Me gusta Madrid, pero NYC es mi ciudad (Madrid, Día 2)

Sunday didn't start off too well because Daylight Savings Time happened here and my phone didn't automatically reset, so we slept an extra hour than we meant to (and we only had until 2pm before we had to go to the aeropuerta). Then I left the guidebook I borrowed from BU in a Metro station, which was especially annoying because I really wanted to read about the places we were going to next.

We went to the Palacio Real, or Royal Palace. It's a big, pretty, white building with a courtyard in the middle (which is surrounded by two wings, the side of a church, and a pretty view of either Madrid or just a neighboring Spanish town -- I don't know; I didn't have a compass. Haha.).

We bought tickets (they had very generous student prices in Madrid -- we paid half price there, and also at the Mueso Thyssen-Bornemisza on Saturday, which I forgot to write about because it was boring an uneventful).

The rooms inside were amazing. This was, by far, the most regal and extravagantly decorated place I've seen in Europe. It was funny, because we saw a lot of Americans there (They're easy to spot by their clothes -- North Face jacket? Check. Coach bag/shoes? Check. College t-shirt? Check.), and I thought it was pretty fitting since Americans love flashy opulence. Though I guess the Spanish do too, huh?

The rooms were really lavishly decorated. The walls of one room (in the first picture below) were decorated with porcelain (like, instead of wallpaper, they glued porcelain to the walls), the Throne Room had red velvet hangings, and my favorite room (second picture below) just had this gorgeous 3D design. I don't know what it was, and it's not clear from the picture how it really looked, but it was gorgeous. The one room that wasn't over-the-top had bright oriental wallpaper and looked like it was probably used as a nursery. It was actually the smoking room. I guess after a nice hit of opium, the pretty colors make the high that much better.


There was also a mother who had her daughter on a leash. I really hate when parents do this. Your child is not an animal. And hey, mom and dad, you never put me on a leash and I'm still alive, right? It just makes me really angry. I want to walk up with scissors, snip the leash in half, and yell, "RUN, LITTLE ONE, RUN AWAY! YOU'RE FREE!" The worst part here was that the girl was about nine years old. Clearly not a baby.

We left the Palacio Real (there was a man set up playing water glasses, like in Miss Congeniality, except without the Swedish girl costume) and walked down the street to San Francisco el Grande. There were a bunch of special churches to see, but I've been in so many at this point that they're all pretty much a blur, so we just picked one. The dome here is bigger than the one in St. Peter's in London. It was nice, but nothing too special. There was some glittery stuff on the cieling that was pretty, but we didn't look around too much because it was Sunday and there was a service going on (Dios mio!) so we ducked out after a minute.


On the way there, we passed a huge group of protestors. Their sign said something about a jardín and San Francisco el Grande, and I'm pretty sure from what I could understand from their leaflet that the city was going to build on a park in the area and they didn't want in destroyed because it's important to have parques verdes in city.

We had some time to kill before heading back to the hostel, so we went to La Rastra, the flea market nearby. It was pretty busy, with people selling everything from clothes and accessories to books and, essentially, garbage from their basements. There was also a lot of underwear for sale, which seemed really gross to me. I stayed away from that, but bought two bracelets for one euro each.

We took the Metro back to our hostel, on which a really drunk older Spanish guy tried to talk to us. We told him we didn't understand him, and he asked where we were from. He said he lived in New Jersey for three years, which was a funny coincidence, but also annoyed because he said it five times and knocked me on the arm really hard to get my attention. Did I mention that this was at two in the afternoon?

And that pretty much sums up my trip. Oh, except also, on Saturday night, we passed Studio 54 of Madrid on the way home. Made me laugh.

Besos! XOXO

Donde está el Metro? (Madrid, Día 1)

We didn't get to Madrid too late, but getting to our hostel was a bit of an ordeal. I figure out that we could take the Metro, but once we were on it, we realized it would take forever to get to our stop, Chueca. So, we got off after two stops at another airport stop to take a cab -- but the airport was ridiculous. The signs didn't make any sense, but not because they were in Spanish -- they just didn't make sense. The nice thing was, though, that I got to start using Spanish right away (first, to ask where the Metro was, then to ask how to get to the cabs). I got to speak Spanish a lot on this trip, actually, because most of the people we encountered didn't speak English. That was really exciting. I felt like my high school education wasn't a complete waste of time.

Finally, we got to our hostel. Again, it's very lucky that I know enough Spanish, because the woman working there (the owner?) didn't speak any English. The hostel was so cute though. It was kind of like a crappy B&B, minus the second B.


We grabbed dinner at this little open market right down the street. The best thing we could find (or so we thought) was a burger place, but they ended up being the worst burgers we'd ever had. We also had to sit in a cloud of smoke, though not for the last time that weekend, because smoking is legal indoors and everyone smokes.

The next morning we got up early and went to the Plaza de Cibeles. There was a pretty fountain, the Fuente de Cibeles, for some god of something. There were a few important buildings around it, including the Palacio de Communicaciones, which they mockingly call "Our Lady of Communcations" (according to my travel book).


We got lost on the way to our next stop and ended up, luckily, at the Plaza de Independencia. This is where the Puerta de Alcalá, the old entrance to the city, is.


From there, we went to the Parque de Retiro, the big park in Madrid. It was absolutely gorgeous out, so we got ice cream and walked for a bit. It was sunny and warm and I regretted bringing my jacket (until about 4, when the temperature suddenly dropped like 15 degrees). We walked to the lake and rented a boat to take out. The friend I went with, Carrie, tried to row, but really sucked at it (the guy on the dock was yelling, "UP! BACK! DOWN! NOOO!"). It kind of reminded me of the 5-person bike incident in Rome. Anyway, I took over, and amazingly, I managed just fine (yeah, Dad). On the way out, we passed a pretty gardeny area.


My travel book recommended a place to eat nearby named La Finca de Susana, but they weren't open yet when we got there at 12:30. They only opened at 1pm for lunch, then closed, then opened again at 8:30 for dinner. Spain is weird. But I guess this place was really popular, because within 20 minutes of it opening, every chair was full.


We were trying to do the whole "Spanish cuisine" thing, so we split an appetizer of Chicken croquettes, which we found out were little mashed up chicken things that were fried and served with tomato sauce-covered bread. Weird, but edible. I got some kind of pork ribs with gross rice and Carrie got paella, which we found out is not, in Spain, what Americans think of as paella (we think of the Cuban kind). In other words, it was gross. The desserts were yummy though -- I got Catalan caramelized creme with biscuits (cookies).

Next up was the Plaza de la Puerta de Sol, which is very lively and has a lot of shopping. There were guys playing music and tons of people. Over the square is a big sign advertising Tio Pepe, a kind of sherry. The sign is supposedly synonymous with the square, kind of like the Citgo sign in Kenmore in Boston. We stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts, which they call Dunkin' Coffee (not even Dunkin' Café) and got snacks (they had some different kinds than we do). I also saw an ad for Confessions of a Shopaholic that made me laugh, because the word "shopaholic" doesn't translate, so it instead says "Confessions of a Compulsive Shopper."



We walked down a busy street to Plaza Mayor, which was more enclosed, and saw a bunch of people yelling and singing. They were wearing Spain's colors and marching around for the football game that was probably that night. The plaza also had one pretty building, the bakery (not sure if it's still a bakery or just was at one time), which had murals painted on the façade.


At this point we were pretty tired, so we went back to the hostel to nap and shower. That night, we walked to the Gran Via (a big thoroughfare) do get dinner. After our lunchtime experience, we weren't to up on the idea of getting Spanish food again (especially if we couldn't get an English menu and didn't know what we were ordering, as I realized my knowledge of food-related language is severely lacking), so we went to McDonald's. This was actually an experience in it's own. It was much nicer than any McD's I've ever seen. There were nice, cushioned chairs and it was clean. The menu was pretty funny, because most of it was in Spanish (hamburgesa, patatas pequeñas), but there were a few English words that didn't actually need to be in English, like "chicken."

The funniest part was a separate counter they had for a McCafé, where they served frappes, coffee, and dessert. We ended up getting some, and the woman served me my cake on a nice, reusable plate (like, actual flatware) and even decorated it.


After our awesome dinner, Carrie and I went to a small bar called Museo Chicote. My guidebook said that Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and some other people were all once patrons. It wasn't anything amazing and the drinks were really expensive, but we had fun. On our walk back, some drunk guy came up to us and said, "Chicas!" which was weird, because if a guy ever just came up and said "Girls!" I'd be like, "What the hell?" That was the one of the only times I wasn't excited to use my Spanish-- so we told him "No hablo español."

Oh-ee-oh, OOOOH-oh

Alice and I thought class was cancelled on Monday (though, actually, it's cancelled next Monday and we accidentally missed half of this Monday's class... woops... good thing our professor is nice) so we planned a chunk of sightseeing to do.

We started off by going to the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. It was actually pretty anticlimactic, but there was a huge crowd and I'm glad I got to see it. The guards just march in to music (hence the title of this post -- it was very Wizard of Oz-ish) , wearing those tall hats, and go behind the gate to the Palace. There's a little ceremony thing that we didn't see because the crowd was too big, and then we saw the other guards marching out.


From there,we went to the British Museum. One of the first things we saw when we walked in was the Rosetta Stone. It's behind glass, of course, but it reflected in pictures so you can see me in the photos I took.


I was pretty bored in the rest of the museum. There was one room with stuff from Waddesdon, and I thought it was pretty cool that there was a whole room in a national museum dedicated to stuff from a place that Poppa lived. But the stuff wasn't actually that intersting -- I think I'm pretty much muesumed-out at this point. Plus, the stuff was just old and boring.

At night, I met up with my friend Steph (from home; she's also studying in London) at Covent Garden to get dinner and see Spring Awakening. It was playing at the Novello Theater on The Strand (like Broadway/42nd Street; it's where most of the theaters are), the same place I saw The Taming of the Shrew. I was really excited because we only paid £10 for the tickets (and I'd wanted to see it at home, but it would have probably been more like $60).

We had dinner at a restaurant nearby, and I was surprised because they put ice in my water. In Europe, I've found, you have to ask specifically for tap water, if that's what you want, or they'll give you a choice of still/sparkling (which defeats the purpose, to me, because you end up paying for it). Some places in Europe won't serve tap, but I've never had a problem in London. They don't put ice cubes in drinks, though, which is why I was surprised to get one here. But that's the thing -- it was one. One lone ice cube in the whole glass. Kind of funny.

The show was good and really funny, but I think it's probably my least favorite of the musicals I've seen (Rent, Wicked, and Hairspray). The songs were good but I was only really impressed with one of the singers, and there were a lot of weird choices that the director made (like some dance moves and staging). There were also two sex scenes, which is funny because of all the plays I've seen in my life, only two have had sex scenes, and I saw both with this particular friend. At least this play was good and funny, though; Equus was frickin' weird.

A Bunch of Stuff

A few links for you: this one is funny, this one has over 17,000 page views as of me posting it here (which is, like, a LOT), and this one is a cleaner post for you to feel better after looking at the last one.

And, a few random bits of info before I go to Madrid for the weekend:

1. I wrote about how the English hate Germans because they're still pissed about the Blitz. I still thought it was weird that they talked about Germans and Nazis all the time, but I'm starting to understand why Prince Harry dressed up like a Nazi at that party a little better. Obviously, I still think it was stupid and insensitive, but now I know why he did it -- it wasn't because he thought the Nazis weren't so bad, it's because he was making fun of them. That's all they do here. They "take the piss out" of them. My boss was talking about doing a stag weekend (a stag party is a bachelor party) in Germany for his friend, and he mentioned that one of them would probably end up getting dressed up like Hitler. It's not because they don't think he was such a bad guy; it's the exact opposite. They're just more into black humor here.
2. Speaking of humor, I've mentioned how I love getting the tabloid London Lite on the way home from work now. There's one page that I love the most, the Message Board, because it has a section where people text message in different, often random, thoughts. They either share something funny or embarrassing, ask a question, whatever. One guy said that he hated not knowing if a girl was single or not and proposed that Friday be Single Girl Green Shirt Day. Somebody responded the next day, and someone else responded to them the day after that. That's why I have to get it every day -- so I know what's going on. One of the funniest things I read was a corny joke: "The seven dwarfs were sitting in a tub and they all felt happy. So Happy got out." There was also something about, due to the state of the economy and concerns over carbon emissions, the light at the end of the tunnel has been shut off.
3. I read the paper on the Underground, not the subway. "Subway" actually means something different here. It's not the underground trains, but any underground walkway, usually passing beneath a busy street. This confused the hell out of me the first time I encountered it.
4. Unrelated: There is a kid in my program interning at Parliament and he met Gordon Brown. I don't know him, but I thought that was pretty cool.
5. Even more unrelated: I saw a milk truck the other day. Actually, I've seen a few. Like, actual trucks that bring bottles of milk to your door. It was very cute.

Adios!

I'll miss you, sunshine. See you in Jersey?

This Saturday I went with two friends to Camden Market, this punky outdoor marketplace in Camden Town (a neighborhood in London). There were lots of booths set up selling clothes and accessories and food and all of the buildings had open storefronts. I got this huge doughnut (that was only OK) but otherwise just kept to looking. Some of the shops had cute clothes, but a lot of them were very Hot Topic-esque (combat boots, skulls, corset tops, other scary stuff) or fell into the "London Fashion" category.

London fashion is... different. Neon is very big here right now. Especially in tights and leggings. I've seen some pretty whacked-out ensembles since I've been here, but the worst was probably what I saw one girl wearing at Imperial College's pub a month or so ago. This girl was wearing hot pink tights under a powder blue tu-tu. Like, a ballerina tu-tu. Except she wasn't a ballerina, and it definitely wasn't Halloween. The guys we were talking to at the time said no, that's not cute. But that doesn't mean there aren't girls who wear that kind of stuff. We actually saw a few tu-tus in Camden. The other horrible thing I saw (a few weeks ago) was in Topshop (a very cool clothing store that's going to be opening in Manhattan! yay!). I'm warning you now to stop reading if you're squeamish. I saw... acid wash jeans. This really scared me, because it wasn't OK the first time around, so it's definitely not OK now... and I'm worried that somehow this "trend" will make it over the pond. Oh, please, no.

Anyway, some of the shops were in what used to be horse stables in the 1800s, and they still have the stable signs up. We walked around for a while, and then headed back. We took the bus to Kensington High Street, which has some more shopping, and I walked along Hyde Park from there to get home. I ended up dipping into the park to walk along the path because it was so pretty and sunny out (and I wanted to enjoy it before the rain comes back, which it most certainly will... tomorrow) and there were lots of cherry blossom trees and bluebells and daffodils and it wasn't just really pretty. Squeeeeeee girl moment. OK, it's over.

Today, the last beautiful day of sunshine, I went to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. There were, like, a million tourists out enjoying the weather. When I got there, a magician was performing in front of the Gallery. When I left, there was a guy doing yo-yo tricks. I thought that was hysterical -- didn't Jake do those when he was eight?


I just went to a few rooms in the museum because I'm not a huge art person and really only care about the famous stuff and the Impressionism (because it's pretty). It was interesting to see that a lot of the paintings, especially from the 1500s, were in really excellent condition. They can't possibly be just well preserved -- they must be touched up a lot, because they looked perfect.

There was also a lot of pink in the paintings I was looking at by Raphael and co. from the 1500s. It was definitely pink, not red, because there was red in the paintings too, and I thought it was weird to see Jesus and John the Baptist in the color. And I got a bit of London fashion here too. In Raphael's Saint John the Baptist Preaching (1505), there is a person wearing a purple dress/toga-thing with bright red leggings and another person with green leggings. I guess Raphael started a trend, and it just took 500 years to catch on?

One of the most famous paintings they have, da Vinci's Madonna on the Rocks, wasn't there. They were restoring it. Good timing, huh? I guess it's not so awful because I saw the one in the Louvre, which was painted first. da Vinci painted two versions, a few years apart, and it's believed that he actually did all of/most of the one that's now in the Louvre, and apprentices did a lot of the one in London. It would have been kind of cool so see both, though.

I pretty much looked for the artists I knew, but I saw some paintings by a guy named Cornelius Vroom. I thought his name was funny. There was also an Yves Saint Laurent room, which I only looked around because of who apparently donated it.

XOXO

Wodgey, Wompy Guff

Monday was another sunny, beautiful day, so we tried again to go to Westminster Cathedral. Finally it worked out for us, which is good because I totally would have given up if it was closed a third time.


They offered a free audio guide, which didn't really provide any interesting information but at least told me what everything was. Well, I thought it did. Today I realized that I didn't see the tributes they had set up to Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton and I don't think they were mentioned in the audio guide. Ugh. And I'm not paying to go back for that. I think this was the most expensive church I've been in.

The whole thing was pretty, as these touristy churches tend to be, but the prettiest part was the ceiling of Henry VII's Lady Chapel. I guess it's like the most magnificent architecture in the building, but it's this really big deal in general, too. You're not allowed to take pictures, and I saw it at the point where I was still following that rule.

A lot of kings and queens are buried there, but there are also memorials for other famous people. The coolest place, the Poets' Corner, had a bunch of sculptures and plaques on the wall for famous authors, poets, and literary critics (yuck). This was where I decided to be bad and take some pictures, because they had a thing set up for Shakespeare and a smaller one for Jane Austen. I'm also pretty sure Charles Dickens is buried there -- the thing for him was on the ground... where I think he is, too (or in it, I should say). I didn't get a picture of him because I got in trouble for having my camera out. Woops.

There was a little courtyard (below) and another garden further on, but it was closed for the season. In that general area there was a museum with tributes to a bunch of royals that I ducked into for only a second because it was creepy. They had wax-like figures of a bunch of people, and the one of Queen Elizabeth looked like Meryl Streep. Weird.


There was also a door with a sign that said "Britain's oldest door." I just thought that was really funny. Like, how do they know it's the oldest one? And is it really that important that it gets a sign?

And that's it. It wasn't a huge thing, but it's a must-do in London so I'm glad I can cross it off the list.


Unrelated: A lesson in British words and pronunciation:

1. sloth = "sloath"
2. "wodgey, wompy guff" = ??? (My professor said this. I had to write it down.)
3. knackered = tired (I actually think everyone knows this, but my boss told me he was knackered today and it made me smile. He also calls me "mate." I love it. I don't tell him that, though, because I don't want to look like I'm crazy.)

Is that... the sun?

The forecast this week is for really sunny weather, an amazing anomaly here. It was beautiful out today and yesterday, which luckily weren't work days so I was able to enjoy it. I'm going to have to gaze longingly out of the windows of Mappin House (on Winsley Street, off of Oxford Street, where I work) at the sunny weather for the rest of the week.

On Sunday, Alice and I got up early to go to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. This is a section of the park where people stand up on soap boxes to talk about whatever they want -- politics, religion, being nuts. Alice's friend told her that when she went, it was mostly just racist people ranting. Unfortunately, that happened when we were there too. There was only one guy speaking when we walked up to the crowd that had assembled, and I heard the phrase "Jewish terrorists," followed by "Israel" and "the liberal media," and immediately walked away. It made me less angry that this idiot was up there speaking this garbage than that he actually had an audience to spew his bigotry at. I wanted to yell something like, "Why are you morons actually listening to him? What's wrong with you?" but I really just wanted to get away because I didn't want it to ruin my morning.

We walked around the park for a while and enjoyed the sun. It was really nice out, but the park isn't really anything special. It's bigger than it looks on the map, but it's just pretty much open. It's not like Central Park with all it's woodsiness or Boston Common with it's gardens. There was one little garden, though (if you can call it that -- there were just some flowers around a fountain), where we sat for a bit. There was a baby playing and I got really excited because 1) I'm freakin' baby crazy and 2) it was just too cute.


We went back to Speaker's Corner on the way back to the Tube, and I was happy because the a-hole wasn't the only person talking anymore. All the regular crazies had shown up. I love the crazies -- they're why Marsh Plaza is my favorite part of BU. There were a few religious zelots, including one guy who stood up on a chair and chanted with his eyes closed, and another woman who was blathering on about trees having feelings.


After trying to go to Westminster Abbey for the second time, resulting in the second fail (the first time wasn't our fault because it was a holiday we couldn't have possibly known about, but this time it was a Sunday and we were trying to tour a church -- morons), we went back to the other end of Hyde Park where the Peter Pan statue is.


The plaque says something about "the boy who would not grow up."

We exited the park pretty close to our dorm, passing Royal Albert Hall and the memorial thing for Prince Albert. I'd only seen it from far-ish away before, and it was really pretty close up.


Not everyone had such a good weekend. One girl was visiting Dublin with friends and got all of her stuff stolen -- money, credit cards, phone, passport. Lucky for her it's an English-speaking country, but that still sucks big time.