Editor’s note: I’m FORCING Mandi to write a few sentences about each day of her trip so I can then post those memories here. She’s not happy about that, but too bad, so sad.
And without further ado, here is the report:
Day One: The Flight.
I woke up at freakin’ 2:30 a.m. to check my luggage to make sure I had everything. I was groggy, tired, had a headache, and doing this was no picnic. My dad came in and made sure I was up, and then we left. When we got to the airport we found a group of teachers, students, and parents. They didn’t look like they were having fun either. After getting my bags checked and my ticket ready at hand we left.
My parents had loaded me up with enough drugs to stock a small pharmacy so I was planning on sleeping through all of my flights. Funny story, none of them worked. I tried all of them (I waited a few hours before taking a new pill or two), Advil pm, Tylenol pm, Benidril, and a few others. I’m immune or something. I tried to fall asleep on my own, but I just couldn’t.
So, thirty hours or so on a plane with no sleep, what do you think I did? I doodled in my sketch pad, wrote in my journal about how bored and tired I was, digested nasty airplane food, used the airplane toilet while experiencing turbulence (such a happy experience), stared at nothing-my record is 2 minutes and fourteen seconds (my neighbor had a watch and timed me), watched 27 Dresses (watched being the key word, I didn’t know where to plug in my earphones.), and read the plane pamphlets about how to fasten your seatbelt 15 times.
Day Two: Airport to Hotel & the Prado
We arrived at the Madrid airport sometime in the morning. We got in, went through customs, heard many Spanish accents, retrieved our luggage, and set off to our hotel. We were greeted our tour guide Riu (yes you read right, that’s her name) and took a bus. When we arrived we immediately ran to our rooms and started unpacking.
While exploring my bathroom I noticed a strange toilet thing. Apparently it was called a baday, and you use it to take a sponge bath. Then we were off. We drove to Madrid and saw the city streets, the tourist traps, smelled the cigarette smoke that was everywhere (I was afraid of second hand smoke it was so bad…), and then we went to the Prado. In case you don’t know this, the Prado is a world famous art museum.
The paintings there were so beautiful, but my favorite by far was Las Meninas. We left the museum and went shopping. I got Emily and Melissa flamenco dolls at a shop across the street. We then went to dinner. It was kind of a let down t be honest. You think of European food and internally say YUM!! But we went to this not so delicious restaurant and had some cold rice and potatoes. Yuck.
Then we went back to our hotel and passed out the second our heads touched our pillows.
She is definetly her fathers daughter! She sound just like you Jared.. She also sounds all grown up–
Good to hear her point of view.
Glad Mandi made it home safely and was not overly impressed by the Europeans. I always did think they were overated. Most of the cream of the European crop emigrated to the U.S. about a hundred years ago. I will anxiously await more of her trip report.
mandi— I love that you are posting!:)
I remember first seeing the baday and wondering WHAT the heck it was….I will say I never used one.:)
The movie on the plane(it was my first time flying) and I found out where to plug in the headphones — but I watched the movie in German cuz I didn’t even know you could change the channel to English. LOL.
I’m so glad you had this experience, can’t wait to hear more.