Second part of winter break.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!
After returning to Viseu after Lisbon we spent a couple days on the DL. (Down Low) Relaxing. The package my parents sent me arrived and Sofia and I went to pick it up. Everything was there and intact! Thanks Mom and Dad! After a quick opening of the package we hopped in the car and set of for Madrid! After about four hours we were greeted by Madrid´s city-scape. On the way to our hotel (which was 5 stars) we passed under the two famous leaning towers in Madrid. It was late by the time we made it to the hotel so we hit the hay immediately to prepare ourselves for tomorrow. We woke up early and caught the bus right outside our hotel and made our way to The Musem of the Prado. (Museu del Prado) We waited in line for a while and then got our tickets and went on in. We started with seeing some masterpeice paintings and then some masterpeice sculpture. Next we went on a tour of the biggest malls in Madrid. I think the act of Mall touring has become a very portuguese thing. When I was in Lisbon, even though we were in a small suburb of Lisbon called Estoril, we went to the local mall to check it out. Other friends of mine here on exchange have noted the same phenomenon. I´m not a huge fan of shopping and thus was a little un-enthusiastic about the possibility that my first day in Madrid would be spent seeing the inside of giant shopping complexes. Well it turned out that after our mall blitz we would be going to see the center of town called La Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor. That was pretty cool and fun. We saw the whole spectrum as far as street performers go. We rested at the hotel for a little while and then went to a really cool restaurant that serves very typical food from Madrid. The madrid style food is like gourmet bar food, small sandwiches of steak and other things. The next day was gonna be big. We slept in and at about noon made our way to the royal palace. This was the first actual palace I had ever seen, the roayal family indeed still lives there and thus was closed to visitors. We looped around the outside of the behemoth house and then ducked into the adjacent cathedral. After walking around a little bit more we went to an argentinian steak house for lunch. That was good. Now we´ll fast-forward to the night of new years.
We left our hotel around 9:30 p.m. and went driving around to La Puerta del Sol. We parked our car in the hippest parking garage I have ever seen and did the last couple of blocks to the main square on foot. The real festivities wouldn´t start till later but there was no lack of people there getting an early start. There were street vendors selling various things that lit up, one of these such items was a pair of sunglasses with rims that had lights in them. An oxymoron. Think about it. There were also people selling mixed alcoholic drinks in the streets. We ducked into a café for a quick bite before we headed into the square to stake out our spots. Well, tons of things happened that night, music, lights, fireworks, countdowns, very much you see in New York´s Times Square. After the stroke of midnight the tradition is to eat twelve grapes and make a wish on each one, we had bought tins of grapes for each person and all ate them in time with the other million or so people who were downtown with us. Once everyone finished their grapes the crowd began to surge as people tried to leave the densely packed square. We were caught in a current of people and made our way back to our car. I probably saw more things during the walk back to the car than I had seen all day as far as interesting people doing interesting things goes. I was offered Marijuana multiple times, saw many fights and met a suprising amount of americans, all in the short walk to our car. Well, the distance was short but it took us well around an hour to make the trek. Someone should write a book on the behaviour of people in giant crowded situations.
The next day we left madrid and headed to salamanca to meet up with some friends for lunch. That was cool. And that´s all for now.