As I left my room to catch the 5:15am train to the airport, I ran into several of my housemates returning from the Halloween parties of the previous night. I had been perfectly content to get to sleep early when I had been dragged out of bed the night before and named Toby’s gypsy pirate slave, despite my protests about being sick. Apparently gypsy pirate slaves don’t get to be sick. After assurances from my housemates that we would come home in time for me to get at least some sleep before my big trip, I began to get into costume. We made quite a crew biking across town: a monk, a pirate, a gypsy pirate slave,
I caught my train, the bus, and the plane and arrived in
We took the metro to Philip’s homestay to drop off my bag and then were were off to see the city! I had a great time as Philip showed me around Puerta del Sol and Plaza Major and the Palace and the National Cathedral and many other places that I can not longer recall but were fun to see. He filled my brain with little tidbits of information and I felt like I was on my own personal tour – and I was!
We went into a store and purchased the traditional sweets of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, and then I broke the news to Philip: having just eaten the treats, I now felt obliged to attend a Catholic mass – it was a holy day of obligation and the rough equivalent of celebrating Christmas without the Jesus part. So we found a church and sat through mass. I expected everything to come rushing back to me from
In the evening, we walked around the Prado, which is free to the public from 6 – 8pm each night. Philip was in a course on Spanish art and knew so much about the paintings! It was fun to listen as he pointed out all of the symbolism that I never would have caught had he not explained it to me.
My favorite part was seeing the paintings by Goya and Velazquez that I had learned about in my high school Spanish class. At the time, I thought the unit on some art museum in
By the time the museum closed at 8pm, I was exhausted. We went back to the apartment and I took a nap before going out for the night. Philip took me to a cute little tapas place and I experienced the terrible Spanish service that makes me glad that in
Following the potato and meat tapas, we checked out the café across the street, but it was too full and the clubs don’t start to fill up until at least 1am. We walked to the other side of the city center for churros con chocolate at the “best place in town.” Churros are softer here, not crunchy like in the
We rushed back across town after the churros to get into a salsa club by midnight (free admission!) but arrived to find that free admission does not exist on Saturday nights. Oh well. We found another club and danced a few songs, ending on one by Shakira which made me miss Ella and Elyse and our renditions of Shakira songs on the bus on the way to
In
No comments:
Post a Comment