February 10th Sunday

Our flight home was scheduled for 5:00 that evening so we wanted to pack in as much Madrid as possible. We got up a bit before 9:00 and got ready to go find churros. We walked down along the street and ended up going to a touristy restaurant hoping that would mean they had them. They did not. What they did have were purros. These are very similar but larger and possibly greasier. I ordered the breakfast that had a glass of juice, hot chocolate, and purros. Since we all ordered purros, they brought them out on a big plate for us all to share. I discovered the best way to eat them was to dip them in the thick hot chocolate. It was quite delicious. The flavors went very well together. We enjoyed our breakfast and lingered in the restaurant a little longer than we had maybe intended. We still wanted to see other things.

After breakfast we decided to hit the botanical gardens for a little while. The entry fee only turned out to be €1 since we are students. We walked around for a while and saw a garden that was not spectacular but had the potential to be so once plants started blooming. The interesting part that we did find was the greenhouse along the edge of the garden. It had a different room for each climate. There was a desert room with huge cacti. There were other more tropical ones too. In one of the tropical ones, it seemed like there was something growing on every inch of surface. The walls were covered with green.

We eventually had to leave to go meet Maria. She was going to show us a giant open-air market that’s only open on Sundays. We took the metro to get there. This place was packed. I felt like a fish swimming upstream. It was very difficult to keep a group of four together in the large mass of people. The street was lined with vendors. They were selling all kinds of things such as clothing, movies, and souvenirs. The prices were right too. I ended up buying a blue and gold scarf for €2. Adrienne bought some earrings as presents. We spent a lot of time elbowing through the crowd. I had only brought a large sweater to Spain. I ended up stripping down to my T-shirt because of the warm sun. I couldn’t believe how warm it was in February. It got up to 17⁰ C.

We ended up stopping in a bar to get some refreshments before heading to the airport. I had an orange juice. We also ordered potatoes in a garlic cream sauce as well as bread with an onion cheese spread on it. We were pretty hungry and thirsty. Soon we had to hurry out and make it back to the apartment so we could make it to the airport.

We hopped on the metro and took it back to the Atocha Renfe stop. As Adrienne and I did some last minute packing, Karuna fixed us more food for lunch. She had some blueberry soup that she heated up. It was actually quite tasty. Maria made some chicken nuggets for all of us. Karuna sent us off with a slice of sandwich bread wrapped around a hunk of chocolate. It’s apparently a European treat for kids. Adrienne and I kind of looked at each other and set into eating the strange treat.

We rushed out of the apartment and decided that it was too late for us to take the metro. Karuna helped us flag down a taxi. We hopped in and told him to go to the airport. I got nervous and double checked with the driver that there was only one airport since I couldn’t remember the proper name of it. He affirmed that there was only one. This was another moment that I was glad that I could speak some Spanish. The ride didn’t take very long at all. It ended up costing €20. I didn’t care as long as we caught our flight.

We made it with plenty of time and found our terminal. We were on the plane and ready to go by 17:10. I listened to music for most of the flight.
Eventually we landed in Beauvais. We found the bus back and got on it. We sat separately but it was only one row difference. I ended up dozing for much of the ride. Car and bus trips often make me very sleepy. Plus, we still had not recovered from our lack of sleep Thursday night.

We made it to the bus stop and got all ready to take the RER trains back. But, once we got into the station they had an announcement that said that a “social movement” was affecting the traffic of the RER C line. They didn’t have any notice of when trains would be available so we went to the metro instead. Thankfully we could connect to the metro in that station and we wouldn’t have to waste a ticket. We took line 1 to line 12 and made it to our Solférino stop. It felt so good to be back! We finally got home after 9:30pm or so.

While waiting for the metro, I had turned to Adrienne and said “Who knew that these stinky metro stations would become so familiar to us?” It is a strange but comforting feeling when something so foreign becomes familiar.

We dropped off our bags and I set to making dinner. I quickly just heated up some of our frozen ratatouille and made some couscous. We devoured it like starving wolves.

I managed to talk to my parents on the phone. It was fun to give them an update after my trip.
Finally I showered and got to bed.