I am currently sitting on an airplane,
between Dan and Ross, as we make our way from Madrid to Paris. This should be a
very fun weekend and will hopefully result in some really great stories to
share. More on that later. For now, I have a couple hours to pick up where I
left off on life in Madrid.
The rest of last weekend was good. It
is surprising how quickly we are getting acclimated and comfortable here in
Madrid. Not only in the city, with the transportation and food, but also at
home with the changes in room temperature, meal size, bed size and the
stiffness of our line-dried laundry. On this issue, our culture (along with
Downey) wins without a doubt! My underwater could strip paint off of furniture
and my jeans could literally be
furniture. Ugh...
On Saturday night, we went to Maloney’s,
a little bar relatively close to our apartment with all of our friends. FYI a 30-minute
walk in Spain is "relatively" close. These are not a Ford Explorer
and golf cart kind of people. Maloney’s was a blast. It is a TINY place, like
the size of our breezeway and we got there early to establish a spot and add
our names to the millions on the walls, which are covered in American license
plates. I spotted an Illinois plate and instinctively planted my name just
under the "Land of Lincoln" slogan. The place played really fun
music and filled up with people around 2 AM. When we got home, we were greeted
by our new host dog, Milou. She is a little, yappy Jack Russell terrier who
woke the whole house when we entered. This reminds me to mention the bizarre
door to our apartment! The door has four, separate sets of triple deadbolts
going up the door jam. With each turn of the key, one of the bolts closes so it
takes four turns total to completely lock and unlock the door and doing so
sounds like a bank vault being cracked open. Pretty sure a tank could not
penetrate this apartment.
On Sunday, I refused to let Dan and Ross
sleep too late, since I feel like we waste too much of the day sleeping. I
can't stand that. We "enjoyed" our skimpy breakfast at home and
then headed west down our street to Parque del Oeste, which is supposedly the
second most popular green space in Madrid after Retiro. We were still starving
by the time we made it to the park, so we stopped into a cafe for a ham
sandwich. I really wanted coffee, but I had evidentially missed the cultural
coffee cutoff and everyone was drinking beer - so I settled for sangria. Haha!
Back to the ham sandwich, the only person I have known to consume more ham than
the Spaniards was Pat Neighbors, and even he would have tired of it here. There
is ham in EVERYTHING, breakfast empanadas, baguettes, soups, sandwiches and
even potato chips. Good thing we like it, since it is about the only
protein we consume in our all-carb, Spanish diet. After lunch, we walked
through the park, stopping to check out the Teleférico, cable car, that we
intend to ride sometime for great views of the city. We wandered through the
rose garden then happened upon Templo de Debod, an Egyptian temple, which was
given as a gift to the Spanish by the Egyptian government as a thank you for
their archeological help. From the temple, we could see the back of the Royal
Palace, so we simply walked the few minutes back to the palace, stopping for
gelato (I had chocolate and hazelnut mixed!) and then to see a famous monument
in Plaza de America. On Sunday
night, the three of us went to see the infamous La Corrida de Toros, or Bullfight, in Madrid. The bullfight season
is from May through October, with fights taking place each Sunday this time of
the year. We ended up scalping tickets from an old man on the street for 10€
each, which was really a rip-off, since the face value (which he was hiding)
was only 2€. Either way, we got in and were utterly horrified, but still very
happy to have the experience. The fight takes place in the historic Las Ventas
bullring and is divided into thirds. I am not certain of all of the
specifics, despite having just looked them up, but each third of the ceremony
consists of a lot of taunting and what appears to be torture of the bull.
Ultimately the bull is stabbed between the shoulders and killed. It seemed
gruesome to us, but our host mom assured us it is not that bad for the bull,
that they are raised to be strong fighters, and that they would be slaughtered
for food if not fought. Whatever -
when in Rome right? Dan did not even know that the skin of the bull was broken,
let alone that it was stabbed to death, so he left in shambles. Long story
short, we should not believe what we are taught as kids, that bullfighting is
simply matadors waving red capes in front of a happy bull!! (Bullfight photos are at the bottom of this post!) That Sunday
was my mom's 50th birthday and as much as I regretted not being there, I really
got to be when she Skyped me into the garage party with the usual gang in their
usual spots. What a blast!
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| Rose Garden, Parque del Oest |
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| Templo de Debod |
Monday was a great day! My first class
of the day at 2:00 was cancelled since the professor was in London, therefore I
didn't have class until 3:30 and got to roam around our street with Ross and
Dan looking for another good bakery for pastries and coffee in the morning. You
would not think to-go coffee would be so difficult to find, but Europeans have
a thing about serving food on real china and drinks in real glass. I have to
say, I like it, but a simple cup of coffee to take to school must be available
somewhere. After my one class of the day, I went with Dan and Lauren to a place
in Retiro called The Crystal Palace. This is a cool glass structure, which is
supposed to be vert beautiful at sunset. Well, we kind of missed the sunset so we took a look at the glass
building then headed to Gran Via in pursuit of another famous bar called El
Tigre which serves massive amounts of Tapas with a 6€ drink, serving as dinner
and drinks all in one! We found the place, had a couple beers, four plates full
of tapas and left for home content. Then we spotted McDonalds, which we
couldn't resist. This was the most beautiful McDonalds I have ever been into
and we even told the people. It's in a really old building and adorned with
marble and gold. Crazy! Lauren got a cheeseburger and fries (I think that's a
secret) and I had to settle for an ice cream cone since they don't have
milkshakes. I told them that no real, American McDonalds would not have
milkshakes and they laughed, but could probably care less.
Tuesday night took us back to Maloneys!
They had a 10€ bottomless cup special, so everyone from SLU was there. We were old-timers, having already been there on
Saturday and already having our names on the wall. Haha! They played more
great music, including Kelci’s favorite "Make it Nasty" and Grease
songs. I could not resist sending a few texts home especially after a couple of
the free chupitas they were handing
out. Lauren and I were dying for a good country song and the best we got was
Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places.
I was just fine with me, but I think I was one of maybe two people in the bar
who knew every word. The wannabe-karaoke-singer bartender definitely did
not!
Yesterday, Wednesday, was another late
start day at 2:00 with my art history class. Ross and I walked to our new
standby café, Chocolate y Nata, were we get a great napolitana (chocolate
filled croissant) and a café con leche for just 2.50€. After getting ready for
class, I stopped into a tiny shop near SLUM that sells sandwiches. They guy, I
assume owner, is Chinese and very fanatical - weighing each piece of jamon y
queso that he adds to the sandwich. It makes for a perfect, cheap lunch for
school. My two classes were just fine and afterwards we went to get a big juicy
burger at a place on my street that we had spotted a few days ago, looked up
online and had to check out. It was called San Francisco Burger Cafe and had
real American style burgers and fries. We are saving the TGI Fridays and Taco
Bell for when we need a real big taste of home. The burgers were great and
really hit the spot along with a big, icy coca-cola. We went back home, watched
the release of the iPhone 5 online and did some homework. We ate dinner at
home, meatballs in gravy with pasta salad and lettuce salad, plus a bottle of
cheap red wine, which has become a staple at the dinner table. We rested up for
our big day today by packing and going to bed relatively early.
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| Plaza de Toros Las Ventas, Madrid |
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| Banderillero |
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