Madrid

Hey everyone, sorry about the long delay, but at long last, my Madrid post appears. Madrid was pretty sweet, lots of unique experiences. I read that if you don't speak spanish its very difficult, but i didn't find that to be the case. We ended up going to madrid friday afternoon and our flight was out of Basel, so we had to train it over (took 1 hours). The Basel airport is really neat because it's a Euroairport, meaning it is shared by 3 countries (Germany, France, and Switzerland). The airport itself is pretty small but has a lot of flights. There are no extras things (food court, shopping, arcade) and is pretty quiet.

When we got to Madrid, the first thing we had to do was get to our hostel. Keegan, being the Genius he is, booked 2 beds for 3 people and for 1 night instead of 3. We managed to talk the hostel to let me sleep on the floor (wasn't fun). Afterwards, we wandered around the city to find another hostel for the next two nights. When we found 1, we headed back to the first hostel, and the staff told us about a vodka party, so we went along. All it was was a trip to a bar and a free shot, after a few drinks we headed back for the night.

Arc at Puerta de Alcala


The second day, we went to 2 of the big 3 museums, the Reina Sofia and the Museo del Prado. The Reina Sofia was more modern art so we saw a few pictures of Picaso and Dali. There was a particularly famous painting of Picaso's called the Guernica so we wanted to take a picture of it, but they had guards everywhere and refused to let us so we got craft. We positioned people to block view and I created some interference but getting a guard to explain some random painting to me. Keegan hid the camera in the camera case with just the lens sticking out and snapped about 20 shots of hte painting blind. We ended up with a decent one, so we left happy :) The Building was pretty nice as it had glass elevators so you had a pretty nice view of the city, pretty cool.

Reina Sofia


Guernica


After the museum, we went for lunch and tried one of the Spanish set meals. You basically get 2 dishes, bread, beer and desert so it was a pretty good price. I got Paella (spanish rice) and some kind of fish, a beer, and a chocolate cake. Unfortunately the beer wasn't a spanish beer so I didn't get another chance to try it, i did pick up a bottle of wine though.

Food


After lunch we went to the Prado. This musuem contained more classical art stuff, but I don't know my art history too well so I don't know what was famous.

The next stop was the State Library that had a exhibit on Don Quoite (spelling?) and then went to the archeolegical musuem. Just your typical museum, nothing too special, I was getting pretty sick of museums by then. We went to Real Madrid's football stadium afterwards. The thing was huge, but unfortunately it was closed so I could look inside. O well. We wandered around town after that and ended up in Plaza de Espania which had a pretty nice fountain display. That evening we watched a Flamenco show. It was pretty crazy, was like riverdance to spanish music. The dancers legs moved so fast, and the guitar was very nice as well. It was pretty gross to sit in the front thought since this one dancer was sweeting alot and every time he did a fast spin, all this sweat would fly into the crowd, eww.

State Library


Estadio Santiago Vernabeu


us at the fountain


us in madrid


Flaminco dancer





On Sunday we went to the market. It was massive and had some pretty cool stuff. Unfortuately, Keegan and I had planned to visit the monastary afterwards, so we did not have enough time to look around. Henry had to go to church, so he stuck around the market longer.

The Monastary (Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial) was just massive and was very interesting. The crypt was neat but spooky and the royal burial place was pretty cool. It was neat seeing all these names (Hasburgs) you saw in other countries. The Church inside the monastery was pretty cool as well. The monastary was 1 hour away from the city, so it took quite a lot of time to go to and from there. When we got back to the city, we went to another art museum (Thyssen-Bornemisza). There were some art works from some famous painters, but I don't really remember.

lake


me at monastary


nice door




hallway


ceiling


nice building



The last thing we did was go to a bull fight. This was quite brutal and mean, but was also kind of interesting. Unfortuately the Matadors we saw were pretty bad (explained below). A local tried to explain it too us as best as she could. There are 3 stages to the fight, the first is where the matador puts the bull through a few passes to judge the speed, agility, agressiveness...ect. Then next step they bring in a house and get the bull to ram the horse (the horse is blindfolded and can't see it coming). The rider on the horse then stabs the bull to weaken it. Then 3 runners charge the bull and stab it with 2 streamer/pin things each. The last stage is where the matador tires out the bull and make it submit before killing it. Each bull fight has 3 matador and they fight 2 bulls each.

Plaza de Toros Monumental de Las Ventas




The first guy was by far the worst of the bunch. During the Horse stage, he let the bull flip over the horse and the bull then proceeded to gore the horse a little. I think the horse was ok, but injured. Also, you supposed to kill in in 1 try by stabbing the sword into the heart of the bull. If you miss then you go for the head. This guy missed like 10 times, so you felt really bad for the bull as it was stabbed in the head repeatedly, not good.

The second guy was pretty good. He went on his knees and let the bull charge him and did this cool matrix-ish move to avoid it. His first battle was pretty text book and received 1 ear for it (if it was a good fight, u get 1 of the bulls ears, if it was really good, you get both, if you suck, you get none). For the second bull, towards the end, the bull charged him and threw him in the air. Was pretty freaky but he was uninjured. It was pretty impressive to see them just jump right back into the battle so quickly after almost being killed.

The last guy was pretty good also but also almost got killed by his second bull. He got 1/2 his pants torn off by the bull.

All in all, it was interesting and unique but not something i would watch again.




On the last day, we went to the Palace. This was also very big and very nice. It was pretty much like your typical european palace, but it had an armor exhibit that was pretty sweet. Lots of medevil armors and weapons. After the palace we just walked around the city and checked out the sites. We went to the cities biggest park (Retiro) and they had some nice fountains and structures. One was the crystal Palace which was a glass house, pretty neat. It was closed so we couldn't go in. We visited a famous Arch and (Arc at Puerta de Alcala) and have some really neat shots of us from the medium between traffic.

Plaza Major



Palace Real



Puerta de Toledo


Group shot


Monument to Alfonso XII in Retiro Park


Palacio de Cristal in Retiro Park


Church


Church roof


knights


monument


park


We headed to the airport after that, but our flight was delayed 1.5 hours, so that sucked, When we got back to Switzerland (Basel) we didn't see any trains to Baden, so we decided to go to Zurich and catch a train there. When we got to Zurich we just missed the last train by 10 minutes so we had to camp at the trainstation till 5 in the morning. Luckily we met a univerity student that is like a taxi service at night to earn some extra cash and he drove us home. It was a little more then the train but way cheaper then a taxi and we were able to sleep in our own beds.

All in all, it was a pretty cool trip, did lots of unique spanish stuff so that was good.