Las Meninas

It's been a crazy week, probably because we're just getting into the swing of things. So sorry if this is a loooonng post.

Well since it was our first real weekend (full weekend not jetlagged) in Madrid, we partied like Madrileños do it, let's just leave it at that. And I had my first churos and chocolate! YUMMY!

Sunday night was also the AFC and NFC championship games. There's a bar here that played the entire game even though it was Sunday and they were supposed to close at 2am. Don't forget, I'm 6 hrs ahead so that means the Giants game started at midnight. I think all but 3 of us live in the NYC/NJ area so for the most part are Giants fans, so it's been kind of crazy. Obviously because I hate the Patriots I am a Giants fan, plus it's really fun to say in Spanish (and the only one that has more of a translation), "los Gigantes." Next week it looks like the superbowl is going to start at 2am... that'll be interesting.

Tuesdays I don't have class so this past Tuesday I decided I would just take the metro to a random stop across town and just get out and walk around. I did this and got really really lost, but it was cool nonetheless. I walked around for about 3 hrs and here's a bunch of observations I have about Spain and it's people.

• everyone walks EVERYWHERE, even old people which is adorable when they walk together, like two old men or two old ladies or old couples
• everyone walks everywhere but takes the escalator over stairs, its weird
• dogs walk without leashes and they are really well behaved, however they do not want anything to do with humans
• street signs are not clear or directional like north, south, etc

There was more but I can't think of it now. Anyways that was a fun way to explore the city.

Wednesday was the 2nd game of Barca/Madrid. A bunch of us went out to a pub to watch the game to get the "real Madrid futbol experience." It really was a great game, but they ended up losing.

Yay Madrid! at least at first. 

My roommate Alexis and our friend Christian

Thursday was probably my favorite day of the week. For my art history class we went to El Prado Museum. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's like THE museum in Madrid. Like the Louvre of Spain. We primarily went in to look at the paintings of Goya, which was awesome because that's who I've studied the most out of all my Spanish art years. Surprisingly everything I've studied about his paintings I remembered and it was amazing to see all his work in person. His painting "The 3rd of May" was the painting I wrote a paper on in high school. Seeing it in person was amazing. The best part of the day however was when I found out "Las Meninas" by Velazquez was in the Prado. Even though it wasn't part of our lesson plan my professor took us over to see it. I never thought I would really care about art until I stepped into that room and saw that painting. Another guy in my class who had studied Spanish art as well and me just stared at it. We couldn't believe that we were actually standing in front of Las Meninas. I never thought I'd care that much about art. But it's just incredible, I don't know how many times I've seen that painting in class, I could analyze that thing from top to bottom, and to actually see it in person. I didn't know what to say.

Las Meninas

By the time we were done we were starving so I didn't get a chance to walk through the rest of the collection. However, this will be a place I will spend an entire day in the near future.

Friday, we went to El Escorial. El Escorial is  a GIANT monastery and summer palace to the ancient royal families. It's about an hour outside of Madrid so a couple of us took a train out there for the day to walk around. There were a lot of art and architecture exhibits that were fun to explore, but really the main attraction was the palace. It was just gorgeous and enormous!!

El Escorial

There was a lot of exploring this week of the city and lots of fun! Next week Alexis and I are off to London at the end of the week. We have almost all of our trips planned: London next week, Dublin for St. Patricks day, Helsinki in the end of March beginning of April, and looking at planning a southern Spain (Cordoba, Sevilla, and Granada) trip at the end of February? Gotta make the most of this!