Tuesday, July 3rd Natural Environment

     David woke up, the first one awake, around 7:00 AM CET(the timezone of Madrid), and when he turned towards the others, he laughed at Evan Cope's face covered in mustaches, accidentally waking up Evan Langebeck in the process. Still having over an hour before the plane would land, David returned to playing video games, and Evan Langebeck continued with the same Sudoku puzzle he had been stuck on the previous night. After around 30 minutes, Evan Cope woke up, who then attempted to continue his drawing on Matt's face, waking Matt up in the process.

A picture from Xanacuk

     We got to the airport in Madrid at 8:05 AM, and we headed to the baggage claim, grabbed our luggage, and headed to customs. We breezed through customs, and we were able to easily grab a taxi to our hotel by 9:00. The taxis in Spain are strange, being mostly black, but yellow doors.  We first took a taxi to our hotel, getting there around 9:30.  We were much too early to be able to check in, but luckily the hotel allowed us to store our luggage there before we got our rooms so we could explore Madrid without having to carry our luggage around with us.  From the hotel, we walked to Restaurante Xanacuk for a large breakfast.

     At Xanacuk, Evan Cope ate a chicken wrap that was a mix of greens, chicken, Parmesan cheese, and some Cesar sauce.  David got a salad with quinoa, grilled vegetables, dry tomato, spinach, and chicken, although he picked out the spinach, which Matt happily scarfed up.  Along with the spinach from David's salad, Matt got a Gabi Juice, which is a smoothie made out of pear, orange, banana, spinach, and ginger.  Evan Langebeck settled on a Tandoori Chicken Wrap, which was made up of cabbage, lombardo, carrots, chicken with tandoori sauce, and mango chutney.

Picture of Putera de Alcalá from the air

     After we all ate our breakfast, we called a taxi to go to Buen Retiro Park.  Before we entered, we passed by the beautiful Fountain of Cibeles, a fountain shaped in the likeness of a goddess on a chariot driven by two lions.  After passing that, we passed a beautiful structure, Puerta de Alcalá.  Puerta de Alcalá is a monument made up of 3 arched passageways and 2 rectangular passageways, one on each side of the arches.  Around the monument, the grass had flowers in a beautiful spiraling shape.

     When we got to a spot the taxi could stop, we got out of the taxi and walked into the park.  We walked down a long and wide two-sided entrance down to a large circular open area with a fountain in the center.  As we continued in awe of our surroundings, we reached a large rectangular lake called "Estanque grande del Retiro".  We walked to the railings surrounding it, and, as we should have expected, Matt pretended to push Evan Langebeck into the lake.  After the hostility subsided, we continued on our exploration through the beautiful park.  We continued wandering the park, and eventually found a fountain called "Fuente del Ángel Caído", or "Fountain of the Fallen Angel," which is a fountain depicting Satan falling from Heaven.  From there we found our way to La Rosaleda, a botanical garden in Buen Retiro Park.

La Rosaleda // Natural Environment

     The cool breeze and the shade given by the trees surrounding us was a welcome escape from the heat we had dealt with throughout the day so far.  The beautiful assortment of various types of roses from all over the world took our breath away.  As we walked throughout the well cared for pathways throughout the garden and past several gardens, we were in awe of the beauty and careful coordination and work that had been put into the garden, all for the citizens and tourists in Madrid.

Picture of Fuente del Ángel Caído

We wandered throughout the garden for about 30 minutes until we realized that it had gotten close to 6 PM and that we should probably eat dinner, and then head back to our hotel.

     We decided to eat at Mercado de la Reina, a decision we do not regret.  David had a roasted pepper salad with a tuna taco that was surprisingly delicious.  Evan Cope and Matt had scrambled eggs of red prawns and mushrooms, which Evan Cope enjoyed, but Matt ended up trading it with Evan Langebeck, who originally got eggplant fried with cane honey, something that didn't fit him, but luckily Matt enjoyed it, and Evan Langebeck enjoyed the eggs.

     We then decided to walk back to the hotel, as it was quite close, and we ended up getting back to our hotel at about 8:00.  We all met together in the room David and Evan Cope were staying in to watch more "Jose Made In Spain."  After about an hour of that, David had already fallen asleep, and Matt and Evan Langebeck returned to their room.