I got there on Thursday and met up with my friend Val from SLU. It's still pretty warm in Madrid, so we could grab ice cream and wander around the city center. It's beautiful! It reminded me a lot of Rome at times, but a little more American. We saw the Plaza de Espana, Plaza Mayor, a palace, a church... lots of other really cool buildings. Madrid is pretty clean, I noticed. None of the buildings have any nasty black grime on them and they were lit up nicely at night. Also, I love tapas. Spanish omelette and some kind of sauce.... oh man. And red wine mixed with lemonade is pretty good too. It was different.
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| Don Quixote and Sancho!!!! (at Plaza de Espana) |
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| at Plaza Mayor |
Friday, I went with Val and a group of SLU students to the Sierra Madrid mountains to go hiking. The day was beautiful, it wasn't too hot or too cold, no clods in the sky.... so perfect! After getting off at the wrong bus stop, being lost, and meandering through a residential neighborhood for a while, we found the park where we wanted to hike. The mountains were dessert dry and very rocky. We climbed up all these rock formations, it inspired me to try to get better at rock climbing. Higher Ground, here I come! The view was fabulous. We spent hours wandering off the trails and just climbing things. I didn't want to leave actually, I wish I could go back and do more of that. Val and I decided we're going to go hiking through the Appalachian trail for spring break..... just wanna hike now :)
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| Rules at the hiking place: No music, no cans, no teepees, no carwashes, no picking flowers, no starting fires. Got it. |
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| lots of rocks |
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| Laura, Val, and I |
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| one of the views |
That night I grabbed another kind of tapas for dinner, I can't remember what it was called. It was this spongy bread or crouton chunks... I don't know, little pieces... with a fried egg, sunny side up, on top. I really liked it actually. And finally I found sangria! Then we met up with a few other girls and hung out by the fountain at Plaza de Espana sipping boxed wine and bonding. I went with them to their favorite bar, a place called Dubliners. I liked it. If it had had dancing, it would have been my kind of place 100%. I mean, I still danced there, not much stops me from doing that... I taught some German (or Spanish? or French? What was he?) guy how to swing dance, kind of. And I tried teaching one of the guys from SLU as well. Lost cause. Oh well. Later, I somehow ended up at a club with Val and another girl's I.D. and before I knew it, it was 6am.
I am then woken up at 10:30am by a guy who works at the hostel I stayed in. Apparently, guests need to leave from 11am-2pm. Seriously? I wasn't meeting Val until 1pm, and my phone didn't work in Spain so I couldn't call her....soooo I slept on a bench in Plaza de Espana. Again, it was another beautiful day and it was warm out. Val came and we walked across town to a museum so I could see some Picasso. I like art, but I'm not really a big fan of contemporary pieces. I'd seen works by Picasso before, but never his darker cubism paintings, so those threw me off. Guernica is crazy.
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| Guernica |
After that, Val and I grabbed some lunch and went to the Parque Retiro where we could both just people watch and rest. 6am kind of kills you for the rest of the day if you happen to stay up late enough to see it. We ended up hitting up another museum so that I could see one of my favorite paintings, Las Meninas by Velasquez. There was also more impressionism in this museum, which is my favorite. Then we did a little shoe shopping.....Val got some fabulous chocolate brown boots. Wow.
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| Las Meninas |
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| at Parque Retiro |
Ok, it's weird. Because the first things you think of when you think of Spain are like... soccer, bull fighting, paella, and sangria. I saw the bull fighting arena, I saw a little kid kicking around a ball, and I had sangria.... but Val and I COULD NOT find paella! We walked around for a good hour before finally FINALLY finding some! We just loaded up at some buffet. I'm sure it was sub-par paella, but what do I know? I'd never had it before, so at least I got a taste :-D It must have been eat-as-much-food-as-you-can night, because we got some spectacular dessert... Churros that you dip in chocolate. Perfect combination. I love Spain.
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| Val, chocolate, and churros |
My flight on Sunday was at 2pm, so we were determined to still fit something in the morning before I had to leave. Val met me early in the morning and we headed to this market that had EVERYTHING for really cheap. Seriously, from art fair kinds of stands with jewelery, knives, leatherwork, weaving, scarfs...to stands with surge protectors, blank cds, batteries, lingerie, boots, gardening gloves... I mean there was EVERYTHING. I managed to get a lot of cool gifts for people ;-) My brother is absolutely going to love the presents I got him for Christmas here.
And now I am home, I should be practicing Hungarian and going to sleep. I am really tired actually, this hostel was awful for sleeping at, actually. So I think I will just listen to Paul Simon a little longer and call it a day.
<3 <3 miss you!
Love, Amy
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ps. hopefully I send the 18 postcards I wrote to people tomorrow.... that's procrastination at it's worst. I've had them ready to mail for weeks.
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