Today began with a multitude of mouth watering tapas and refreshing beer at a steal of 2.50 euro. All starving, my roommates and I searched for the tapas bar that everyone has spoken so well of, El Tigre. And now we know why everyone raved about this place. All we had to do was order our less than 3 euro beers and we were handed over three large plates of tapas, paella and croquetas, making our jaws drop. All of this was for us? There is no seating at El Tigre but rather a counter lining the walls of the entire restaurant that you stand at. After expressing our excitement for finding the most amazing place to get food, we proceeded to dig in and found we could barely finish everything. I couldn’t bear to leave any food behind so I gave into my impulse to wrap some of the croquetas (fried cheese balls) into a napkin to save for later. It’s safe to say that my roommates and I left the tapas bar with food comas.

Having no classes today, we were all free to explore the city, starting with shopping. Everyone here in Madrid is very stylish, making me very tempted to buy some clothes in order to keep up the winter fashion. But I was determined to save my money and wait a little longer before purchasing clothes. In order to escape the temptations of spending all of my money, I decided to branch off from the group with Emily and spend a day of wandering – which we’ve started to become very good at. While we ended up getting caught in a little drizzle of rain and while my hands were so cold that I thought that my fingers would fall off, we ended up enjoying ourselves and walked through a park while practicing studying Spanish vocabulary from notecards. It was then that we came across a terrace that overlooked the city. You could see the royal palace! Even in the gloomy weather it was beautiful.

Next, we came across the Templo de Debod, which is an Egyptian temple that was brought over to Madrid and rebuilt as a gift in 1968. Emily and I ended up running into two of our other roommates and had a little photo shoot with the structures outside. We then ventured inside and read (although a lot of it was in Spanish) about the history of the temple.

We wandered through the palace gardens nearby until we eventually winded up back into familiar territory near our Spanish home in Sol, the center of Madrid. Emily and I decided to take a detour to the little churro place across the street from our Spanish apartment for a tasty snack. Chocolateria San Gines is right around the corner from club Joy, so it is open to the many drunk clubbers leaving the dance club until about six in the morning (and I admit I was one of those looking for a late night snack after Joy later on in my semester). The Spanish like to enjoy their churros con chocolate, which is supposedly hot chocolate. But this hot chocolate is not the kind you would have in America. It is thick and creamy, tasting like melted down chocolate in milk. When we ran out of churros to dip in it, I offered to drink up the rest. I was so glad this place was only across the street. Needless to say, I treated my belly well today.