Day 37
Disclaimer: A lot of the pictures I took are on my camera, which I can't upload until I get my computer back, so I'll have to add them later. Sorry.
Turns out I should have investigated Madrid more before I came here. There is apparently nothing notable or worth seeing except the clubs in Madrid. It's apparently only known for its night life, and maaaaybe shopping. It's also weird because I thought it was such a big, international city, and it is a lot more modern and similar to America than Florence, but no one speaks English. Usually I'd love that because it means I get to learn Spanish but I think it's intended to be rude, not because they actually don't know English. Actually, the only time people speak English is when they want your money- and then it's flawless. Except for that, everyone seems annoyed when you order in English or try to speak really bad Spanish. I'm curious about what other visitors do in Madrid. What if you're from Germany or Japan? Chances are you speak English, not Spanish because English has kind of become an international language. If your job is in an international city, isn't it kind of part of your job description to be able to interact with customers?
We napped for a little while and then, it was time to get ready to go out. The goal was to get into Kapital, so we were aiming to look as "elegant" as possible, even though we hadn't packed anything that really fit that description. My roommates drank before we left and then we screenshotted every inch of the route on Google Maps before leaving. We asked a group of people on the street which way to Kapital and they laughed at us and said we should take a taxi because it was really far. That sounded expensive and we'd already shelled out for shoes to fit the dress code (which I'm not even sure exists...) so we kept walking. Our feet were killing us from our new heels. As we got further from home, two of us started to seem really drunk. We stopped in a cafe for water and snacks and they fell asleep on the tables so, after all our efforts, we decided to give up and go home. And then we stopped in a McDonald's to make ourselves feel better about the waste of the night.
We've been doing pretty well though relying on just numbers and product names. For lunch we got calamari sandwiches, which I guess Madrid is kind of known for. 
They were really good but might have been a little better with some kind of sauce on them rather than fried calamari in a hoagie roll. Right after, we found beer sold in a candy store for 50 cents- and tried it! 
We walked around a little bit and found a chocolate churros place. Since we got here we have been dying to try this combo. The churros come looped and you can dip them in hot liquid chocolate. 
I'm not sure how I felt about the churros because I was expecting them to be rolled in cinnamon and sugar but the chocolate was delicious. Basically, today was a day of food tasting. In other words, Madrid is kind of a let down. There's like two cool places to take pictures (my personal metric for the level of a city's coolness) and one is the Palacio Real which is free if we come back another day so we didn't do it today and the other is a rooftop bar which we haven't made it to yet. But there aren't any really special buildings or landmarks that we HAVE to see, like the bridges in Venice or the Colosseum in Rome. Or maybe it's just that now I'm familiar with Italy and know not to expect great customer service but feel safe knowing that no one will flat out lie to me about what something costs or what's included in a fee. There's something uncivilized about dishonesty that feels barbaric in comparison with even the most aggressive selfie stick sellers on the streets of Florence. Either I don't like the Spanish culture that deems it socially acceptable to act like this, or else Spain's depressed job market has caused people to become desperate. Either way, strong negative reaction.
On our way home we stopped in a few shoe stores to look for inexpensive heels. We'd heard that you needed to look "elegant" to get past the strict bouncers for Kapital. We found one starting at 6€ and I decided to buy the plainest pair of black heels I could find to justify the purchase since I don't own any heels. 10€ later, I was mentally preparing for my feet to hurt, semi-satisfied with the financial damage I'd done. Guilty, I found 2€ pizza (Hawaiian, DUH!) for dinner.
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