El misterio del Oso y el Árbol


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Europe » Spain » District of Madrid » Madrid
September 4th 2009
Published: October 5th 2009
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Hola mis amigos!

So in the continued chronicle of my European adventure we will be blasting off (not quite Magic School Bus style) to the beautiful city of Madrid! Exciting, right? You bet it was. But before the good stuff up date on the goings on. This week was totally outrageous. It was the equivalent to taking my final exams at school. We had 7 assignments (including exams) due on Thursday. It was very trying on the nerves. Needless to say by the time Thursday rolled around my brain was pretty much fried. We had to perform a version of one of the Arthurian Romances as a final project for our Lit class. It was high-larry-us. We did "The Knight of the Cart" and turned it into the teen drama "Days of Our Knights". I got to be the bad guy and pants the main character. Then the main character played by Sarah (my twin) did an awesome Mission Impossible style "sneak in". The class was totally rollin'. We were too when we practiced. Totally epic, I wish it had been caught on tape.

The journey to Madrid had been a totally rocky one. At first I was supposed to be going to Barcelona but my travel companion dropped out. Then one of the other girls and I decided we'd travel together to Madrid. It was very stressful trying to pull everything together. It did show me that I am totally good at planning. Then I started to get nervous because of the whole language barrier thing. Granted, I do speak and understand Spanish well, I am not fluent by any stretch of the imagination. I had to have a "mommy-chat" to get it together and not worry about everything, as is my fashion. One of my biggest fears was that there wouldn't be an equal dispensation of responsibilities between my travel buddy and I, which would have been so totally un-fun. Annnywho, it all got done we just had to get there, which was so interesting.

So Friday morning I got up at like 4am because we had to catch a 5:20am bus to the London Gatwick Airport which is about 2 and a half hour drive. I went down to my friends room and the door was open, but home girl was sleep! So once I woke her up and she began to scramble to get herself together I went to make sure that the people we were riding with, who were going to Dublin, didn't leave. That also would have been bad, because I didn't know where the heck the bus station was. I had to go in search of their rooms and hope I didn't wake anyone up knocking on the wrong door. Luckily they were across from one another and the only ones on their staircase. So they were still getting themselves together, which was good. So once we got together and met by the Porters Lodge we were on our way to the bus station.

The bus ride was not too bad except that it was cold and cost like $40....Not. the. business. Funny thing is we still got to the airport with like 3 hours to spare. We had to navigate the airport which was kind of confusing. It took us a while to find our airline to check in. After a while of walking around we found out it was right in front of us :-/. Typical. So once we were checked in, we parted with our comrades and the two of us went to our terminal. The Gatwick Airport is totally ridiculous, kind of chaotic in fact. It was quiet in the airport terminal though. We sat there for a long time. Enough time for me to get paranoid about crossing the language barrier again. Once we got on the plane we were waiting again for the plane to take off. There was a delay because they were checking on something or other. The plane ride was interesting because they did announcements in Spanish and in English. I was able to pick some of it up. Things were ok, then my friend got sick on the plane but, I tell you, she took it like a pro. Once we got to Madrid we had walked around for a while trying to figure out just where we could catch the subway to get to our hostel. So after that misadventure we finally got ourselves onto the subway and got turned around...and my friend got sick, again. She totally almost yakked all over a dude on the train. I was standing behind the guy giving her the same look that my babysitter used to give me when i was about to get sick that says, "You better not do it." We laughed about it later.

Once we finally made it to the stop that we were supposed to get off at I was really nervous/excited. It was kind of dramatic because we'd been inside for hours, plus we were underground so it was great to see day light. It was beautiful and picturesquely old (like everything in Europe). We navigated our way, with relative ease, to our hostel. I must say that I was very pleased with it. It was like a dorm and clean with yellow walls. They guy that checked us in (I think his name was Tom) was sooo sweet and English! The other dude, whose name I don't remember but it was something random, was nice and cute too. So Tom cut a map up for us a gave us directions to a few key places. Our first stop was to the Prado since it was free that evening but first we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts that was on the corner of the street that housed our hostel so that my friend could get a bite to eat (we were doing an experiment to see if she could hold down something). Then we began walking and looking at the people (who were all so beautiful) and taking it all in. We stopped by a couple of shops that we'd seen coming in and tried things on. We were on a mission for a charm for me and a white dress for my friend. We stopped at a touristy gift shop and got postcards, I also got a "Madrid" purse and a shot glass for my collection. So as we're walking and reading the map and asking random people where the Prado was we realized that we were going in the opposite direction. Great...But it was ok because our motto for the weekend was "lets wander". On our walk we found some other shops that we wanted to check out the next day and started to see a lot of images of a bear in a tree.

We got to the Prado about an hour before it closed and managed to get in a look around. It was a slight overwhelming. It's like one of the largest museums in the world! That's more than a little impressive. We looked at somethings and were like, "Hey, we learned about that!" It was quite exciting to be able to think critically about art and actually enjoy it fully because you have some knowledge about it. After we left the Prado we walked back toward the hostel and looked around at some street vendors. On the way back we got hit on by this old shop owner, it was pretty funny, and got semi-lost but ended up back in the right place which is good. We freshened up and went out to have Tapas and Sangria. We found a random whole in the wall place to eat. It was really nice and smelled sooo good. I don't know the name of the place which is part of the adventure. I knew some of the things on the menu but we decided to just pick out food and try it. I got a pint of sangria, it was the bomb digs. Totally different than what mom makes at the crib. It had fruit in it and sugar at the bottom and was slightly carbonated. It was totally strong though. we both ordered two tapas. My friend got this thing that was like a veggie meat pie and things that was like an omelet with potatoes. I got fried potatoes (OMG they were the best EVER!) and croquetes that tasted like cheese grits. It was a totally awesome meal. After we ate we went back to the hostel and turned it in because we had a long day ahead of us.

Saturday we got up around 9am or so and went to breakie at the Dunkin’ Donuts (in spainish) and began to wonder around going into different shops, still seeing this bear in a freakin tree. So we decided that we were going to try and find it before we left. We went over to the Palacio Real, which is the royal palace and it is ginormongus. Totally HUGE. It had this great big fountain with statues of lions and whatnotness. Unfortunately it was closed so we didn’t see the inside. Instead we hung out there a little and took pictures. Then we walked over to the Iglasia San Gines and it was also closed. Being the creepers that we are we took pictures of the alter from behind the gate. It was fun. Afterwards we walked through more shops and I picked up some things for the fam. We walked into this little grocery store and it was really cute with all of this fresh food. We were both like, “We could live here”. Afterward we found the Marcado San Miguel which we’d heard about. It was so great. There were fresh food vendors EVERYWHERE. So my friend and I got a white wine and people watched. We met this cute older couple on holiday from Argentina who, we sat with. The sights and smells and everything were so vivid I loved having a moment to just take it all in.

Afterward we walk back toward the Prado and got lunch at a whole in the wall sandwich shop, also very good. Then we wondered around some other stores including this one that had all of this medieval paraphernalia. It was interesting and I loved the little figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. I was tempted to get one. Around 3:30 we walked back to the hostel and chilled out for an hour before we set off toward the metro to go the airport. My friend also looked up the statue, which turned out to be the city mascot or something and it was specifically a strawberry tree (I didn’t know strawberries grew on trees…). So when we left we went to the H&M and guess what we ran into? The bear statue that we’d been looking for and passed on our way to the Prado! Go figure that out. It was much smaller than we thought it’d be but we got photo documentation. After we went into H&M we hopped on the metro and went back to the airport to head back to Oxford. So ends my Spanish Adventure.

Peace and Blessings,
~SC




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