A semester in Espana: It's Friday, Friday: Retiro Parque, Plaza Mayor and San Miguel Market

This Friday I dedicated to exploring around Madrid. I went to el Parque del Retiro in Madrid with some of my friends. It’s a really famous old park with a bunch of fountains, old buildings and a mini lake that you can rent rowboats on. The rowboats are a big tourist thing to do at Retiro so naturally I had to do it. It is only 5 Euros to rent the boat for 45 minutes that seats up to four people so its pretty affordable. It was fun. The row-paddles were pretty tiny and with my left leg getting in the way with the boot, I wasn’t very good at rowing. However, the sights around the lake were very pretty and we went on a gorgeous day. It was sunny with a slight breeze and a lot of the guys rowing in other boats were shirtless and enjoying the sun.

After the rowing, we all just explored around the park and found this Crystal Palace building that was very pretty. Its walls and ceiling were made completely of glass and it also had a little lake with a fountain outside it and a bubble blowing guy. The inside of the building had works of art from the Reina Sofia (Madrid’s modern art museum) that were kind of weird. I don’t really get modern art but the building itself was beautiful.

After being at Retiro for a while, we decided to go to Plaza Major, just because I have never been there and it is pretty cool. It’s a big square that is famous in Madrid full of restaurants, shops and street performers/entertainers.

Everything is pretty close together in Madrid and we were all hungry so we decided to go check out this market called San Miguel. It’s a big market were they sell seafood, paella, fruit, vegetables, pastries, ice cream and other assorted things in a market format but you can also eat dinner there. It was interesting and very crowded. I got a chorizo empanada. Chorizo is just some kind of raw Spanish meat, similar to pepperoni. It was ok. I don’t really love Spanish meat because most of it is raw, so it’s an adjustment.

After that we all got gelato and I had to go home. I was close to an hour late for dinner (We usually eat at 8pm and it was close to (pm) and my host mom was made I didn’t call. She said she was worried. Whoops. I don’t have her number in my phone yet but I should probably add it for that reason. The rest of the night I just relaxed. I was gone for 6 or 7 hours that day exploring so my foot a bit.