In any case, we had the entire week off of class and decided to take advantage of the free time by heading north to visit Madrid and Toledo for six days. This was my first venture outside of Andalucia-- the large southern-most province of Spain-- so I was definitely excited to see what the rest the country was like.
TRIP 2: MADRID
After taking a six-hour bus ride up to Madrid, we left the station and promptly got lost. (First of all, they shouldn't have let me hold the map in the first place. That's just asking for trouble. Second of all, it's not my fault that Atocha Street and Atocha Drive are right next to each other! What kind of city planning is that? I have the attention span of a four-year old boy, I'm not going to read the ENTIRE street name. Honestly.) After 45 minutes on the "scenic route" we managed to find the hostel. It was excellent-- it had really nice staff, bright, clean rooms, and a massive kitchen.
Ramya and Meredith posing outside the hostel. We had pretty much convinced ourselves that it didn't exist a few minutes before, so they are really excited to have somewhere to sleep in this picture.
This is the common area of the hostel. We didn't use it whatsoever because we were so busy, and I actually uploaded this picture to the blog by accident, but now I want all of you to marvel at it. That's a quality common area, that is.
After dropping off our stuff and having yet another delicious dinner of PBJs ("delicious" might be too much... let's go with "adequate" or perhaps "technically edible") we decided to take a walking tour around the city. Led by my guidebook, we hit almost every major plaza in Madrid in the span of two hours. During the walk I took no less than 100 pictures, of which about four came out properly. Thanks for nothing, camera. Is it because you know I'm replacing you when I get home? Is that why you're acting out lately? No batteries for a week!
The famous Tio Pepe billboard-- at over 100 years old, it's the oldest in Spain! For the curious, Tio Pepe is a wine/sherry company. And yes, that is a bottle of wine wearing clothes and holding a guitar.
Me standing on "Kilometer 0". It's supposed to be the exact center of the country but I think it's a little sketchy that the exact point just happens to be at the front door of their town hall. I doubt it's factually accurate. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to say down with the metric system! Inches and miles FOR LIFE.
Some government building that I've already forgotten the name of, accompanied by a statue of a guy that I've already forgotten the name of. Ahh, memories...
The next day we woke up bright and early, ate about six pieces of toast each, and headed out for the Temple of Dubod. What's that, you ask? Oh, nothing major, just an INTACT EGYPTIAN TEMPLE IN THE MIDDLE OF MADRID.
A far-away shot of the temple before we went inside. It's actually remarkably warm in there. If there's one thing Egyptians knew how to do (besides mummies) it was insulation. It's their less-popular legacy.
After that we left the temple and were walking to the cathedral when we happened upon a giant monument to Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. We stopped there and took some pictures before heading inside the church.
Wow, that's one heck of a memorial-- Cervantes basically gets his own mini-park! (Note: if I ever get a memorial, I want it to look exactly like this except I want all the statues to dispense free food in some way. Also instead of water in the fountain there should be chocolate milk. Shoot, just make the whole thing edible like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.)
The outside of Madrid's cathedral. Fun fact: though all the other cathedrals in Spain are hundreds of years old, this one wasn't finished until 1992. No, that's not a typo, I am older than this cathedral. I think that means I win?
As I just mentioned, Madrid's cathedral is the youngest and it was definitely designed with tourists in mind. They even let you go up some stairs to get a close-up of this retablo! Usually there's bars keeping you about thirty feet away lest your fanny-pack accidentally brush up against something.
The ceiling of this cathedral was, by far, the coolest of all the ones I've seen (and certainly the most seizure-inducing). So modern and colorful, I love it!
After the cathedral, we walked through the Plaza Mayor on the way back to our hostel. Built in 1619, this plaza has been the site of any number of Spanish historical events: bullfights, fires, royal ceremonies, and executions during the Inquisition. Now it's mainly just filled with people like the gentleman below:
I know what you're thinking: "You've got to be kidding me. Is that FAT SPIDERMAN?" Why yes, yes it is. This picture doesn't accurately portray the chaos of the plaza at mid-day, though: there were tons of Mickey and Minnie Mouses, a fake bullfighter, a zombie pirate, several headless men, flamenco dancers, living statues, portrait artists, and so many other people trying to get tourists' attention/money.
We left the plaza quickly after the ghost-pirate said he was going to abduct Meredith, ate lunch, and headed to the Prado Museum. What's the Prado Museum, you ask? Only the best art museum in Spain, hands down. I don't even like art that much and I loved it.
The outside of the museum.
No photography, you say? In the words of the 1990s, AS IF. This is one of the many many blurry/off-centered pictures I took inside the Prado. No, it's not the famous Mona Lisa, but it IS another painting of the woman who posed for the Mona Lisa. And this one's bigger and you can get really close to it. Prado 1, Louvre 0.
Despite our expectations, we actually stayed four full hours in the Prado and would have stayed longer had it not closed. That night we found a restaurant with really friendly waiters, tried a calamari sandwich for the first time, and went to bed relatively early.
The next day, we started things off big: the Royal Palace. According to my guidebook it is the third-greatest palace in Europe. It was built in the 17th century by Philip V-- he was a giant Francophile and wanted a Versailles of his own, basically.
The front of the palace. Enormous, amazing, everything that I expected. I just wish that we could have seen more rooms on the inside (there are over 2,000).
After a few hours we left the palace, ate lunch, and headed to Retiro Park, the humongous 350-acre park in the middle of Madrid. If you haven't noticed by now, when Madrid architects and city planners do something, they do it BIG.
We saw this on the way to the park. What's wrong with this picture? Yep, the entire left side of the building is painted that way, none of the windows/railings/etc. are real. MIND BLOWN. There are lots of these building-paintings in Madrid.
The lake in the middle of Retiro park, with a giant monument to King Alfonso XII in the background. This area of the park has the same problem as the Plaza Mayor in that there are countless street-performer types here. Still amazing!
The back of the same monument. Note the people near the bottom for a sense of scale.
This is the Crystal Palace, located inside the park. It's a giant glass building that you can go inside. Surprisingly, it does have bathrooms (fortunately they are underground and not glass-walled).
We left the park and hit up a few more places of interest before leaving for Toledo.
Sigh... yet another addition to the "Libraries that are Infinitely Superior to Old Quarry" album. This is the National Library in Madrid and it is, as expected, enormous and beautiful.
If you weren't insulted enough by the library, take a guess at what this building is? It's a post office. It's a POST OFFICE. FOR MAILING THINGS. I am so jealous right now.
This is one of the last things we saw before leaving Madrid, and also the craziest building I've ever seen in my entire life. It's an art/culture museum called CaixaForum. In the front is a sculpture of an elephant standing on its trunk. On the left is the main building, which has some sort of red-metal grating on the top. In addition, it's hard to tell but the building has like two tiny supports at the bottom, making it seem as if it's going to topple over at any moment. And can I just mention the building COVERED IN REAL PLANTS? God, it's like Salvador Dali's parents forced him to become an architect.
Overall impressions of Madrid: I had heard some lackluster reviews of Madrid and arrived not expecting to like it much. But how could you not love it? There's parks and statues and monuments and palaces everywhere! It doesn't have the same charm as Sevilla and I'm definitely glad I chose to study there instead, but it's a very cool city.
Next up: Toledo! (Not the one in Ohio.)