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...

Green? Guinness? Good to Go

The Friday of St. Patrick's Day weekend, Elise, Alex, myself, and 1 billion other American students studying abroad in Europe this Spring decided to invade the wonderful city of Dublin. How did I know that all the people I saw were Americans? Easy: are they wearing tacky amounts of green? If yes, you have found an American. But don't worry, I'm not judging - I did too.

After a very exhausting travel process caused by travelling on bad airlines from inconvenient airports, we arrived at our lovely hotel with its lack of free wifi and [initially] running water - oh the life of the starving college student. Fortunately, on Saturday, we awoke to sunny skies and positive attitudes. We started off the day by going straight to O'Connell Street, which is the broadest city street within Europe. Going with the record setting, also on this street is the world's tallest sculpture, The Spire of Dublin. On O'Connell's, we also popped into the General Post Office (GPO), which is for some reason historic and I don't remember why (hey give me a break, I've been seeing a lot of famous things that I'm supposed to remember lately, k?).

Part of the fun of travelling with 3 people, is you get a lot of people-rotating sets of pictures like this, get used to it:

(courtesy of Elise's camera - thanks lovely!)

Being expert tourists as we were with only the purest of intentions for our St. Patrick's day weekend, we continued exploring the sites. We wandered over to Trinity College, which is the oldest university in Ireland. It is also famous for hosting in its library the manuscript of the Book of Kells.

Look, we found a nice stranger to take a picture of all 3 of us at Trinity College!:

But don't worry, that didn't stop us from taking another set of rotating pictures:

As we had clearly already had a long day walking down one whole street and through another whole campus, we figured we had earned a break and started heading to the nearest pub. Along the way, we saw all sorts of fun things:

Why not?

A boat race!

Also, just the overall loveliness of the river

After all this we figured it was about time to wake ourselves back up with some delicious Irish coffees when we finally made it to the pub - yumm.

Afterwards, we met up with a few other lads from our program who also ventured out to Dublin for the weekend. And from there we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hopping from pubs to site-seeing attractions to pubs.

Dublin Castle

Yay, another successful group picture!

The gang

The next day, finally actual St. Patty's Day day, we awoke bright and early in preparation of the parade. From the minute we stepped out in the streets we could feel the excitement building up for the day's festivities.

Alex and Elise made a new friend! ... I stayed safely away at a distance...

This guy didn't scare me as much. Who doesn't love Guinness?

As we waited for the parade to start (and for the pubs to open...), we did some final touristy things and wandered around St. Stephen's Greens, a famous park. It wasn't exactly the sunniest of days, but it was lovely nonetheless.

We went all out with the green for the day-of

And at long last, parade time! Due to the huge crowds at the parade, we discovered we actually were able to find a better view of the parade indoor from the window of a pub on the main street, as it was elevated compared to the rest of the crowd. It also conveniently had a roof, meaning safety from the rain. Oh, and it had Guinness. Due to being indoors, we weren't able to take as many pictures, but a simple google search will convey the idea of Dublin St. Patty's day parades.

Alas, due to a flight back that night, we had to leave shortly after the parade. But all in all, I think my St. Patty's day weekend was a success. I met all sorts of interesting folks throughout the weekend, like the former soldier that cleaned up after his acid-tripping days in which snakes "laughed at him," annoying people who thought it was cool to show up to a pub during St. Patty's day in a limo and in suits with sunglasses (it was raining outside), some Swiss guy who stole my friend's seat at dinner and tried to steal his beer, a guy who apparently was also a fan of Lord of the Rings, and a woman from St. Louis who decided to adopt us and hold our spot by the window whenever we needed to stand up. I saw all sorts of interesting things. And I had all sorts of experiences that I may or may not remember for the rest of my life. That sounds about right for St. Patty's in Dublin, eh?

I Have Friends!

A few weeks back, I had the lovely privilege of seeing some fantastic friends as they came to visit [me] London (in my world they were just visiting me, k?). And of course, as life tends to work out sometimes, they all chose the same weekend to come, leading to happy chaos. First the lovely Steph came in Friday night from Edinburgh. A big group of us celebrated and went out to O'Neills, a fairly famous pub with 3 or so floors. Oh how I've missed that girl :).

Saturday both Shelby and Kelsey flew in, and after some chaotic struggles with out-of-service underground lines and incompetent phones, we finally were all three able to meet up for lunch. Oh how I've missed these kiddos! And it was also very exciting because I'd been telling both of them for years how they needed to meet each other because they remind me of the other - how perfect that we all three got to meet up in London! After lunch, we walked around for a couple hours, stumbling across some familiar sites.

Can't you tell how excited Kelsey and I are to see each other again?

The next day, Shelby and I ventured off to Oxford together! And unlike my last time there that was unfortunately largely academic, this visit I instead got to geek out through nerdy touristy things! I found a nice itinerary of things to do, and you'd be impressed to know we saw everything on that list! Look, I even made a pretty map so we could stay organized.

Along the way, we stopped for some good 'ole English tea and scones at this place called Vaults & Garden, which was Oxford University's "Old Congregation House." Our next major stop was when we got to Christ Church. Exploring around was a wonderful nerd moment, because one of the halls in Christ Church was what inspired J.K. Rowling's vision of the Great Hall in Harry Potter. We maybe got a bit too excited... Ultimately the highlight of our evening though was even more nerding out when we met up with Kelsey again at the Eagle & Child Pub. This pub is famous for being the meeting ground of some literaries that dubbed themselves the "Inklings," notably C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And for those of you who know Shelby, Kelsey, or myself even slightly, you can only imagine how exciting this was for us. All in all, it was a wonderful day.

Only fitting that our train to Oxford would be at Platform 9... and 3/4.

Yes, I forgot to put my hands through... as if I couldn't already look any awkwarder. (at Oxford Castle)

Shelby and I next to Oxford Castle

Outside Vaults & Garden, where we got tea

Nim, Ace Oxford student inside the private grounds. 

Shelby outside Christ Church

Shelby being pretty inside Christ Church

ZOMGGGZ WE'RE IN THE GREAT HALL HARRY POTTER GRYFFINDOR AHHHHSODIFJ

More Christ Church - it's pretty, okay??

The Eagle and Child pub = happiness

So perfect I want to cry

That week I continued to meet up with Shelby during my after-work hours, where we had lots of fun exploring and such. And a great highlight was, our last night together before she travelled off to Cambridge for a few days, we went to a play together. We saw One Man Two Guv'nors, a comedy that was pretty funny. 

This band played before the show and during set-changes.

This is my "I'm at the theatre!!" face

But alas, after a wonderful week of getting filled up on the love of my wonderful friends, I had to say my final goodbyes. Back to having no friends again.... that is, unless you (yes, I mean you whoever is reading this (presupposing that if you're reading this you're probably my friend... if you're not you probably have better ways you could be spending your time...)) come visit me - yes, that's a challenge. Come.