(Mad)rid about Spain

In an attempt to visually serve justice to the remainder of this trip while also realizing that image fatigue is a thing, and not all of you might find each different side street photo as much as individual treasures as I do, here goes the cliff notes version of days 5 through 10:

To wrap up our portion in Madrid, we snuck into the Reina Sofia an hour before opening to receive a private lecture by our Professors in front of Guernica, all by ourselves. And once that clock hit 9am, boy were we flooded with traffic. This was probably the point of the trip when I realized how fortunate we were to be traveling with such brilliant people and doing such VIP things. This thought was confirmed when one of my classmates whispered in awe, "Wow, I can't wait to come back in see this." (probably in regards to one of our Mosque-roof-access excursions), to which a professor responded, "You're probably never seeing this again." And rightly so.

These views were spectacular, and made even more so because of their rare, almost unicorn like, status. We were probably never going to see Spain like this again, so what'd I do? Split my time between soaking it in and photographing it, for institutional memory of course.

Post Morning At the Museum (think Ben Stiller level, but AM), we ventured to El Escorial where someone tried to sneak into the Courtyard with us, but our super cool security guard was not having it.

But that wasn't the only Palace we saw. Once we hit Sevilla, we frolicked in the gardens of La Casa de Pilatos, and took a quiet, dusk tour around the Alcázar.

The next morning, we took to the sky with several aerial views of the city - think tons (and I mean tons) of stairs (yep, I may or may not have slipped in one of the winding corridors in the dark) & altitudes so high there may or may not have been a nosebleed... friends run to the tour guide for help, true friends know that that's taken care of so they take pictures instead:

For one of the only moments we had a free hour to unwind, we hit the pool. And by that I mean napped poolside and fawned over the beauty of it all.

Suffice it to say, I absolutely loved my trip to Spain. I realize any return adventures will never be the same, but I am so fortunate to have had my first Spanish experience be filled with such fun, surprise, and learning.