Paris Adventures: les vacances de printemps!

ok so i just got back from my epic spring break. i'm going to talk about each of the places i went in separate posts though cause it would be ridiculously long if i didn't.
so.
the first part of my trip: paris to madrid!
so i went on most of this trip with one of my friends from my program here named zaid. we decided we would take the night train from paris to madrid. quite an adventure. for one, it was like a fourteen hour trip. we left sunday night at 10 pm, and arrived in madrid on monday afternoon around 2. for second, our train ticket said "paris-irun" and then we would catch a train from "irun-madrid." however, at 6.30 in the morning the conductor comes over the loudspeaker of the train and says something that I don't hear because 1)i'm asleep 2)its over a loudspeaker and 3)its 6.30 in the morning so i'm asleep but zaid pokes me to wake up cause everyone else is getting their stuff together. i say to zaid, we still have an hour before we're supposed to get to irun, let me sleep! right after those words come out of my mouth the conductor goes "terminus: bayonne" and zaid and i look at each other like... what the hell? and then he goes on to say that to get to irun there will be a bus waiting in the parking lot... so we troop off the train and into the parking lot where about 7 buses are waiting, but not all of the buses go to the same destination, and of course the signs indicating where the buses are going are on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. of course. so we eventually get on the correct bus and basically laugh for 15 min straight that the guy who sold us our tickets would neglect to tell us about this bus situation, and because it was 6.30 in the morning. i fall alseep and eventually zaid goes, katherine, i can't read the signs anymore, and that is how we crossed the border into spain...a 30 minute bus ride. legit, an adventure.
the train ride from irun to madrid was gorgeous, all mountains and blue skies, and fields.

in madrid we stayed with one of my friends from AU named casey who is studying there this semester. she has an apartment and very kindly offered to let us stay there! so we did, and she was nice enough to show us around the entire city too! that afternoon we walked basically all around the city. we went to this cool park that i think was called retiro park (please excuse my spanish....) which had this really pretty lake/pond thing that you could rent rowboats on, a crystal palace, and ducks and turtles, and lots of people. it was a gorgeous day so we sad down and just chilled for a bit. casey also introduced us to the wonderfully cheap prices of food in spain: we went to this place called the ham museum (in spanish of course) for lunch, and i got 2 huge bocadillos for two euro!
then we walked over to el corte ingles which is a huge department store and zaid and i decided we needed to buy a spanish phrasebook... this turned out to be only semi-helpful in the long run but hilarious too... then we walked over to plaza mayor and then to another park by a palace...
then we went back to casey's apartment and hung out for a bit before going out for tapas at a place called el tigre where you buy a beer and get tapas!!! food in spain is great by the way. that was our first round in madrid!
ok here are some pics!

this is the park: