Madrid with Company!!

Monday in Madrid was bunches o fun!!! I met up with Liz at her hostel. It was so nice to see a familiar face! I left to go move over to a new and less expensive hostel. I had to share a room with 5 other people this time (the night before I had a room to myself) which was interesting because I got to meet a lot of new people! Liz and I met up again and had tapas (like appetizers) and salad at a little cafe and we got to sit outside. The salad was interesting because it had raw or cured? salmon in it. It was really good! After eating, we walked to the parque del buen retiro...this is a big beautiful park in Madrid. There were tall trees with beautiful orange leaves, guys playing soccer, couples having picnics. We swung on the swings in the playground area! It was nice to see all the active people....people riding bikes, working out on the playground equipment, rollerblading, skateboarding, and even rollerskating! After the park, we stopped by el corte ingles...a big grocery center/shopping mall. We bought a few little things like apples and tuna with crackers for snacks. We decided to go back to our hostels before meeting again for dinner. When I went back to the hostel, I met some more new people, including an English teacher from California who was traveling through Spain for vacation (he was with family but decided to stay longer). His name was Carlos and he was super outgoing. I ended up inviting him to dinner with Liz and I. We went to a place called Tapas y Vino. I never realized there are so many ways to top a piece of bread. I ordered tapas or inexpensive appetizers...one was a piece of bread with salmon and a really good cheese on top and the other was bread with ratatoiulle and a slice of boiled egg on it. It was nice to have Carlos with us because he was more comfortable speaking in Spanish than me and he helped me order. He also taught us a little about the Portugese language, like the difference between Brazilian Portugese and Portugal Portugese...one of them sounds prettier than the other. Carlos invited us to a pub crawl, but we were tired and it was a Monday....a pub crawl is where you pay a certain amount and you get to have so many drinks/shots and get into a certain amount of bars or clubs. Liz and I just decided to call it a night!
I had so much fun with Liz on Monday!!!!!