After arriving to our Hostel at 9:30am, and waiting 4.5 hours to check in at 2pm, we settled in to our 5 person jail cell room, and headed out to do some shopping. Lucky for us, we were only a 3 minute walk to Plaza Del Sol which was home to pretty much any store you could ever want. It also happened to be home to one of the main stages for Madrid Pride. The live music was SO loud and everyone was wearing rainbows, pride flags, tutu's, glitter, you name it. Men in short (and I mean short) shorts is not uncommon. OH ALSO, I'd like to point out that everyone in Madrid is either 1)gorgeous, 2)dresses impeccably, or 3)both. I've always heard people say that Spanish men are beautiful, but I wasn't ready for what I witnessed.
After 1 glass of wine, 3 sangria's, 1 massive mojito, and chicken paella, we walked back to our hostel to get ready to get the fiesta started. (PS- the sun isn't completely gone until around 10pm).
Around 12:15am, all 5 of us headed down to the bar in the hostel for a few drinks. Were quickly coerced into joining the bar crawl that was starting at 1am that night. Mind you, I'm not much of a partier, especially after 2am. I have never stayed up past 5am, and that was because I was writing a paper. I chugged a beer and took a shot of sangria(?) before heading out on my first pub crawl.
I'm not going to talk about the entire bar crawl because that would take forever and quite frankly I want to keep the memories to myself (but I'll post some pics below ;)). In the end, we got back to the hostel around 6am, and woke up at 4pm the next day. Nice, I know.

Day 2-
"Ashley, you wasted the whole day sleeping!" you might say. But that's where you're wrong. When the average bedtime is 4am, waking up at 4pm is nothing. Since it was our last day in Madrid, we wanted to take a tour of the city, but unfortunately the tour we wanted wasn't running due to Pride festivities. Instead, we walked around the city on our own. I finally tried chocolate con churros (which didn't live up to the hype, but was still good), and saw the STUNNING Royal Palace. The architecture in Madrid is breathtaking and continued to surprise me at every turn. There are street performers and artists everywhere you look, Pride flags were hung in almost every window, and everywhere you go is great for people watching. That night, since we had to catch a bus to Granada at 10:30am, we decided to skip the bar crawl and hang out in the hostel. Overall, I met some of the coolest and most interesting people from all around the world these last 2 days, andI'm in love with Madrid and I can't wait to go back ASAP.

Day 3-
This morning we got up at 7:45 to check out, eat breakfast, and head to the bus stop. After trying to hail a taxi which seemed like forever, we were officially headed out of Madrid. Our bus ride was 4.5 hours, but flew by. The countryside in Spain is beautiful with mountains, trees, fields, and old buildings. When we finally got to Granada, we met up with our host families and headed to our new homes. I'm not going to lie, I know absolutely very little Spanish so this is difficult, but I can't wait to see where I go from here.

Some things I noticed in Madrid:
-The air is SO clean and the streets are mopped and pressure washed every day
-Even though it's technically illegal, people hang out in the streets and drink.
-They don't ID for alcohol (from personal experience, I guess I just look old)
-If you're blonde, you will stand out and everyone will assume you're American
-Spanish men love blonde Americans
-Everyone is ready to party at any given time
-There's a lot of ham stores?
-Clubs stay open until 6am, but food places do not 😡
-There are Burger King's everywhere. Burger King here, is like McDonalds in America
-Water is so cheap. I got a 1.5 Liter bottle for 2 euros