Madrid

Three weekends ago I went to Madrid with Kellie and Kendra (friends from school). Kendra has a friend from back home, Justin, who is teaching there for a year so we got to stay with him and he showed us around the city. This was the second trip where I went somewhere and had a local who knew the city and could show me around; this is definitely the way to travel. It takes all the uncertainty out of being somewhere you’ve never been and they know which sights to see and which to skip. We got in on Thursday afternoon; Justin met us at the airport, got us on the metro, and took us to his place. We showered and changed—me into shorts and a t-shirt because it was wonderfully warm—then went to Parque del Retiro. Retiro is the largest park in Madrid, and is a very popular local hangout. It’s beautiful, filled with tree lined avenues and grassy partitions where you can sit. There are tons of cool statues and monuments—Madrid is mad for horse statues, every statue is a person on a horse or on a chariot except the chariot which is pulled by lions and the one that’s a seashell pulled by seahorses—and even a man-made lake with rowboats. We found a nice patch of grass and sat around in the sun for an hour or two and drank beer and smoked, it was such a wonderful break from the cool weather in Prague. We left and went to get food, kebabs which are similar to gyros and are delicious. They are pitas filled with shaved lamb, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and some fantastic cream dressing. I was a fan of the kebabs and found my way to a few more vendors before the trip was done. We went out that night to a British music club, it was kind of interesting not your typical club. They played lots of what I would call punk type music, Oasis and The Strokes were the only bands I knew. The next day we got up and Justin took us all over Madrid. We walked around for a bit, saw some famous squares and courtyards and then got lunch. Lunch was interesting; we ate at the Museum of Ham which is Madrid’s chain restaurant. It’s a two story affair with a deli-type lower level and a sit down restaurant above. As you may have guessed the have a lot of ham, whatever I ordered was much better than I expected, delicious even. The coolest part of a Museum of Ham is there are literally hundreds of ham hocks hanging from the walls. It’s hard to explain how many there actually are, on one small wall in the upstairs we counted around 120. Walking in and seeing that many pig legs dangling from the ceiling is a bit surprising, but the food is good so I’m all for it. After lunch we walked around the city a little bit, the financial district was fantastic. I think I could really trust a bank that looked like a palace, they aren’t going anywhere for a while. After walking through parks and down promenades we ended up at Museo del Prado which, according to aboutmadrid.com, “the Prado is considered one of the most important art galleries in the world.” It was a cool museum, they had a ton of Goya and other famous Spanish artists but my favorite part was on the first floor, tucked into a corner was a whole gallery of Roman statues. I love those old statues and they had a bunch of them. A close second was the information room which had the 9 muses in a giant semi-circle. I guess these particular statues were made around 100 AD, lost until the 1500s, dug up and some how the queen of Sweden end up with them. Her people put all the heads back on the statues but got all but one wrong—not sure how they messed that up—and then replaced one of the heads with a replica of the queens head. I thought that was pretty funny but I suppose that if I were a monarch with a bunch of awesome old statues I put my face on one of them too. It was back to Justin’s for naps and food before we went out again, this time to a more traditional dance club. The next morning, we got up and got right back to seeing the city, right after lunch. Three course lunch menus are a big deal in Spain so we had to try one out. It was very tasty but way more food than I could eat. The best part was the paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish. We saw the Egyptian temple, which is an authentic temple from some year BC that the Egyptian government gave to the Spanish government for helping them with some other temple, kind of convoluted I know. Anyway, it was disassembled, shipped to Spain, and reconstructed in Madrid on a ridge that overlooks a lot of the city. It was pretty neat and the view was fantastic. I’ll deviate from the story here to mention how massive Madrid is, it’s giant. Expansive in every direction. We took the metro from Justin’s place in the southeast of the city to the city center and it took at least a half hour each time, 45 minutes more often. And that was only crossing about a third of the width of the city. In Prague 45 minutes on the metro will get you across the whole city, easily. From every ridge and hill the city took up almost the entire view. It was great to visit but it made me appreciate manageable Prague where you can get from place to place without too much hassle. And we’re back, after the temple we saw the royal palace and its connected gardens and cathedral. The gardens were quite pretty and the cathedral was nice too, fairly new—1800’s—and didn’t have that old cathedral feel that I find so compelling but pretty none the less. The palace itself was fantastic, massive and opulent beyond almost anything I’ve ever seen. It was built during the 1600s and you can see the wealth of the Spanish empire and its New World colonies everywhere. My favorite part of the palace was the armory. They had on display a few hundred suits of armor and weapons and old guns, all interesting stuff. I have read a lot about the power of heavy cavalry and its battlefield dominance but until I saw up close and in person fully armored horse models I didn’t under stand how intimidating they really were. And I was just seeing the armor on a few individual, wooden horses. I can’t imagine standing in a field with hundreds of real armored horses charging at me, it was eye opening and very cool. We had dinner, and then met my friend Tierney Black, who I know from high school and is studying in Madrid this semester, and went out for sangria and dancing. The next morning we went to Mueso Reina Sofia, a modern art museum. I liked it a lot, more than Prado. They have a ton of Picasso and Salvador Dali. I really like Dali and it was cool to get to see his stuff in person. The top floor has so really modern “art” the kind of stuff that I don’t consider art. I say that, “if I can do it, it’s not art.” My favorite piece of non-art was a canvas on a frame with a slit down the middle. No paint, no drawing, just a cut in the middle of the canvas. If that’s museums quality art then I have a lot of printer paper from when I had Exacto Knives that they should look at. Still, it was a fun museum and I’d go back and spend more time there. We went back to Justin’s so I could pack up and get ready to leave and the girls could get ready to go to a bull fight. I had an easy flight back and caught the last metro of then night back to my apartment to end an awesome weekend. The trip to Spain was a lot different than the trip to Ireland. I was glad to stay in one city and not spend so much time on buses. I got to see a lot more of the city and got to do many more cultural activities. Also, adding travel within a weekend trip is too much. We came prepared for this trip, bringing 3 bottles of Pirate ship, our phenomenal Czech rum and we introduced Justin to the magic. He, like many others, fell in love and we killed a bottle a night before we went out. It's always a wonderful thing to bring new people to Pirate ship. Finally, I love Lufthansa, we flew with them to Spain—SpainAir back through the Star Alliance—and just like on my flight over from the US, the Lufthansa crew spent the whole flight feeding us and giving us free drinks. Much better than anything I’ve ever flown in the US. They fed us on the 55 minute hop from Prague to Frankfurt, then again on the flight to Madrid but I fell asleep. I awoke after everyone was done eating and they went to the back to get me a meal anyway, it was great.