Esbanana, Part 1: Madrid

The last week of March our program had our spring break, or as our program wants us to call it our "Reading Week" because the name "Spring Break" supposedly has negative connotations and because they wanted us to work on our papers during that week (lolzzz). I told this to my coworkers when they were confused by what our "reading week" was supposed to be, and they just laughed. And for me, reading week meant Spain!

Despite there being a number of marvelous cities in Spain that I all wanted to see, I decided it would be better to do one or two cities well than to rush through all of them and just end up exhausted and spending all my time travelling. So deciding to hit the big ones on my first (but hopefully not last) trip to Spain, we spent the first half in Madrid and the second half in Barcelona. Due to the plethora of things we did this Break, I'm just gonna talk about Madrid for now and get to Barca in my next post.

That Saturday, we woke up at the ungodly hour of 4 am to catch our 4:40 cab to Victoria station (the tube wasn't open yet because human beings shouldn't be awake at 4) to catch our 5:10 bus to the wonderful Stansted airport (ugh) an hour and a half away to catch our 8ish flight. But of course, the entire attempt to get there early to have a full day in Madrid on Saturday was totally worth it when we spent the next 2 hours sitting on our plane waiting for it to depart as we waited for a defroster. But on the bright side, that did mean we left the snow of London only to arrive in sun of Madrid.

Where we stayed was perfectly centrally located by Puerta del Sol, so upon finally arriving, we got out and started exploring. We decided to start by knocking out one of the farther away sites, an Egyptian temple. However, in the process of walking there we accidentally stumbled across most of the major sites. First of course we went to Puerta del Sol. Then we stumbled across Museo del Jamon (jamon = ham) and snacked on our first of many hams from Spain. Next we went through Mercado de San Miguel and sampled some delicious treats that caught our eye. And then on to Plaza Mayor. And then Palacio Real de Madrid (the Royal Palace).

The view from the balcony of our room

Alex, Elise, and I at Puerta del Sol

Plaza Mayor

Palacio Real de Madrid

Myself and Alex at Palacio Real

Alex and Elise being cute as always

Finally, we actually arrived at our intended destination, Templo de Debod. It was worth it as soon as we got there, turned around, and saw a lovely overhead view of Madrid. The temple itself was fairly interesting, an Egyptian temple that had been given to Spain as a gift after their help saving some other temples. Random but cool.

It was really windy, please excuse awkward faces

Alex under one of the arches at Templo de Debod

Templo de Debod

Afterwards, I was still feeling adventurous so continued to walk and explore around. I wandered through the gardens around Palacio Real, and went and got myself some gelato (hey, people eat dinner late in Spain, I needed something to tide me over!). In navigating the city throughout the week, I also got to refresh my Spanish a bit, which sadly I have let slip an unacceptable amount. However, I was happy that it was easily still enough to get around, and definitely at least enough to give Alex a hard time for pronouncing a street name "esbanana." (However, I'm not one to talk as if she could have seen me attempting to get around a few weekends later in Paris, I'm sure she would have enjoyed equal bouts of amusement).

The gardens

Side view of the Palace. Lovely. 

That evening we went to El Tigre for dinner, which is a magical, wonderful place. At El Tigre, you go to the bar, order a drink, and then they proceed to bring you as many tapas as your heart desires to eat with that drink. Then that night I made my one real attempt at doing the Spaniards way of going out, which means going out no earlier than 2 and coming home at 8. We went to Kapital, a 7 story club. We made it to around 5:30 or so, which considering we'd woken up at 4 that morning (ie more than 24 hours before), I was proud of us for lasting that long.

The next day we had a relaxing breakfast outdoors. On Sundays in Madrid, they have this huge street market called El Rastro, so we wandered through that after our brunch. In the afternoon we strolled through Parque Retiro, which was so lovely. I wish we'd had more time to go boating, but alas, we had to start making our way to the bullfighting arena for the evening.

Parque Retiro

Lovely day at the park

I'll just briefly preface my blurb about the bullfight by saying that this was something I was very nervous about. When we first booked tickets I almost wimped out, but I decided to go as a cultural experience. I am glad that I went for that reason, however, it is something I would absolutely never do again as it was upsetting and quite gory. In hindsight, it is one of the stranger things I have ever done. "So what'd you do tonight?" "Oh, I watched 6 bulls die a torturous and gruesome death." Casual night out.

The arena

I'll choose to show you happy pictures of horses and flamboyantly dressed bullfighters before the gruesome stuff happened

The aftermath... :(

On the bright side, we got to do some excellent people watching while we were there. In particular, was this guy who possibly has one of the most amazing hair cuts I have ever seen.

Twirled mullet pigtails with a bald cap. Dope.

I was about to be judgmental, and then I remember, who am I to judge??

Mullets for life. 

Now would also be a good time to introduce my frustration with Madrid weather. Correction, not my frustration with Madrid weather, but rather my frustration with weather forecasting in Madrid. We learned that when you're getting dressed for the day, you should do exactly the opposite of whatever the forecast tells you. On Saturday, there was a 90% chance of rain, and it was lovely all day. Then, for the bullfight, we check right before leaving and there was a 0% chance of rain for the rest of the evening. It poured on us.

The next day was a rough one for me. I woke up feeling a little... off... Unfortunately, my breakfast from the previous morning had not agreed with me (or at least, we determined that it had to be the breakfast, because every other meal we had had that trip was tapas, meaning we'd all had the same things, and neither Elise nor Alex were sick). However, stubborn as always, that did not stop me from rallying and heading out for the day.

That day we did a tour of Palacio Real de Madrid. I have to say, after all the royal buildings and extravagant palaces I have seen this semester, this one by far took the cake. It was insane. The palace is made up of 2,800 rooms, and each one that we saw was crazier than the prior. So many art styles were represented throughout the design of the rooms, and not only the rooms themselves, but the palace also held a great collection of artwork (including a great Caravaggio), and also a great collection of musical instruments (a number of rare Stradivari's violins, cellos, etc). As we were unable to take pictures within the palace, I will now shamelessly spam the internet to try to at least somewhat show how incredible this Palace was.

But seriously though... is this real life?

The next and final day in Madrid, we went to El Prado, which I had been itching to get to all weekend. It was definitely one of my favorite if not favorite art museums that I have visited. I could have easily spent hours in the room holding Goya's Black Paintings alone, nonetheless the entire museum. But after making Alex and Elise wait for an extra hour or two at a pub so I could finish seeing the museum, I figured it was about time to go! (For an idea of some of the many masterpieces held in El Prado, check out the pieces at the bottom of this wiki link and at this prado link).

After a wonderful time in Madrid, however, it was finally time to hit the airport again that evening for Round 2 in Barcelona.... to be continued...