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Our group with Arturo
Arturo Dovalina from Mezcal Entertainment and our group! This morning I woke up and showered and packed the rest of my stuff up. Once I was ready I headed down with my backpack and met the rest of the group in the dining room for breakfast. This breakfast was complimentary and definitely hit the spot even though I didn't know how I could be hungry so soon after the night before. Now that everyone had finished and was ready to leave we headed back to the bus stop and boarded our charter bus for the last time.
Less than an hour later we arrived back at Hotel Regina and checked into new hotel rooms. Some of us had left our luggage there to keep it safely locked in their luggage storage because we weren't sure if the hotels in Avila and El Escorial would have safes in the rooms (the didn't) like Hotel Regina did. Getting our luggage back took awhile because other groups had come to the hotel while we were gone so there were other rooms that had to be used and locked for luggage as well.
Since we had a lot of free time that day a couple of us decided to go shopping.
Night Life
Downtown Madrid at night, just as beautiful as it is during the day! Some of the other girls had already had their shopping sprees and I was determined to find a couple cute things to take back home with me as well. We stopped at Sfera which I immediately fell in love with. It was a four story clothing store that ranged from fashion clothing to casual clothing all within decent prices. Some of the styles were similar to what I'd seen back home, however I did notice some items that looked more European. One of the best parts of this store was that they were having a huge sale. Spain is going through an economic crisis, not as bad as ours though, but because of this a lot of places were having great sales while we were there! I ended up being just in that store for hours. In the end I bought a skirt, a dress, a shirt, and a leather jacket (I've always wanted one) for just under 60 euros which wasn't too bad.
We walked back to the hotel just in time to meet in the meeting room once again. This time we were listening to Arturo Dovalina from Mezcal Entertainment. His business provides editorial photo and video
My Dessert
The best strawberry icecream I've ever had! services in Madrid. He works with wire services to cover basic needs such as EFE and other print/online businesses. His company is actually based in Mexico City where he is from and he covers a lot of business in Latin America as well as in Madrid. He started this around 2000 when there was no Hispanic prescence in the media outside of their own niche. Since he covers mostly Hispanic media he cares mostly about artists/subjects that are realted to Hispanic interests/markets such as Shakira, Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayak. However, he never turns down mainstream market coverage because he feels that he can find a good photo for every story. What sets him apart from other people in this business is that he stays and waits for the story telling pictures. A lot of magazines and newspaper articles end up with the same photograph and people tend to notice this when they are on the newsstand. Arturo waits until he can take a picture of someone laughing or doing something other than just smiling straight at the camera so that his picture will stand out amongst the others. Overall I enjoyed listening to him talk about photography and his business in general. It was also really interesting to see his media catalogue of some of the work he has done in the past.
A few hours later we went to Oneill's for the last time to watch Spain play Honduras in the World Cup. Cesar met up with us and we actually sat upstairs for the first time. During the game Aleksandra left her purse on a chair right next to Abby and Alex while she stood behind or table with the rest of our group. Just as we were getting back from the bathroom Alex saw a man reaching through this window that was built into the wall and grab Aleksandra's purse. She climbed through the window and grabbed it out of his hands and started yelling at him until he and his friend started quickly walking out of the bar right past us. Luckily nothing was missing out of her purse but it left us all in shock again. We quickly forgot about this once the game started picking up and Spain ended up winning 2-0. I was hoping for a loud celebration, but most of the people around us just cheered once, clapped a little and went back to their beer and cigarettes. I'm not a pro on Spain bars, but I think that if we had gone somewhere else other than an Irish Pub we might have been with a different crowd. Despite that I still had fun but realized I was starting to get hungry. Since everyone else was getting hungry as well we decided to start looking for a place to eat. Cesar led us around to a couple different places but people were having a hard time deciding on a place since we had different likes and price ranges. After awhile a few people went home because they were tired of walking around. The rest of us finally found a place and it seemed to be a little expensive. I settled for a salad which was pretty good and then had some strawberry icecream that was to die for! Unfortunately we weren't aware that the bread and table service was going to be so expensive as well as the water we were served too. Some places we went to were ok with serving tap water but some places only served mineral water and this was one of them. Since it was close to the end of the trip I didn't mind paying a little extra and was satisfied with what I ate that night.
We got back to the hotel pretty late and decided to call it a night before waking up early for breakfast to say goodbye to the first two people that were leaving the next day. I was already getting sad that the trip was coming to an end and it made it even more real knowing that two people were already leaving tomorrow...
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indiana
non-member comment
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