Elizabeth in Aranjuez!!!

Wednesday was a holiday in Madrid, so we didn't have school. I asked the class if anyone wanted to go to Aranjuez with me, and a bunch of people did! I love how everyone is always inviting everyone else to do things, and there's always multiple people down to do whatever you want to do. It's also fun to get invited and go to places that other people found that you wouldn't have gone to otherwise and getting to have a new/different experience than what you're normally drawn to.

I wanted to go to Aranjuez because there's a palace. It's only an hour away by metro. I thought the palace was going to be pretty mid to be honest--this is not even close to being a top five palace in Spain, but even a mid palace is still a palace. But it was epic.

You know the drill--the first order of business when we got there was to get food. I took these pictures on the walk to the cafe.

Galletas baby<3<3<3<3<3

Bernadette!

The employees at this cafe were sooo nice. They are usually not that friendly here. But here they asked me where I was from, complimented my Spanish, and carried on a conversation with me. They were nice to the other kids too. That made my day a little bit. I got a focaccia with pesto, mozzarella, and tomato first (seen above), and then, shocker, I was still hungry, so I got a napolitana.

I took this picture on the way from the cafe to the palace. .5x zoom for Ryan.

In the palace courtyard.

Palace gang--Lauren, Carson, Jason, Larissa, Bernadette, me, Alexia, Zoe, Noah. Sorry to Larissa for posting the pic where she has her eyes closed but this was the one where the most amount of people were ready/had their eyes open. (I took like ten and didn't check because I was like "Surely one of these will be good" and they all had at least one person not ready.)

Inside the palace.

Here's pictures Jason took of us pondering a painting. We were wondering if the horse in the painting would look whack if we looked at it straight on.

We were taking mad pics, hanging out (obvs, see above) and then we walked into this room and I started taking pictures and got yelled at :( I don't know what changed, it was definitely allowed before, the guards saw us all do it. But then we got to this room and they were so pressed. They kept following us around too; they were out to get us. So these are the last pictures, they weren't allowed anymore from here on out, which is a bummer because the rooms we couldn't take pictures of were sooo much cooler than the ones above (sorry to the previous rooms).

Pictures were allowed on the way out. Last palace picture.

Outside the palace.

Cat! This cat can be for Claire.

Alexia was really trying to be friends with it and it did not want to be friends.

In Spanish the word for "peacock" is "pavo real", which literally translates to "royal turkey" lololol language is so fun. Anyway there were peacocks in the trees in the garden?

With the lighting you can't really see the peacocks, and I had to zoom in because otherwise they blended into the tree, but there were a bunch.

After Aranjuez, Jason, Carson and I tried to get last minute tickets to the opera. We tried to buy them at 4PM online when the prices dropped, but their website is jank and we couldn't figure it out. We went to the box office at like 4:10PM, but it had special hours because it was a holiday and didn't open until 5:30PM. So we decided to come back and try again when they were open, even though we were pretty sure they were sold out, so then we had about an hour to kill. No one had had lunch, and Carson wanted pizza, so that's what we did.

My pizza <3 It was really good. It was called "pizza campesina", which means like "countryside pizza" which is also what the Lay's chips I like are called. Campesina nation.

I took this picture when I finished my pizza. Jason and Carson still had half their pizzas left. Carson at least finished his, except for the crust and he picked a bunch of the pepperoni off. Jason stopped here. Smh. No one can keep up.

Then we went back to the box office, and indeed, they were all sold out for Wednesday. Saddies. (Spoiler alert: on Friday we were able to get tickets.) They've set up this Christmas tree in Ópera.

They were doing the traditional Madrid dance in the plaza. Respectfully, it's very boring. I heard a Spaniard say that first, so I feel like I'm allowed to agree.