Just as a heads-up, folks, you're in for rather a long one. I do promise you, however, that it represents one of the most fun and fulfilling vacations I've ever taken. Speaking of taken, my pictures from this trip are
here.
(54) is Monday, 1 March 2010
I got up very early, went to Charles de Gaulle airport, and I'm already about to go on a tangent. Parisian airport security is surprisingly similar to most American security. Same equipment, same procedure, same sterile environment... the only difference is that CDG has only one security lane per terminal, meaning the line takes bloody forever. So, the next time you're groaning your way through the TSA and their hellish job, be glad that at least they're minimally efficient about it.
Anyway, I boarded Swiss Air for Zurich ("That's not Madrid!" I hear you cry). Next tangent: Swiss Air wins. At everything. It's timely, and it served me a croissant, orange juice, and cute little fun-size Tolberone bars.* I changed flights in Zurich: a sandwich, another drink, another Toblerone, and another reason to love this airline. Speaking of reasons to love Switzerland, we flew over the Swiss Alps, which were gorgeous... seeing them made it clear how an Alp a day keeps the doctor (and Nazis) away.
Okay, so I'm finally in Madrid at this point, which makes Spain the third country in which I set foot in a single day. I took the metro (like the Paris metro, only brighter, bigger, cleaner, and all of the trains look like Paris's newest ones) to my hostel. If you're in the market for a Madrid hostel at any point,
Cat's Hostel (find them
here) is a good one. Very reasonable prices for internet, a small breakfast, clean spaces, a beautiful courtyard, and a location in the heart of downtown Madrid, walking distance from everything.
So, after getting settled, I walked about ten minutes to Puerta del Sol (perhaps best compared to Paris's busy central meeting point, Saint Michel). I met up with my dear Vassar friends Leslie Briggs (who is studying in Madrid this semester) and Kristin Van Der Kloot (who is studying in Paris this semester). We got a late lunch and chatted, and then strolled around a bit before we had to part ways for the evening. I went back to the hostel, where I chatted with a few fellow travellers. I found a forgettable dinner and went to bed on the early side.
I wrote down in my notes for today that I'm "starting to feel like a man of the world." That's a reference to Hemingway, but that's really just to say that, with all this independence and travelling and having two languages to navigate with, I really felt like I could hold my own (in terms of functionality) with most other human beings I might come across.
(55) is Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Big day. I got up early (so that's what happens when you go to bed before midnight!), got my modest breakfast, and headed over to the Prado (again, within walking distance from my hotel). They charged me to get in (which my beloved Paris would never do), but I have to say straight-up that it was worth it. The Prado in sum: same style and prestige of art as the Louvre and same size as the Musee d'Orsay, but Spanish. I spent between 4 and 4 1/2 hours there (about an hour of that was me eating a decent, fairly-priced lunch in the museum cafe), and I'm pretty sure I saw everything.
I really like the Prado. My father is right about one thing: there are a lot of dark paintings of crucifixions. That said, even all the iconic religious paintings captured my attention. Virtually every painting (religious or otherwise) had a very personal, original style. I felt that each painter truly had a unique and vivid take on whatever it was they were painting, which is rather lost amid the miles of might-as-well-be-identical works in the Louvre.
I left the museum around 3:30 and decided to wander Madrid a little. I found the train station near the museum and wandered inside. It's a great old building from the outside (lots of old red iron latticework with opapque glass: very classic train station style), and on the inside... this is tough to explain. Well, there's a rainforest. Yup. Just... there, being watered every however-often. Pictures in that album I linked you to.
I went back outside, and by this time I'd learned that Aaron, Kirill, Liz, and Dan would be in Madrid within an hour or two. So, I walked by the Reina Sofia, the Prado's modern art counterpart (stay tuned) and through the streets. I eventually found my way back to the hostel, chilled out for a little siesta (I had been on my feet for most of the day), and waited for the others. When they showed up, we traded stories; they told me about their adventures in Barcelona and Valencia.**
So, we went out for dinner (which is pretty late in Spain: 9 or 10 PM without breaking a sweat) to this great paella restaurant.*** They make one dish for 2-4 people, and each dish is roughly the circumference of a tire and filled with incredible seafood, chicken legs, whatever. That's for 2-4 people. We were 5. So, we get two. One was seafood in rice or couscous and marinara (which I typically don't like, but all the bad parts seemed to have been cooked out) and the other was "mixta" (Spanish for "mixte," which is French for "mixed"), so it was the same thing plus a few chicken legs and sausages. Delicious. I'm not usually that full after a Parisian meal.
We then went out to a few bars. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Paris's St. Michel/Latin Quarter, where a few streets have restaurants with people bargaining for your business. In Madrid, the clubs do the same thing, only they do it everywhere, and the deals range in awesomeness from 2 drinks for 10 euros (not bad, especially coming from Paris) to a free shot of apple liqueur (not bad by any stretch) to a free Bacardi mojito (friggin' sweet). So, we visited a few places. My favorite was a bar called Sol y Sombre (the apple stuff), because it was just really nice and made me feel like a VIP. Other places included a conga line, though, which was fun and something I've decided never has and never will happen in Paris. It was spontaneous and great, and while Parisians are also great, that in particular is not how they roll.
(56) is Wednesday, 3 March 2010
So, we got up and got lunch at Marrakech, a great little Moroccan restaurant at 14 Calle Almaden ("calle" = "rue" en francais, "street" in English).**** I had very good couscous (though it took a while to prepare) and this absolutely delicious sweet mint tea. Leslie and another girl from the Vassar-Wesleyan Madrid Program joined us. It was great fun.
My friends hadn't seen the Prado, so we went again. Same great Prado taste, now with witty commentary!
We then headed to the Renna Sofia (Same great Prado taste, now with surrealism!), where we saw some Dali and some Picasso (namely Guernica) and the very sterile white inside of this odd building. I also thought about writing a heist movie called "How to Steal Guernica."
We went outside and threw a frisbee in the twilight in the courtyard of the Renna Sofia, then we wandered some more and eventually found Liz's friend Dana (also V-W Madrid), other friends studying in Madrid, and a good dinner at a place near the Lavapies metro (that name has an accent on the 'e', but I much refer thinking of the station as "lava pies"). It was good food and decently priced, but I'm sure you could find a similar restaurant without much trouble.
(56 1/2) is after dinner on Wednesday, 3 March 2010
We finished eating pretty late, so it was time to scope out a few more bars and such. We decided to go to another place whose name escapes me, but it has what I agree was the best Sangria in Madrid. We sat around playing this great game-- maybe you've played it-- where someone writes a person/character's name on a sticky note and sticks it on someone else's head without their seeing it. Everybody gets one, and you go around asking yes-or-no questions about who you are until you get it. Great fun, and you get to look like a bunch of idiots for doing it in public.
We went to a few more bars after this place closed, including a salsa club with live music. That was fun, although for a while people seemed bent on doing this one line dance that I could not for the life of me figure out and, despite other people's seeming to have it figured out, my feet kept getting stepped on. Eh, oh well. We still had a great time, and stayed for a good two hours.
We then found our way back to the little square with our beloved blue tower landmark (see photo album), and we played on a playground there for a while. 'Cause, you know, that's what you do. We were really just biding time to go to THE CHURROS PLACE.
This place (Guess what? I can't remember the name.) Supposedly had the best churros in Madrid. I would agree with that, too. It's a real fancy-looking parlor sorta' place, and they served us a few dishes of churros with a cup per person of melted chocolate. Instructions are simple: dip, eat, love.
We then had to pack it in, so we walked back out to Sol (which, as I hope you'll agree after looking at my pictures, was very cool in the early morning streetlight). Some of us went home, some of us went back to hostels, and some of us didn't bother going to bed. Liz, Aaron, Kirill, and Dan had to catch a train to Toulouse, and I had about 6 hours before I had to head for the airport. It was about 6. Sleep?
Forget that!
I saw the others off and hung out at the Hostel until the sun rose and
(57) is Thursday, 4 March 2010
started. It is a standard rule of people under 30 (maybe older, too: I haven't gotten there yet) that the next day starts either when you wake up or the sun rises, whichever comes first. In any case, I took a sunrise stroll around Madrid. Such a good decision. The city was beautiful, and I found the big public gardens (Parque de Retiro) where we had meant to go on Wednesday but didn't have time. There's this neat little man-made lake with statues and marble railings around it and you can rent boats and row... it's great. I would have done it, but falling in the water at 8 AM didn't strike me as a great idea.
I kept walking, found a bunch of cool public buildings and monuments, and I finally made it back to my hostel for breakfast and a surprisingly annoying time of printing my boarding passes. Finding an internet cafe was surprisingly difficult, and finding one whose computers would actually load Gmail (which, in this day and age, shouldn't be that complicated) was harder still. But I found it, printed it, and then found my way to the airport.***** I got on my plane.
And then I went back to Paris.
-----------------------------------
Since this entry isn't long enough, let's throw in some footnotes.
* Only Tolberone bars can still be fun when they're "fun size"... alas, the tragic misnomer of the American snack food industry.
** I had been unable to accompany them the weekend prior because I had a chorus concert on Sunday with my Mendelssohn group. And it went well-- thanks for asking!
*** Which I would wholeheartedly recommend, only I can't remember the name... it's in guidebooks, though: the one with bulls painted on the walls, as if it were a Spanish Ben & Jerry's.
**** And their zipcode, 28014, is very close to my Bethesda code of 20814... *sigh*... Remember when my footnotes were actually useful somehow?
***** Barajas airport, by the way, is surprisingly annoying in terms of layout. It's a very long buidling, and you have to walk all the way to one end to go through security. Then, of course, my gate was all the way back at the first end, but of course I couldn't go in there because there's a big glass wall. There is, however, also a pretty sweet McDonald's-style playground for what would otherwise bored and annoying kids. Genius installment.
