A Madrid Post devoted to Meredith

Since Madrid is afterall, a big city, I took advantage of the many ads and Americanisms and took a ton of pictures since Meredith asked me to find some American-esque things but in Spanish.

In the metro station...


Okay, I had to walk into the Burger King when I saw this through the window. Apparently, I am ice cream now.

This isn't actually American, but I thought it was a funny advertisement encouraging people to go to the theater.

This is actually in Oviedo at my bus stop near the flat... sorry for the bad glare, but it is hard to avoid. Merche is REALLY excited about the new Indiana Jones movie coming out so we might go see it in a few weeks before I leave actually.

Last day in Madrid

At the end of the day I was REALLY exhausted… Telefonica was supposed to come to the hostal to fix the internet, but they never showed up. SPAIN!!!!!! In any case, I got Tuesday morning and decided to seek out the Plaza de Espana with the memorial to Cervantes (featuring Don Quijote and Sancho Panza) before leaving Madrid that afternoon.

Me in front of a fountain at the Plaza de Espana

Cervantes memorial (with Don Quijote in front)




I returned to the hostal to pick up my bags and went to a nearby Vodafone store to add some extra money to my cell phone since I had run out and thought I might want to have the cell in case I got lost or something. Afterwards I hopped on the metro to go to the bus station, even though I had about 2 hours until the bus left… and thank goodness I did.

The day before while I was in a metro station I asked a metro worker (since it wasn’t busy) how I would get from the stop near my hostal to the south bus station. He drew me a route on a map and I was on my way. Well, I went to that stop and wandered around a bit to find the bus station and what appeared to be a bus station looked abandoned. I asked a nearby old man where the bus station was (remember my Things I Learned In Spain? ALWAYS ask the oldest person around, they usually know their way around the city and they are so happy that at young person is talking to them they will happily help you, that is, if you don’t mind getting half a life story while you are at it.) Sure enough I got a mini-history of the bus station and long story short this particular bus station had been closed for months. He then gave me directions to where the relocated station was and I was on my way.

I get to the station (which was actually attached to the metro station… how the other metro guy didn’t know this, I’m not sure, but whatever) and I look at the big board of arrivals/departures, and I didn’t see a listing for Oviedo. Oh boy, I thought maybe I was yet again, at the wrong station. I did however see a listing for Gijon, a city nearby (remember the pretty beach pictures I uploaded recently?) so I decided to ask the info desk if that’s my bus. Sure enough, it was, it turns out they changed the route name on me since it will continue on from Oviedo to Gijon. Whew. I ended up with about 15 minutes to spare, but man, what drama.
I promised Jay's mother I would take pictures from the window of the bus so here is one of about eleventy billion (Shhh it's a number if I say it is!) photos, so this is just one of them. I am pretty sure this is the Picos de Europa entering Asturias again.

All and all I am glad I visited Madrid, if nothing else to see all the statues and paintings that I’ve studied during my college career… it really is different in person. However, I am also glad that I chose not to study abroad in Madrid. The city itself is, I suppose like any other big city… trash and graffiti everywhere, everything seems dirty, and it overall doesn’t seem very friendly. It was most definitely a touristy place, even though this is not "peak season," and as a result, most people automatically wanted to talk to me in English which was a bit annoying for me. I always responded in Spanish and sometimes people switched when they realized that I could communicate perfectly well in Spanish, but others continued in English. Again, one of those places that is nice to visit, but I don’t think I’d really want to live there…. Sort of how I feel about D.C, haha.

Madrid continued: Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor

After that I went the Puerta del Sol that I’ve heard so much about, which is a major shopping district but also just sort of a major meeting place.
Center of Puerta del Sol

Infamous bear statue in the Puerta del Sol


I walked from the Puerta del Sol to the Plaza Mayor which looks like it used to be a major meeting place for people but nowadays looks to mainly cater to tourists. It looked like they were doing some major restoration work at the time too, but I still snapped a few photos.


Here is another "mimo" remember the guy I snapped a photo of in Santiago? Basically he was standing perfectly still with his arms at his side and when people gave him money he would raise his arms showing the other spider-ish appendages and wave them around in a creepy way.

Main part of Plaza Mayor. There are tons of little touristy shops underneath in those arches and it goes around in a big square essentially.

Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid (continued)

Monmument to Carlos Linneus... and ducks!

Madrid continued... churros and flowers.

After the palace I stopped at a café for a pincho (snack) and was on my way again. But first, I had to take a picture of some chocolate con churros that they were serving there to tempt you all:


Next I decided to hop the metro and buy a 1 day pass which was only 4 euros for unlimited rides all day long. It turned out to be a VERY good call because my legs are STILL sore from all the walking around I’ve done. Next I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens for a stroll. It was a really nice little sanctuary in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of Madrid.

I probably took 100 pictures as a conservative estimate, so I feel like just 3 pictures just isn't enough so this will spill over into the next post:

Madrid adventures, continued

The next day I was more or less wandering around on my own. I decided to go to the Royal Palace first which turned out to be a good call… when I left the line was wrapped around the building.
Here is me in front of a fountain in the gardents near the Palace






The palace was AMAZING! I got to see the royal armory with real armor from the 1500s, the armor for the horses, and even the child-armor of famous past kings like Phillip the II and Carlos V. It was very impressive, but unfortunately I couldn’t take pictures. I also saw the Royal Pharmacy which had hundreds of bottles heavily decorated and with all kinds of crazy remedies from back in the day and some of the old alchemy tools as well.
Here is the "plaza" of sorts inside the palace walls. On the right is the main palace building with the important rooms, and on the left was a gorgeous overlook.


I went into the main part of the palace and it turned out that I couldn’t do a guided tour since I had a student discount, but since the tours were going through the same area I just sort of tagged along random ones as I went along. First an English tour, then a Spanish tour, and then I hopped on another one that I could understand but I was having a bit more trouble with it…. Turns out it was because it was Italian. It was cool to find out that I can understand my fair share of Italian too though. The palace was REALLY amazing though, with the most ornate decoration and paintings imaginable. I even saw a couple more Goya paintings that remained in the Palace that I recognized which was a nice surprise.

More random pics from bus in Madrid

Plaza de Colon

Next was the Thyssen museum, which had some impressive Dali (my favorite!) and some more Picassos. Here is Thyssen

Unfortunately however, I was robbed while I was taking out my student ID at the ticket counter. As I opened up my purse someone “bumped into me” making me drop the card and when I stood back up all the cash in my purse was gone. Luckily I had enough cash in my pocket to pay for the ticket with the student discount and all, but needless to say I was still pretty upset about it all. I had tried so hard to be careful. I don’t even want to think about how much I lost.

After Thyssen I caught the tourist bus and rode around a bit more. I also hopped on the other route since my pass was about to run out but unfortunately the bus routes ended while I was on the other side of town. I actually met a Mexican family on the bus that got ditched off with me so we all went down to the metro together and figured things out to get back to our respective homes. They were really nice, an older lady with her sons it seemed. It was actually nice to be able to use “ustedes” instead of “vosotros” for once, since it comes a bit more naturally to me.

Random pics from bus:







Plaza de Cibeles again w/a tourist bust in the background

More random pics

This is the Atocha train station


Caixa Forum building.. really strange design.


Neptune

The next day I went to the Reina Sofia museum which had a lot of Picasso (Guernica among them) Joan Miro, and a lot of other modern stuff. I really enjoyed it a lot, plus it was free since it was Sunday. There was also an Amnesty International party going on outside which was sort of interesting. Reina Sofia was free that day, and luckily since I got there early I didn't have to wait in line too long.



Museo Reina Sofia

Joan Miro sculpture outside


Lady dancing around trying to sell stuff outisde of the museum


Statue outside of Reina Sofia and Amnesty International gathering (in yellow)