Madrid is awesome!!!! I really wasn’t excited about this trip because I’ve been traveling so much lately that I was burning out. It also didn’t help that I had a paper due the following Tuesday in addition to a group project looming. It also had to do with my dread of having to make the trek to the dreaded Charleroi airport again. Caitlin booked the tickets going out of that miserable airport of bad memories for me for a 9am flight going out. I was pretty sure we were going to have to sleep in Charleroi the night before in order to make it to the flight on time because of all the train connections we needed. Caitlin and I both were against doing that though, so we decided to take the risk and try to make it in the morning. Luck was definitely on our side. I completely thought we would be back in our beds in Maastricht by noon, but we somehow talked our way onto a speedtrain and then found a cab to take us to the airport. It was amazing.
We made it to Madrid in one piece (always a question on Ryanair) and set out to find our hostel. We successfully navigated our way to the correct metro stop and after minimal trouble, found our hostel. It wasn’t marked, so we just had to look at the buzzer names to find it. It was okay, though. Our hostel, the University Club, was located in the Chueca district of Madrid because there were no other hostels available in the city because of the Fiestas de San Isidro which started the day we arrived. As it turned out, though, our hostel was incredibly charming. The lady who runs it speaks absolutely no English, so we had to guess at what she was telling us when we checked in, but we figured it out eventually.
We headed out from the hostel in the direction of a market we had heard about called El Rastro. It’s basically a really big flea market where all these vendors sell all sorts of unique stuff. It runs for about 3 blocks at the south end of the city, and we were really stoked to get there. On the walk there, we saw a parade of people celebrating the festival, playing instruments, dancing and wearing beautiful traditional costumes. It sort of reminded me of the fasching parades we saw in Germany, only more sedate. After we saw the parade, we found a smaller market going on in a square on the way to El Rastro. We shopped around there a bit and found a couple of neat items like this star light thing that I am stoked to put in my room.
Finally, we made it to El Rastro around 2:20. Unfortunately, the market closes at 3 and everyone was already packing all of their stuff up. So we didn’t get much shopping time in, but we definitely got the feel for the place. We also learned that very few people in Spain speak English. It was one of the only times when I’ve had a hard time communicating. There is usually someone around who can help, but in Spain we were forced to function on my VERY limited Spanish vocabulary. (Hola. Donde ____?? No habla Espanol.) It was an adventure, though. Lots of fun.
After El Rastro, we decided to wander until we found some touristy stuff. We ran right into the most incredible church, the Cathedral de la Almudena. This church was one of the coolest I’ve seen. In structure, it’s very similar to the rest of the churches I’ve seen, but the paintings and all the decorations inside were just incredible. The paintings were all incredibly vibrant colors depicting bible scenes painted in interesting style. It made the whole church feel jubilant. There’s no other word for it. That is a church in which you can worship. It’s happy in there.
There was also really ornate decoration all over besides the bright colors. Oh! And they had electric candles that you would “light” in the chapels. You know, like when you light a candle because you’re praying for someone or something. In this church, though, they didn’t want real fire so you put in your coin and a candle light pops on. Crazy!Next door to the Cathedral was the Palacio Real. It’s the most stunning palace. Honestly, it reminded me of Versailles, and Versailles is supposed to be the most amazing palace there is. Apparently the Palacio Real was built to dwarf all other palaces, and I must say that it was stunning from the outside.
Unfortunately, it was closed to visitors because of the holiday, but it was still great to see it.After that, we wandered for a little bit, then tried to find a tourist office where we could get a better map and a better idea of what we should be doing in the city. The lady in the tourist office spoke English (!!!) and gave us some great information about what we should see while we were there. She even told us that because of the festival there were bullfights every night. We were under the impression that they were only on Sundays, and we were upset that we wouldn’t get to see one. Because of the festival, they were fighting every night for a month.
We decided to go to an internet café that was nearby to try to see if we could score some bullfight tickets. Unfortunately they didn’t even have English on the website, so we couldn’t accomplish anything. We grabbed some dinner, and then headed over to the bullfighting arena, the Plaza de Ventas. It looked an awful lot like the Colleseum.
We tried to buy tickets, but the only ones for sale were for like 50 euro and we didn’t want to see violence that badly. Just as we were about to give up, this really shady looking older guy came up to us and asked us if we needed two tickets. At least, I think that’s what he was asking us since he was speaking rapid Spanish. We said yes, and then he shadily looked around for the cops and made us follow him to a different spot. We got him to show us the tickets and then we paid him 20 euro each for tickets that cost 4.50 each when bought them. 
We were seated all the way at the top of the arena, and I thank my lucky stars for that. I am not sure I would have been able to stand the bullfight much closer than that. 
It is terribly violent. I mean, I knew it would be, but it’s different when you actually see it. I would never presume to say they shouldn’t do it, but I don’t plan on seeing another bullfight any time in the near future. The way it works is this. They have the bull come out and there are like 8 junior matadors that just play with it and tick it off for a while. They don’t do anything except get it to run around and rile it up a bit. Then these two dudes on horse back come in (I think they’re called Lancers) with these long spear type things and they stab the bull in the spine to make its head stay down for the remainder of the fight so the main matador can get the right angle for the kill. Then the junior matador guys come out again and poke the bull with these hooky thingies that get it all riled up again. Those are just surface wounds to hurt it, but not really cause any damage. At that point, the main matador comes out to much fanfare and dances around all effeminately with the cape thing and starts playing with the bull. That guy makes the bull run around and around 
until finally he gets bored and stabs it between the shoulder blades with his sword. At that point, the junior matadors come out again and drive it crazy until it collapses. When it collapses, they stab it in the head a few times to make sure it’s dead and then it’s all over and these horse guys come out and drag the bull’s body out to more fanfare. 
If the main matador was particularly good, the crowd waves white handkerchiefs to petition the judges to give the matador the bull’s ear or tail depending on how good he was. Repeat that process about 10 times, and you have a bullfight. Frankly, it’s pretty disgusting. I’m glad I went though. I almost asked Caitlin if we could leave after the first fight, though, because it got really messy. The bull attacked the horse of the lancer and knocked it to the ground twice. The horse was bleeding so badly and I was kind of upset about it, but the horse got up and walked out of the arena and it was okay, I guess. Then, the bull ended up attacking the main matador during the final stage and throwing him into the air and stabbing a big old gash in his leg. Not pretty. The matador ended up being able to still kill the bull in the end, but it was SCARY! And I thought that if all the fights were going to be like that, I didn’t want to stay for another two hours. It was too violent. But the rest of the fights went like clockwork just the way they were supposed to go. The bulls really have no chance at all. It’s like 15 dudes versus 1 bull when it comes down to it. Anyway, after the bullfight, Caitlin and I walked back to our hostel and passed out. We had been up early and we were exhausted.The next day we went straight back to the bullfighting arena because we had heard there was a museum about the fighting there. They hold crazy hours there in Madrid and the museum was already closed by the time we got there, so we decided to see if we could find a New Europe walking tour of Madrid. So we went to an internet café again. Unfortunately, New Europe has discontinued their Madrid tour. So we decided to go to Plaza Mayor, where we knew there was a tourist office offering walking tours. We ended up taking a tour with a lovely lady named Isabella that focused on the contributions of the Bourbon Dynasty within Madrid. The Bourbon Dynasty is one of the more recent ones and they changed a lot of the style in architecture within the city. It was a very interesting tour.
After our tour, we wanted to go and see the botanical gardens while we waited for the free opening hours at the Museo del Prado to start. The botanical gardens were nice, but once again I realize that Keukenhof has really ruined me for all gardens. I just won’t be impressed very easily ever again. Haha! After we took a tour around the botanical garden, we went back to the Museo del Prado and laid in the grass for a half an hour or so to enjoy the sun and relax a bit. The weather in Madrid is really fabulous. In the sun, it’s incredibly hot but if you get in the shade it’s almost too cold. It’s amazing. I LOVED it. Around 6:30, we went into the museum. The Museo del Prado is an art museum and it’s quite impressive. We saw some Rembrandts and some other famous artists whose names escape me at the moment. I am terrible at remembering what I see in art museums. I really enjoy it while I’m there, but the details are always impossible for me to remember. There was a good stretch in there, though, that was all paintings depicting different ancient myths and I was so proud of myself for remembering most of the stories’ details. Caitlin was even interested in the stories and asked me to tell her what I could remember. It was fun. Hahah…I love classical mythology. What a dork!
After the museum, we headed back to our hostel to tell our landlady that we would be checking out that night. We also had tickets to see a flamenco show just around the corner from our hostel. We got to the show just in time, and spent the next hour and a half in awe of the passion of these dancers. There were probably 10 girls and 5 guys dancing and they were incredible. The show did a mix between ballet and flamenco; some dances were one style, some the other, some a mixture. It was really interesting. More importantly it was HOT. The guys were so masculine and strong and talented and it was almost too much to bear. The girls were amazing too. There was one girl who was so beautiful it was almost impossible. The coolest thing was that these girls were real women. They were attractive and thin and everything, but they had curves and they weren’t rails. It was just wonderful. I want to take a Spanish dancing class because that is some sexy stuff and I want to learn to do it. Haha…
After the show, we walked around trying to find either some good looking tapas or some good looking paella. We were having a bit of trouble finding either because neither of us speaks Spanish and we were never sure what we were looking at on the menu. Eventually we asked a man on the street who was trying to get people into a bar where we should go and he sent us into the bar to ask his friend. His friend told us to go to a place around the corner called La Barracas and we set off to find it. Let me tell you something, that place was amazing. We ordered a bottle of sangria to split (YUM) and a paella (rice with stuff mixed in it) with shrimp, pork, chicken, and mussels. We also had a bruschetta type appetizer and bread with this amazing garlic/sour cream/butter stuff. Basically, it was as good as that lobster pasta I had in Milan that I say is my best meal in Europe. La Barraca may have overtaken the lobster pasta…I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. It was amazing though.
After dinner (it was about 1230 am by the time we left the restaurant—they eat incredibly late over there) we ran back to the hostel, grabbed our bags and jumped on the metro to get to the airport where we were going to have to sleep because our flight out was at 615 am and the metro doesn’t run that early. We did fine until the last metro line when we blew it rushing and got on the right line going the wrong direction and ended up at the end of the line on the wrong end as the metro closed for the night. BUMMER. Hahah…we’re lame. So we had to take a cab to the airport, but luckily we found one easily enough. Sleeping in the airport sucked majorly, but it made it very easy to sleep on the plane/bus/train that we were on later so the trip home went really fast. Hahah…
Madrid was incredible. I really really really like Spain. The people we met would go out of their way to help us in a way that I haven’t really experienced elsewhere. We also saw a lot of homeless people, and even ended up in the middle of a police chase at one point when this cop on a moped was chasing a pickpocketer. The bad guy tried to hide behind Caitlin and me as the cop zoomed around to get him….haha… But the people in Madrid were amazing. Even though we didn’t speak Spanish (que hora metro close-o?) the people were patient and kind with us and I just love it there.
I leave for Scotland tomorrow. It should be a riot. I’m doing the tour thing again, so it’s guaranteed (almost) to be great. ☺
No comments:
Post a Comment