a rose is everywhere..a rose as a rose forever is a rose

I apologize for the length of this post in advance, and by all means, you probably shouldn't waste your time reading it. I'm half writing this so that at the end of the semester, when I'm desperately logging what I did in Spanish, I have a reference. But this is out of control long, so you might want to take a bathroom break first.

So, on the morning I left for Madrid, I got up before dawn (I hate that) and Paco drove me to the Cathedral. It was pretty awkward. I tried explaining about 5 different times that I wanted to take the bus there, like everyone else, but my host dad wouldn't listen...whatever. So I get there before everyone else, but we set off pretty soon. It was a 6 hour drive....but I like long drives (especially since my motion sickness has only struck once since being in Spain).

We went to Toledo first, and were set loose to find lunch. I had a goal of only spending 50 of the 150 euros we were given for food, which should mean crappy food...but I found an awesome sandwich and a pitcher of sangria for 4 euros. SCORE. Then we went to the Cathedral, and thus started a weekend of getting yelled at every time I took a picture. I mean, don't worry, I took pictures anyway...what are rules when you know you're never going to see something again? We also hit up the Sefardi museum, which I thought was pretty interesting. I was having freshmen seminar flashbacks, and it was nice to feel authoritative on something in Spain. Oh, and I tried Toledo's marzipan...I thought I hated marzipan, but I really liked theirs. I think in the States it's way too sugary. Here it's literally just mildly sweet almond paste. And delicious.

The next day was our first real day in Madrid, and we started it off by going to Museo del Prado. I have a problem with art museums. I feel like it's necessary to see everything, and I spend waaaay too long in them. I was in Museo del Prado for approximately 4 hours, and I only left because I was physically hurting from standing that long (plus I was the last one there, and didn't want to miss lunch). I can't decide if I enjoyed it as much as the National Museum in London, but it had a lot of beautiful paintings. Goya and Velazquez are the two major painters featured, but there were tons and tons of others (and shockingly, not everything was a jesus picture).

After that, we wandered around to see the sights. We went to Plaza Mayor, which felt very Europe-y. We wanted to find La Latina (the Latin quarter), but ended up seeing it on Sunday. We went to a famous food market, which had amazing looking things...but I couldn't justify spending that much money on them. Then we went to Palacio Real, which is beautiful. I took a tour, because I've never been in a palace before, and the inside was insaaaane. There was one room made entirely of porcelain. And the dining room table sat at least 200. They had a room filled with Stradivarius instruments, which is incredible. There were no pictures allowed, but I took a lot of really stealth pictures (again, pictures are frowned upon everywhere in Toledo, Segovia, and Madrid).

After the palace, we went through Plaza de Oriente, Plaza de Espana (I knew there was one in Madrid...it's just lame in comparison to the one in Sevilla), and then to the Temple of Debod. It's an Egyptian temple in the middle of Madrid, bizarre, right? It was a gift to Spain apparently, for helping Egypt out. We saw it at sunset, and it was really, really incredible. From there, I tried out the Metro system (My take: not as amazing as London's Underground, but functions exceptionally well considering it's Spain), and got to Madrid's Plaza de Toros, where there was a beerfest. Now, beer's not my thing, but I almost wish it was. They had every kind of beer you could possibly want. Amazing.

So Saturday was spent in Segovia, which I don't think I'd heard of, but turned out to be great. We went to El Escorial first, which is a monastery/school/castle. We couldn't see the monastery or school, but the castle was very cool. I think it was Felipe II that lived there, and apparently he wasn't big on kingly comforts. But, eerily enough, they have the bed he died in, and they haven't moved it since he died....in the 1500s. Same exact place. Weird. Underneath the castle is the crypt where all the monarchs are buried after Juana la Loca and Felipe el Hermoso. Carlos V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, is buried there, and many, many others. It's creepy though, they have rooms on the side on your way down that have the bodies of monarchs that haven't decayed enough to go into the crypt yet. Gross, right? The current King's grandparents are in there right now. They also have room after room after room for burying the king's cousins, siblings, children, etc. All the royals get sent there, regardless of if they make it to the crown. But the library was probably the coolest part, it looked like it was straight out of Beauty and the Beast. The ceiling had beautiful paintings, and gold in between, and the library was filled with illuminated books and desks where the monks would study.

After that we went to Valle de los Caidos, which was beautiful. You go up a mountain, and then in between the trees you can see this humongous cross at the top of the mountain. There's a huge basilica at the top of the mountain, and huge paved terraces. Franco is buried inside there, and it was actually the eeriest church we've visited. It was really dark in there, since there weren't any windows, and the space was just huge and cavernous. The surroundings were beautiful though, it looked like fall in the mountains around Dickinson. It made me want to go hiking.

After that we finally went into Segovia proper, and walked around and saw buildings. The cathedral in Segovia looked amazing from the outside, but for once we didn't tour it. We went instead to another castle, El Alcazar, which is very disney-esque. We climbed to the top, which was terrifying because the steps are really tall and spiral very narrowly, and there's no railing, just a chain. Oh, and there's people coming up and down at the same time, so you have to cling to the the chain or the center. I think the Spanish people were afraid I was going to fall, because I was wearing flip flops, and looking extremely nervous. But I made it all right, no worries. The view from the top was amazing, and then we toured the bottom, which was one of Isabel and Ferdinand's castles. They still had their portraits, and their thrones, it was super cool.

Segovia also has this amazing aqueduct built by the Romans in the 2nd century BC, and they're still standing, even though the Romans didn't use mortar or anything. It's just the stones. Standing there, nothing gluing them together for thousands of years. SO COOL.

Halloween in Spain! (Is not very exciting). Europe doesn't really have Halloween the way we do. You see a few decorations, and there were a couple children walking around in costumes, but it's something that they only do because they see it in American movies (and before you call me ethnocentric, I got that information via my culture professor). So the kids apparently think the only costume they can dress up in is a witch's costume, which was funny. There were a bunch of adults out in costumes at night while going to bars, but they definitely don't commit to it the way Americans do.

So instead of donning a costume, we went out to see a flamenco show. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, because I've never seen flamenco before, but it was amazing. It was like a cross between tapping, stepping, and middle eastern dance. There's so much passion in it, it was crazy. Plus, nothing makes you feel more Spanish than sipping on sangria in the corner of a bar, watching flamenco, and shouting “Ole!” every now and then. GOOD TIMES.

So we started off November by going to Museo de Reina Sofia, which is a museum in what used to be a hospital. Museo del Prado is historic art, from 1300-1950ish, and Reina Sofia is contemporary art mostly. It was really cool, and there was a lot I liked, although a few that I didn't see the big deal about (I feel that way about Jesus art too, I guess). Reina Sofia also houses Picasso's Guernica, and it's really cool because they had a bunch of rooms showing all this work that went toward Guernica.

After seeing all of Reina Sofia...I took a nap. Not too long though, because then I went to see an exhibit called Lagrimas de Eros (Tears of Eros), which was way cool. It had beautiful historic paintings, beautiful photographs, some interesting history I didn't know, and a few weird videos at the end. Very cool though.

So, after that, even though we were in Madrid and there are a million things to see...we were beat. So we went to a park, and laid in the grass, and it was splendid. We walked around a pond in the park, saw a protest for street music, saw a girl on stilts, and a few miscellany carnival-ish things. And then the next day, we left for Malaga again. We stopped in a little town called Almagra, but everything was closed for the holiday. We did tour a historic theater there, which was very cool. Buuut I was pretty glad to get home to Malaga. My host mom asked me if I had missed el mar, and I had. It's good to be back.