For my last weekend in Spain, I spent the weekend in Madrid and Toledo. My flight to go home was out of Madrid on Sunday so it made sense to explore Madrid and Toledo on Friday and Saturday.

Friday morning I woke up super early to catch a 7am bus to Madrid. We arrived at our hostel at around 10am and dropped our things off to explore the city. The first thing we did was grab a bite to eat. The hostel we stayed at was just around the corner from this little bakery called Panishop. I got three of these flaky pastries that had chocolate inside and this mini calzone-like bread. It was all delicious and pretty inexpensive. It definitely gave me plenty of energy for the long walks ahead of me.

Once we were all satisfied we walked towards the Temple of Debod, which was about a 30 minute walk from our hostel. On our way there we had to walk through the plaza and there was a person in this shiny costume that had a dog face. It would bark and dance around. I know it was a performance, but it kind of freaked me out. The dog face was pretty scary looking. There was one woman who tried bringing her kid up to the thing and the kid did not want to go near it. I think the kid had the right idea.

But anyways, after that weird encounter, we continued making our way to the temple. One of the things I noticed while walking there was how quaint this huge city is. Madrid is definitely one of the largest cities in Spain, it's the capital, but the way the buildings are arranged and their style just makes this city feel so much smaller than it really is.

After lots of steps up a steep hill, we finally made it to the temple. It was pretty cool to see an Egyptian temple, even though it wasn't originally built there. Egypt actually gave this temple to Spain as a gift! Who'd a thunk!

Once we took in the views we walked towards the palace and took some great photos there. We didn't go inside but there were some great statues in the gardens that were nearby and the palace was just beautiful to look at.

We walked around a bit more and found ourselves at the Mercado de San Miguel, a neat market filled with lots of food! It all looked so yummy. We didn't get any food there because we were about to get lunch at a famous restaurant in Madrid, but we figured we would stop by the market to see what they had.

So for lunch we ate at the longest running restaurant in the world, Restaurante Sobrino de Botin. It was a pretty cool experience. We ate on the third floor of this restaurant, which I know makes it sound like it's huge, but it's only like 1 medium sized room on each floor, so it was kind of a tight fit. But the view from our table was pretty cool and the food was delicious, so I'd say it was a pretty great experience.

After lunch we walked around a bit more and made our way to the Puerta del Sol, which leads to a large shopping street. Although we didn't do any actual shopping, it was still pretty cool just walking under the covered streets.

We made our way back to the hostel to sign in and to relax for a little bit. Once we were all set and recharged, we walked to Casa Hernanz, which is a shop that still hand-makes shoes. I didn't get any, but some of the other girls did. It's actually pretty cool because there's so many options to choose from, and you can even get customized ones.

Then we made our way over to Parque El Retiro where the Palacio de Cristal and the Estanque Grande del Retiro can be found. The Palacio de Cristal (The Crystal Palace) was absolutely breathtaking. It was so beautiful. The sunlight hits the palace and it just sparkles and shines. There is a little pond right in front of it and in the pond were so many turtles, ducks, swans, and there was even a black swan! It was very relaxing to sit and watch the turtles swim around and also see the beauty of the palace. Then we walked over to the Estanque Grande del Retiro which is a man-made lake, where people could take boats out and row around. There were actually some pretty huge fish swimming around in there, which was a little concerning, but also pretty cool.

We then walked over to the Reina Sophia Museum to see Picasso's Guernica. After going to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, it was cool to see another one of his other masterpieces somewhere else. Like the Garden of Earthly Delights, there is so much being depicted. The scene is actually showing the destruction of the city, so there's quite a lot of death in this painting. It gave me the chills after a few minutes of looking at it because you start to see all of the death and destruction greater detail.

When we were done looking at the works of art, it was time to grab some food. We stopped at this restaurant that was pretty close to our hostel where we ordered some delicious pizza. However, we had an incident at this place. Our table was next to a giant open window and this woman came up to the window and put a piece of paper down on the table, asking for money. Now a lot of people have come up to us throughout our entire trip here in Spain so we've learned to just ignore them and they will go away. Unfortunately, this was one of those times where we should have not ignored them because this woman stole one of the girls' phone right off the table. The girl did not realize her phone had been stolen until about 15 minutes later, by which the thief was long gone. It's one of those situations where we were all mad at ourselves because we just weren't paying attention to what she was doing. It was suspicious that she had put the paper down on the table, but of course at the time we just thought that she wanted money, so we turned away from her. Luckily, nothing else was stolen, but we had to contact the girl's parents and figure out what to do next so that she could get a new phone when she gets back to the states.

Since that incident put a damper on the night, we went back to the hostel and just went to bed because we were going to wake up early again for a day trip to Toledo.

We woke up the next morning and headed to Toledo, which is only a 30 minute train ride from Madrid. The train station is on the outskirts of the city so we could see that the city is actually surrounded by a giant fortress. We walked into the city and grabbed a quick bite to eat for breakfast. Once we had enough to eat we walked to the other end of the city to see this bridge.

After the monastery we stopped at the Greco Museum. It was really cool to see his paintings and even the paintings that were variations of his by other artists. There were some beautiful gardens there as well where people, mostly kids, were painting. I think that's such a fun activity for kids to do at an art museum. It would have been fun for us to do it, but there was no room for a canvas in any of our luggage.

We walked up some steep streets to get to the cathedral. For some reason we had a hard time finding the entrance to the cathedral, so we ended up walking around the entire thing until we found the entrance. Even though we were confused, it was cool to see the streets around it because they were covered by these sheets and there were flowers and vines hanging from them. It was beautiful.

Once we finally entered the cathedral, we were free to walk around. There was so much to see, it was a huge cathedral. There were little rooms with pieces of art and church relics. There was even a little courtyard that had huge paintings on the walls. It was really cool to see and felt nice to be in a cold building because it was so hot outside.

We had worked up an appetite so we walked to the plaza and grabbed a quick bite to eat. We ate outside under a tent that would spray mist to cool us off. It was quite relaxing.

Once we were full, we headed over to the Alcazar. It was once a place where the king had lived but it is now a museum. We spent the rest of the afternoon there until it closed. It had a little bit of everything. A lot of it was about the history of Spain, but also of Europe in general, and even some of U.S history was told from the point of view of Spain. There were some art exhibitions, and parts of the Alcazar were open to view what it was like when the king lived there.

One of the last things we did was we went to this mosque that was then converted to a catholic church. It was small and we weren't there for too long, but it was interesting to see the combination of Islamic art and architecture with Christian art and architecture. It was very beautiful.

After the mosque, we headed towards the train station to wait for our train. When we got back to Madrid we headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit.

Once we had recharged, we went to the police station to file a report about the stolen phone. We found out that she just needed to have a report from the police and give it to the insurance company so that she can get a new phone for free. It took awhile and she had to explain everything in Spanish, but the police were very patient with us, and really helped us out. We are so thankful that they helped us.

We then made our way over to a restaurant to get our last dinner in Spain. We all got something different and not a traditional Spanish dinner, but it was delicious either way. Even though we were full, we heard about the best place to get chocolate con churros, Chocolateria San Gines, was nearby, so we headed over there. I've had my fair share of chocolate con churros, and I gotta say, they really were the best ones I've had. They gave you a lot of churros for a good price, and the chocolate was so delicious. It was the best part of the day.

I'm sad that my trip had to end, because I had such an amazing time in every city that I went to. I learned so much about myself and the country. I would love to go back to see more of this wonderful country.