madrid part 1 of 2

After our final on Thursday (6-12-14), we were free from school until Tuesday morning for class!  Since the term ended, some new students are arriving for the second term, and they have orientation today (Monday) that we don’t have to (I mean get to) be at!  Because of the long weekend, I got to spend three nights in Madrid- and I still get today off to blog, sleep, edit pictures, try not to die from dehydration/overheating, and spend more money that I really don’t have!

Thursday

Our bus left at 2:30 from Plaza de Armas bus station, so we went home to grab our bags, eat a quick lunch, and chug free water before we walked back across town to the bus station.  The bus ride to Madrid is 6 hours, so I read a little, slept a little, and mostly just listened to my iPod and enjoyed the scenery.  I ended up getting both seats in the row to myself, so I was able to spread out a little and get comfortable.  We arrived in Madrid around 8:30 pm, and the bus station was about an hour walk from our hostels, so we just headed in that direction and took in all of the sites.  We didn’t have any problems navigating towards the center of the city, but once we got to that point we also got to the “welcome to a European city where all the roads are curvy and don’t go all the way through or make any kind of sense” part of town.  We found some cool plazas and ended up stopping for some supper. My phone died (I’m of course the only one with data on my phone) and no one else could connect to wifi, so we decided to just take a cab to our hostels from that point.

The trip to Madrid was my first time in a hostel!  I was very pleasantly surprised with the cleanliness, safety, and overall experience.  I definitely prefer a private hotel room, but for 20 euros a night, I’d willingly stay in a hostel again.  We stayed in a 4 person room, and our 2 roommates were Asians- how diverse.  The room was basically just 2 bunk beds, lockers, and a bathroom.  We stayed at Room 007 on Calle Hortaleza, which was just a few blocks away from Gran Vía, which seems kind of like the Magnificent Mile of Madrid.  Every store you can think of (including 2 H&M’s) is on the street, and there are huge marquees, billboards, and lights that make it feel kind of like Times Square.  The proximity to Gran Vía made navigating around the city a little easier, and we always knew that we could at least find a way to get back to that street.

gran vía

Friday

On Friday we decided to attempt to see everything we wanted to see in Madrid.  Obviously there is so much more to see and do, but in a 3 day whirlwind trip, we had to narrow down priorities.  We went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (National Art Museum), the Museo Nacional del Prado (Prado Art Museum), and the Estadio de Santiago Bernabéu (Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, where Real Madrid FC plays).  

I’m not a huge art museum person, but I was excited to see a few select works at each of the art museums.  If you’re into art, you could probably spend a whole day at each museum; we skipped a floor in the Reina Sofia, and we basically only did Velazquez’s gallery in the Prado.  Pablo Picasso’s works, including Guernica, are in the Reina Sofia Museum.  I can remember studying that piece in elementary school art and learning more about its history and significance throughout school and Spanish classes, so getting to see it in real life was amazing.  My highlight of the Prado was Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez.  We studied it in Spanish III with Señora Melson, so I was remembering fun conversations and the good times I had learning with her.

While we were in the art museums, we ran into a lot of field trip groups.  I was amazed that most of the groups of students were very early elementary or even pre-K classes!  Obviously management and getting them to stop yelling and laughing at the paintings was a major struggle, but they clearly enjoyed the art work.  Also I feel like kids will enjoy any field trip that they get to go on because it’s a field trip, so why do we take students to water parks when they can clearly handle- and enjoy- national galleries of art!  

guernica by pablo picasso... you’re not allowed to take pictures in the museums but whoops

las meninas by diego valezquez

the 3rd of may by francisco goya

My highlight of Friday was touring the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium where Real Madrid plays soccer. Real Madrid is considered the best football (soccer) club in the world because of its cumulative records, number of world cups, number of Euro cups, etc.  I don’t think I’ve watched more than a handful of soccer games in my life- and probably 3 of them were when Jackson played Upward soccer at age 5- and I really don’t care about soccer.  But since I’m in Europe, and particularly since I’m in Spain, I’m pretending that I LOVE SOCCER!!!  Honestly though, I was so excited to go in the stadium.  Our tour included a view from the top of the stands, a walk through the trophy room (more like trophy convention center), and the chance to go on the field, in the locker rooms, and in the press room!

in the locker room at cristiano ronaldo’s locker!

being interviewed by all the reporters post-game in the press room

So in Granada we had a lot of issues with the bus system, but I kind of figured it was mostly just because we were lost 90% of the time anyways and our hotel was so far away from civilization.  In Madrid, we had major problems with the buses too.  We had a list of 4 or 5 buses that would stop at the stadium (it’s about an hour walk from downtown), so you’d assume that any of them can take you to your destination.  Our method of figuring out the bus (because the maps make 0 sense) is ask every bus driver that stops if he’s going to your destination until you find one that tells you which bus you actually need or if yes, he is indeed going there!  It’s fail proof... if you have an hour or so to spare while you actually figure out what bus you need.  We only needed 3 or 4 attempts to find our bus to get to the stadium, and we assumed that getting back would be even easier- how confident we were at this point!  We got on the same bus at the same station expecting that the driver would loop around and bring us back to Gran Vía.  We ended up way on the outside of town in a residential area that’s about 55 minutes walking from our hostel.  Again, my phone was dead (it dies super fast here; maybe because of the power adapter or since they only have 3G?) but thankfully my friend Kelsey has a mobile charger, so we Google Maps-ed our hostel and headed out on foot!  The walk back was probably really beautiful and we probably passed a lot of super significant monuments or something, but I honestly have no idea.

Friday night was Spain’s first World Cup game, so we had planned on eating some McDonald’s to save money (plus we all wanted to try McDonald’s in Spain- it’s basically the same, btw) and then wanted to head to an outdoor restaurant or somewhere that was showing the game so we could be in a crowd, but from afar.  The night before we ate in a big plaza that had a huge screen advertising the World Cup, so we assumed that the game would be shown there.  I should assume that assuming is a bad thing by this point... the same commercial that kept playing while we were eating is all that was playing during the game, so we turned around and found a hole-in-the-wall bar with a TV that was reasonably full and enjoyed the experience.  The TV’s connection was a little weak or something, and it actually ended up completely going out at the exact moment of 2 of the Netherlands’ goals- the TV must have known no one wanted to see NED score.  Unfortunately Spain lost, but no one’s talking about it so I’m going to join in and assume it didn’t happen!    

gran vía mcdonald’s- open 24 hours, 2 stories, and crowded

my first spanish mcdonald’s- my usual, minus the sweet tea and omgosh I miss it

plaza puerta del sol, where we thought we’d be watching the world cup 

where we actually ended up watching the world cup

In an effort to keep this post as short as possible (I know, it’s still like 8 pages), I’m going to break Madrid up in to 2 posts, so to keep reading, see madrid part 2 of 2!