Catherine+Diary+Entries


 * __Part B__** **__Travel Diary__**

Day 1

This is our first night in Madrid, it's such a beautiful city! We landed about 3 hours ago and now we are in the hotel, it's such a beautiful hotel room too! So on the drive to the hotel we passed by many of the wonderful buildings, and passed a few of the parks that i would love to go visit during the day. I didn’t know what the park was called, but I remembered it’s location. So once we went to the ho9tel, and we put our bags in our rooms, I went down stairs to find out what the name of the park was. It was called Casa De Campo she said that I still had 2 hours to go until it closed, it was close by, so I thought that I’d grab someone to come with me to check it out, I grabbed one of the girls and it was magnificent. I have never seen anything so beautiful! I couldn’t believe how peaceful it was, and I think it looked, much, much nicer than in the day time! Lots of couples were there holding hands, I guess on dates! There was a lake, and there was an amusement part towards the back of the park, and they had a swimming pool and tennis court, why doesn’t Australia have a magnificent place like this? I could live here.

Day 2

We all felt really hungry, and none of us felt like cooking anything, the whole change in time from Australia is still kind of with us. So we decided we would go round and have a look for something to go eat. Oh my gosh, we walked out into the street and there was food everywhere! They seem to be like little cafeteria or café things. They offered sandwiches, croissants, coffees and juices and the ever so popular churros. I had a croissant and a coffee because I wasn’t so completely sure what everything on the menu meant, so I thought I’d keep it safe, and because I have always heard “Churros” on tv, I thought I’d try one, they were really sweet, after all, they are covered in sugar, but now I think I’m hooked! The waiters were really nice, always coming back to make sure if we wanted anything else to eat or drink, I think they just wanted us to spend more money just because we were foreigners. But then again, that might just be the way they serve, I’m not sure.

Day 4

Me and the girls really wanted to go out, and look at the museums and art centers So we thought that we would travel by foot to a place close by to our hotel, it was called Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia it was so interesting, it was a cultural centre that contained a lot of Spanish contemporary art that is apparently taking permanent residence in the museum. They had so many displays, such as painting sculpture, video, photography and film, luckily for us the tour guide around the museum spoke good English so that he could translate a lot of the captions otherwise we would have been stuck there for ages trying to translate them out of our dictionary and wouldn’t have spent enough time inspiring the artwork. I could have stayed there for hours and hours, as if the 2 hours we were there wasn’t enough!

Day 10

We went out today with the group and we had a little difficulty trying to communicate with some of the locals, I had a English to Spanish dictionary which helped a little but luckily we were in a city that a lot of foreigners go to, so we bumped into a few English speaking Locals and they told us how to get to Palacio Real we REALLY wanted to go there because we had heard so much good stuff about what a great place it is, and it really was. It was an old royal palace that the king used to live in, but now it’s not being resided in, but it is being used as a tourist attraction. We weren’t allowed to view the entire building, but we saw most, it had beautiful gardens, and its architecture was so interesting in its own way, and they had wonderful paintings hanging from the walls too. The tour guide was such a nice lady and seemed pretty fluent in English. She could answer any question we through at her. The workers on the other hand didn’t seem as friendly as her, maybe they just aren’t supposed to talk to the visitors.

Day 14

We thought that we would end our last night in Madrid by partying, and drinking. They have things called Disco Pubs and they have a small dance floor but everyone got up and danced once they had a few to drink, it was actually quite fun, there was a live band, but they also had a DJ playing too, it was a really fun and great atmosphere, too bad we didn’t go there earlier in our trip. We were a little exhausted, and it was only midnight, but were we hungry, so we thought we would try and find somewhere to go and grab a bite to eat, and that café we went to at the beginning of our trip was still open and serving customers, so we stopped by there before heading back to the hotel, before having to rest up before our big flight home the next day.