The End of Our Spanish Adventure ....

Today was an emotional day for all of us since it was the last day of summer school in Madrid. We got up bright and early and walked to uni together for the last time all prepared to present our final presentations that we've been working on. Nerves were high for presenting but we all managed to get through it and Kumba and Danielle's group, NAC even won best presentation!

Couple of actions shots from the presentations. 

After all the presentations and feedback from the lecturers were given we had a farewell brunch with the full class. This featured some delicious Spanish snacks, our favourite being the tortilla espanola! It's safe to say emotions were running high at the brunch whilst saying goodbye to our new friends, however we've promised we will keep in touch! 

The four of us with three of our new favourite lecturers, Teresa, Julia and Pilar. 

After an emotional morning and afternoon at the university, we ventured home via Retiro Park to take in the culture for the last time. - And we couldn't resist taking advantage of a few photo opportunities. 

On the way home we also stopped by a frozen yogurt place which we can no longer remember the name of, however the sight of chocolately milkshakes looked much more appealing than some healthy frozen yogurt. Extremely sickly, but extremely delicious !

After stalling for quite some time, we had to accept it was time to go home and get packed up and ready for going our separate ways - which none of us were happy about. Nikki and Danielle were the first to leave and trigger the first couple of emotional goodbyes. Gillian and Kumba (the ones writing this) sadly leave the beautiful city of Madrid behind tomorrow. 

We can all definitely say this has been a trip of a lifetime for all of us which we would recommend to any fashion and retail students looking for something different. We've learned a lot and gained experience as well as getting the chance to meet some extremely interesting people in fashion and retail industry which we hope to keep in touch with in the future. However, not only that, from coming here strangers the four of us have became great friends and shared some amazing memories. We all plan to keep in touch and stay friends and have many Madrid reunions soon!

Now, for the last time, 

Hasta Luego , 

Gillian, Kumba, Danielle and Nikki 

xxx

Last Family Dinner....

So our second last day in Madrid (waaaaa) started off with a trip to the Museo del Traje which is a costume museum featuring many beautiful articles from the 16th Century till now. It was amazing to see the transformation in style throughout the ages and to see how people are now still incorporating some characteristics of these styles into modern day fashion. The tour started with clothing from the 16th century and eventually travelled through to an exhibit of today's fashion. After the tour we were treated to a behind the scenes look at restoration process that each garment goes through before being displayed in the museum. We really didn't realise how much stages and work goes into this. 

After our tour at the museum Gillian and Nikki decided to take advantage of their last chance to sunbathe and hit the local pool in Lago. 

Meanwhile, Kumba and Danielle decided to be a bit more cultural and ventured off to Plaza del Sol for some shopping and eating in the lovely Mercado San Miguel, where they consumed lots of tapas and sangria! 

      

Later in the evening we went out for our last family dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. We are finally getting used to the late eating time in Spain and ventured out at 10pm only to get our table at around 11.30pm. The wait for a table however wasn't bad at all since we had some delicious cocktails to pass the time. 

Not realising the massive portions that are served in Hard Rock Cafe we ordered a combo starter to share and each our own burger. Needless to say we were all completely stuffed afterwards and slowly traveled home whilst getting emotional about it being our last night together. 

 

Our last metro journey together :( 

Our next blog post being the last will be an emotional one... 

Hasta Luego 

Gillian, Danielle, Kumba and Nikki. 

xxx

Row, Row, Row Your Boat...

So Wednesday we headed off early to meet the rest of our class mates at the bus station at Plaza de Castilla and caught a bus to the Cortefiel Head Quarters. (Fancy, I know) This trip was extremely interesting and educational for us all. It started with a brief presentation about the history of the company, and also we were presented with a goodie bag. - FINALLY A GOOD GOODIE BAG !

Afterwards we were then given a tour of the building which included getting a first hand glance at what happens back stage in fashion companies. Probably our most favourite part of this tour was getting to see a live photo shoot which featured their new menswear line and a very attractive male model... not that we looked....

               

After our Cortefiel trip we traveled back to uni to do some last minute work on our projects. We then felt we would end our day with spending some time in Retiro Park. This then lead to adventuring onto the lake in small row boats. Which really isn't as easy and romantic as it looks, since we spent most of our time going round in circles and screaming. - Everyone else somehow seemed to manage it fine however. 

The evening ended on a high after successfully managing to fix the trip switch in the flat after realising our freezer wasn't frozen but the pizza in the oven still was. 

More adventures coming soon, 

Hasta Luego, 

Nikki, Gillian, Danielle and Kumba. 

xx

Study, study and more study...

Monday morning was spent at a lecture by Julia Urgel on Celebrities and Fashion Communication Strategies. 

This was fascinating as Julia originally was politics based and worked for CNN in America and then (somehow) managed to make the transfer to working for Marie Claire and interviewing celebrities like Olivia Palermeo and the Hilton sisters - we hope we will be this lucky too!

We then spent the afternoon working on our final projects and then having a snooze in the sun in Retiro Park. Not a lot of photo opportunities came about today so unfortunately we have nothing to show you from today !

Tuesday morning we had another engaging lecture from Sandra Manresa who works for the Marketing department of Google and rides a motorbike... could she get any cooler?! This lecture covered a lot of information about online fashion retail, which is a key area for us as our Generation, is the most frequent online consumer. 

Later that day we went to visit El Corte Ingles, their flagship store. This building was amazing and possibly the tallest shop we've ever seen!

We had a tour with a brief history and then were let loose on the store. However as a lot of shopping has already been done this trip not too many purchases were made... (except for Danielle, who may have a shopping problem)

So that's all we've been up to so far... 

Hasta Luego 

Nikki, Gillian, Kumba and Danielle

xx

Gay Pride in Madrid!

So on Saturday the 5th we returned bright and early to one our new favourite spots - the pool in Lago. We felt after our busy week we could do with a few hours of relaxing. This pool visit was particularly ascetically pleasing due to the volume of gorgeous gay men obviously here for Gay Pride which was occurring this weekend in the centre of Madrid ! After our sunbathing... and staring... we ventured off back to our flat to get ready for the nights festivities. 

Since Nikki's family had arrived in Madrid for their holiday, she ditched the rest of us and dined out luxuriously - while we wined and dined at KFC - not jealous at all. 

So Gillian, Kumba and Danielle got their glad-rags on and decided to see what Gay Pride was all about in Madrid. The second we stepped off the metro we were submerged into a mass of glitter and colour. None of us had experienced anything like this before. It's been estimated that 1.2 million people attended the Gay Pride weekend, it was definitely a sight to see !

So on Sunday we felt it was about time we fully explored the beautiful city of Madrid and hopped onto a tour bus. We choose to do the Historic bus route of Madrid to learn a bit more about the city which was also relaxing to get the chance to see everything from the comfort of a bus seat in lovely sun. We decided to do the full route to start of with to see all the sites,  but after travelling through Gran Via (the main high street shopping district) being the fashion retail students that we are we knew what our first stop off would be.

                               

After our semi-successful shopping trip we treated ourselves to a lovely lunch at Cafe & Tapas which we all thoroughly enjoyed. 

Hasta Leugo 

Danielle, Kumba, Nikki and Gillian

xx