Well, not really spring break. The weekend after, technically. The weekend Katie and I went to Madrid with one of my friends from my program. Sorry it took so long.
We departed my apartment with what we thought was plenty of time to spare-turns out we were wrong. We ended up standing in line FOREVER to check in, and just as the cut-off time was nearing and Katie was freaking out (and Molly was secretly also freaking out in her head), we got pulled to the front of the line by a very nice ticket agent. Turned out, our plane was delayed an hour and a half anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered in the end, but he saved us a lot of worrying.
Waiting to take off...as a side note, this airline repeated all of its announcements in THREE languages- Spanish first, then English, then French. It got to be a little annoying, as they made a LOT of announcements.
The Plaza Mayor was a five minute walk from our hostel, and hosted a variety of strange things. The figures are people, dressed up. There was also a very portly Spiderman and a Spongebob.
The Mercado San Miguel was an indoor market similar to the indoor market in Boston. We had a good time walking around and admiring the elaborate displays and salivating over the food!
We went traditional for lunch-tapas and sangria! And let me tell you, the Spanish know what they're doing when it comes to both.
In the middle of the city, there was a park, not unlike Central Park in NYC I would imagine. Katie and I killed a few hours wandering around and talking, and then we found the "Crystal Palace"-a glass building that looked out onto the park around it. It would be a beautiful place to have a wedding or reception!
Our mid-afternoon snack- churros and chocolate, a traditional Spanish breakfast, and of course more sangria at a cafe while sitting outdoors. I could get used to eating like that.
For dinner, we continued on the traditional path and got paella, a rice and seafood dish. We ate outside again (one of my favorite parts of Europe is all of the outdoor eating!) and were seated next to a bachelor party; apparently in Spain, they dress the groom up in a humiliating outfit-here it was a nurse's VERY SHORT dress- and take him out.
The next morning, we repeated the chocolate and churros-it was that good- and prepared to leave. We also happened upon this bubble blower in Plaza Mayor and spent a good 10 minutes just watching. I guess we all still have more of a child in us than we knew :) 
The Madrid airport is very airy and modern-they coordinate the gate numbers and colors with the paint on the pipes. We were in terminal U, which was blue, so our pipes were blue! I enjoyed that aspect.
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