Monday 1 November 2010
Completely forgot to include this in the last update:
Before I met Maggy at Sol in Madrid I went to another famous street in the city, Gran Via. It's a big shopping part of town. It's a fairly new development, just over a hundred years old. This street was designed to link modern Madrid with other parts of the city. The road is almost 1500 meters (a little less than a mile). It's one of the places you've got to see if you go to Madrid. It didn't feel like anything special for me. It almost reminded me of a TAME Times Square in NYC. Just a lot of shops and restaurants and very crowded.
Notice the large screen at the end of the street, similiar to Times Square but not as dramatic (sort of the similiarity between everything in Europe to America).
Tuesday 2 November 2010
After an exhausting past couple of days, I decided to sleep in until Maggy had to go to class at 10:30am. We walked through Alcala de Henares, the town Maggy lives in for the semester, and I headed to the train back to Madrid. Alcala is a beautiful town and it's the birthplace of Cervantes, author of a famous Spanish book, Don Quixote. Junior year of high school we read this book in Spanish class. Can't believe I actually read a book written in Spanish..after this trip I could tell my Spanish was a little (or a lot) rusty.
I arrived in Madrid at almost noon probably since it was about a 40 minute train ride to the Atocha station downtown. Conveniently, that station is just a few blocks from the Prado art museum. Also, not to conveniently, I got a little too cocky with my sense of direction and probably waster 45 minutes being lost once I left the station. I thought I knew where I was going...absolutely not. I was in a residential neighborhood and NO ONE how to get to the Prado, which was so strange to me , considering it is such a famous visitor desitination in Madrid. I tried to use my minimal Spanish skills to ask for directions, but I think people could obviously tell I didn't speak it well and were reluctant to actually help me. I can understand a lot of words but by no means am I good at it. I ended up retracing my steps back to the station and then just going in the opposite direction since it was obvious I left Atocha going in the wrong direction.
I found the Paseo de Prado and wanted to stop at the Royal Botanical Gardens. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson from visitng Kew that gardens aren't really that impressive in the fall. Nope. It was only a couple Euro to get in and if I didn't check it out I would have been disappointed. It was a pretty park, but nothing special. Just a lot of trees and some flowers. Like one flower bed of flowers...Oh well.
(new boots from Porto, Portugal :)
After the Gardens, I headed to the Prado which was literally the next building over, but since it's so huge it probably took me 10 minutes to walk to the entrance. When I got to the museum entrance, there was an enormous line to buy tickets. So annoyed. I'm talking over a hundred people in line (that's not even an exaggeration). I'm sure I looked confused as to why there were so many people in line, and a museum worker came up to me and asked me something in Spanish. I told her I spoke English and then she told me (in English) that if I was just visiting the musuem and not the new Renoir exhibit I could use buy tickets on the other side of the building. Thank goodness! It only cost 4 Euro for students, which was nice.
I'm at the point now where if I don't take a picture of it, I won't remember I saw it. So in museums, I take pictures of anything I want to be sure to remember.
Appears to be the entrance, but not. Probably walked 6 or 7 minutes past this to the another side of the long, retangular building to get in.
Actual entrance. Notice the red brick building on the right side, that's the building I walked in front of to get here, to actually go inside the museum. The museum has two wings, the part on the right and part of it is on the left hand side behind the white building.
This is the room of the most famous artwork in the museum, Las Meninas.
"Las Meninas" or the Family of Felipe IV
by Diego Velázquez
(Definitely learned about this in Senora Binder's class, too.)
Loving the arches...so beautiful!
I stood and watched this local artist replicate a portion of this painting. It was amazing to watch something like that start as nothing. I really enjoyed watching him. I also enjoyed that he had a true paint palete like you see in the movies. ;) But seriously, I did.
'Charles IV and his Family'
by Franscisco de Goya
I also remember seeing Raphael's 'Cardinal' (Thanks again Senora Binder for teaching us about all of these paintings so I actually recognized some of them!)
After leaving the museum, I walked behind it to take a few more pictures. I met a older Spanish couple and asked them IN SPANISH if they would take a photo of me? It felt so awesome to actually be able to communicate with people in a foreign language. Of course, my Spanish was good by any means but the woman knew what I was trying to say and she was very helpful and taking a picture of me in front of the Prado. Success.
This was the back of the museum. The entrance was to the right and down a flight of our outdoor stairs. In the picture above of the entrance, you can can see a little bit of this part on the left hand side of the picture near the top.
The kind Spanish woman also, she volunteered to, take a picture of me in front of this gorgeous Spanish Church, Iglesia de Los Jerónimos. I tried to got inside, but honesly, I couldn't find the entrance. It was the main entrance (behind me) was underconstruction (not that you can tell from this photo, but it was). I walked around the church to try another side but didn't see anything. I'm wondering if this church is even open for tours.... not sure.
Here is the set of stairs I was talking about. The entrance to the museum is on the left down that sidewalk. The Prado is the red brick building on the left. Loved this area in Madrid, so beautiful. I'm beginning to notice that I love just about anywhere that there is a park of some kind.
After the Prado, I started walking in the direction of Retire Park. I love it to so much the day before I really wanted to spend more time there this afternoon. I also wanted to see the Palacio de Cristal which I missed earlier. I stopped on the way and saw the Neptune Fountain at a roundabout across the street from the Prado.
Apartment buildings I walked past, love the differnce in the buildings!
I also stopped for lunch on the way to the park. Of course, I pick the place where no one speaks English and it's full of business men and cigarette smoke. I remember seeing only two women other than myself in the place. Not kidding. The waiters were very nice to me. They may have just felt bad for me being alone (Maggy was in class all day so I explored completely on my own again) and not knowing any real Spanish. It was fine. I just ordered the special of the day. I got a soup, a very Madrian food - Cocido Madrileño and melon for desert. It 11 Euro and it was delicious! The waiter, who spoke a limited amount of Spainish said that Cocido is a typical Spanish lunch so I thought I had to try it.
The vegetable soup was quite good, also that water is in a glass bottle. Very European and very common.
Cocido Madrileño
It includes meats, sausage potatoes and garbanzo beans. After doing some research on the food after coming home, I learned it takes several hours to cook to allow the beans enough time to get soft. It was so full of flavor and unlike anything I have ever eaten before. Side note: every time I take a picture in a restaurant, I undoubtedly get lots of confused people staring at me. Oh well.
Retiro Park was across the street. I walked through another part of it. The park is huge, think Central Park huge. It's probably not as big in square mileage but that helps you get the idea. I found the Palacio de Cristal. It's a grand building made of glass and iron. I'm assuming it can be rented out for weddings or other events. It's just so beatiful, tours were available but it's closed on Tuesdays so that wasn't an option for me. I'm not even sure if I would have wanted to go on a tour. It's next to a man made pond and it was really peaceful there. Here's other pictures of Retiro and the Palacio de Cristal.
Palacio de Cristal - Gorgeous right?
This is looking through the glass. It's hard to tell from far away, but when I was up close to the glass I could tell that this decoration was made entirely of children's sand toys (shovels, buckets, scoops, sifters etc.). It was really cool actually. I look how ordinary objects can look so beautiful.
This was the pond that was in front of the building. Love that the trees were changing colors!
My one token photos of myself in Retiro - definitely asked someone who did not speak English to take it.
Right outside the park is this is famous archway, Puerta de Alcala (meaning door to Alcala, just to clarify it's not where Maggy lives. Alcala is just a common name for places in Spain, think the Springfield of Spain.). You pass this on the way to the metro. Clearly, it's under construction so it's not as pretty as usual.
I had time left for seeing one more part of the city until I needed to leave to meet Maggy in Alcala for dinner and gather my things to head to the airport. I had been wanting to see another famous landmark, Temple of Debod. It's an Egyptian construction from the Ptolemaic period. The stone was brought from Egypt before the construction of the Aswan dam some 2000 years ago. My quite informative map said it was a beautiful place to watch the sunset and I wanted to check it out.
I got off at the Gran Via metro stop so I took a picture of Gran Via in the daylight since I only had the night picture from the day before.
Streets of Madrid on the way to Temple of Debod from the metro stop
Temple of Debod
Behind the Temple, there was a stunning lookout point. This part of the city was high above other parts of Spain and it felt like I could see on forever. Looking at this picture now makes me happy.
Here's the Royal Palace of Spain. I saw it up close yesterday (pictures on previous blog post) but this was the astonishing view from across the city. I forgot how much I loved this evening until writing about it now. The sunset was so beautiful here.
Temple of Debod from the reverse side with the city of Madrid in the background
Museum about the Temple. I went inside to look around, but I really didn't have much interest and didn't stay long inside.
Interesting story of my short time in this area of Madrid. I was sitting on the stone taking pictures of the Temple of Debod this man starts asking about my camera. The man was wearing grungy combat boots and dark blue zip up sweater. He's speaking Spanish of course and I tell him, I don't speak Spanish. He starts talking in English, very well I might add. He is raving how I need to use my camera to take pictures of the birds. He repeatedly told me I could get beautiful shots of the birds at this time of day. He made me feel uncomfortable because I got up to walk away and he was walking beside me. I don't think he would have ever harmed anyone but it was still a foreign man talking to me when I was alone. It was just weird and I couldn't believe how much energy he was putting into talking about the dang birds.
I eventually have to head back to the metro to get back to Atocha train station to catch it to go back to Alcala. I was meeting Maggy for dinner and I was so excited to actually spend time with her. I came to visit her but with the France fuel issue and her coming into town much after I got there we didn't really see each other.
I got to Alcala and made it back to her apartment. I had to take another bus to her stop (the last one on the bus!) and was a little nervous about getting on the right one. It was just fine and there were no issues making it back to her apartment in Alcala after getting off the train. I'll tell you what, after this semester I am going to be a pro at public transportation. I packed up my things and we were planning to meet our other sorority sister, Muriel for tapas and drinks. Muriel is in the same program as Maggy and they have classes together through Butler Univesity.
Spain is a much later culture than England, or even the United States. Spaniards eat dinner at 9 or 10pm each night. So we were going to go eat tapas, which are small entres that people eat as a pre-meal, if that makes sense. They had a place mind, but it was closed of course. Boo. Anyway, we ended up walking all the way back to the train station (45 minutes!!) from Maggy's apartment and never finding a place to eat. I was so hungry and just ready to eat anything. It was fine, though. I ended up buying some high quality cuisine at the train station (joke.). Maggy urged me to try 'cafe con leche', a typical spanish drink. It's basically coffee and milk, I'm still not sure why Maggy was so stoked and adamant that I try it... It was alright. I'm not much of a coffee fan so I wasn't super excited by it.
I got on the train about 9pm and headed back to Atocha (another 40 minute ride) where I had to swich metros and head to the airport. Sleeping in airports has become my new job. My flight was at 8:30am the next morning back to London and there was no way I would make it on a train so I decided to sleep there instead of paying for an hour and a half taxi ride. That would have been ridiculous. I'll save my money and buy shoes. Seriously.
I would not recommend airport dwelling for anyone unless it's absolutely necessary, especially in Madrid. I walked into the Ryanair gate and people were EVERYWHERE just passed out on the ground sleeping. I was kind of surprised, not sure why. It was just funny to me, it felt like you walking into an area where fish jumped out of the fish tank and just flopped wherever they landed. That's a weird analogy, but whatever. I tried to sleep/read/journal/pass the time however I could but let's just say it was a long night in the airport alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment