Blogs from Madrid, District of Madrid, Spain, Europe - page 96

This past weekend I went with my whole program to Madrid. We left really early on Friday morning and had to take a 5 hour train ride to the city. The ride wasn´t bad at all. We were all in the same cab, so we just hung out together, some people slept, some read, and some listened to music. Some of us also watched this weird movie in Spanish about this girl trying to steal someone else´s life...good ole Spanish films for ya! We arrived in Madrid around 2 pm and checked into our hotel. There are 60 students in my program, so we split up into 2 groups of 30 and stayed in 2 different hotels, but they were very close to each other. After chilling at the hotel for a while, we went on ... read more

Spain is a good place to be for Carnaval, the go all out crazy party that happens right before the Lenten season begins. My friends and I decided that we should take part in this celebration. Cadiz is very famous for its celebration, but as we planned a little late, we chose to head to a slightly smaller party in the north, in Sitges (pronounce seat-gez). It's about 20km south of Barcelona, so we thought we'd hit two birds with one stone. It goes without saying, if you're going to any sort of carnaval celebration in Spain whether it be big or small, you MUST wear a costume .... you'd be out of place if you showed up with out one. We arrived in Barcelona on a Thursday evening and thanks to some very resourceful friends ... read more

Hola Todos! Ay que fin de semana buenissima! I figured I should include a little Spanish, considering how I'm studying here and all. Spanish was definitely the theme of the weekend, because our program traveled to Madrid, and for once signs, menus, and conversations were in castellano, not catalan. Catalan culture is rampant here in Barca - it's almost like Catalonia is a whole separate country from the rest of Spain sometimes. Anyways, it was nice to sit down to eat and not see a menu filled with Q's and Z's all over the place. Our trip lasted from Friday morning until Sunday evening. The whole program met at the train station at 9am on Friday, and by 9:20 we were rollin forward on our FIVE hour trip. I don't know if any of you have ... read more

So how long have we been here now? Almost 6 weeks maybe?? Doesn't time fly? Well, here's a blog about what we've been up in our spare time. You know you're fascinated... Arty Farty... Now, when it comes to art, I'm more of a Tony Hart or Neil Buchanan (from Art Attack - "This is an Art Attack, This is an Art Attack - this is...Art Attack!") sort of a bloke than a Damien Hurst or Monet appreciator. But being in one of the arty cities of Europe and, perhaps also because the gallery had a free entry on Saturday afternoons, we found ourselves the other week in Madrid's modern art gallery - The Reine Sofia. Here we found a range of expensive pieces - including the thought-proving and beautiful...and then the ones that, you know, ... read more

I visited Madrid last weekend and found it surprisingly different than Barcelona! The history, people, buildings, metro...todos! Some better, some worse. I went to a couple museums that were extremely captivating (mostly because my guide was fantastic!). Learned endless amounts of history and ancient tales, as well as saw works from artists such as, Goya, Velazquez, and Greco. Oh! I also saw the original "Las Melinas" painting at Museo Prado that we´ve been discussing in every art lesson since I´ve been here! I also visited Palacio Real, where the royal families of Spain have been living up until 1940 or so. Everything was intact; the enormous and intricate paintings on every ceiling, the furnature, portraits, dishes, clocks, etc. And all was immaculately detailed! This was my favorite of sight seeings in Madrid - the whole time ... read more