Thursday night, John, Kelly, the host parents and I went to a local bar to watch the football game. Watching the game is a social event and everyone heads out to take part in the experience. We went to a bar called "El Rey de Las Tapas" (The King of Tapas). Luis had reserved a table so we had a good seat outside to watch the game. A couple of friends of Luis and Maria also joined us. The tapas were very tasty--we tried a lot of things! My favorite was huevos rotos (broken eggs): it consisted of french fries, fried eggs, and ham all mixed up. The other cool thing was that there was a person on site who was slicing ham to eat. Ham in Spain is a specialty and it is NOTHING like the ham in the states. It was very thin and delicious! Spain also won which was very nice:) I posted a few pictures up on Facebook of the fun experience.
On Friday, Kelly and I decided to head to an art museum that is not included in our tour. It's called the "Thyssen-Bornesmiza Museum." In Madrid, the golden triangle of art museums consists of the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen. We visit the Prado every Thursday and are visiting the Reina Sofia later in the month so we figured we needed to get the whole picture. Our host mom told us it wasn't a very big museum so we would only need a few hours. There was so many different types of art! The biggest feature of the museum was their collection of Dutch art. We also saw some art that we recognized--Goya, El Greco, Van Gogh, Tintoretto, Tiziano, Picasso, etc...I really liked this museum because it had a lot of artists that you wouldn't see in the Prado. The art after the 1850's was very interesting and it was a little bit abstract--especially the 20th century art.
Saturday was another excursion day for us. We got up early to take the bus to Toledo-a city that is about an hour south of Madrid. We knew it was going to be a hot day and indeed it was! Toledo is a cool city because Christians, Jews, and Muslims have all lived in the city throughout history. We visited an old mosque that was later turned into a church (a fairly common practice). We also visited one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Spain as well. It was cool to see the way the cathedral changed throughout time. After the church tour, we visited the site of the Greco's painting of "El entierro del conde del Orgaz." I was really excited to see it in person since we had talked about it so much in class. I was surprised that it wasn't bigger than what it was. The tour then continued to a site that used to be Roman baths that was later converted into a Jewish synagogue that was later converted into a church then into a center for persons escaping prostitution to a museum! phew! Apparently the multipurpose building is quite common in Toledo. By this time everyone was tired and hot and ready for lunch. Fortunately our host mom packed us a huge lunch that was delicious (as always)! When we were done eating, some of the guys in the group wanted to go buy a sword. Kelly and I decided to pass and instead bought some famous cookies (toledanas) from a pastry shop. Yum! We got on the bus and got back to Madrid--I called it an early night!
Today has already been eventful and we haven't even eaten lunch yet! We decided to go visit El Rastro which is one of the largest flea markets in Europe! We weren't quite sure what to expect--only that we needed to go early to beat the crowds. When we got there at 10 the market had only been open for an hour and there were already a lot of people. Basically they close off an entire street and vendors just line the entire street. Everywhere you looked there was another booth of things to buy. There was literally everything under the sun--from underwear to jewelry to soccer paraphernalia to authentic fans. The best part? The prices are low and it's easy to get a good bargain! I got almost all of my shopping done for people which was really nice. I also bought myself a Real Madrid scarf to hang in my room.
Tomorrow we are going to visit the Royal Palace after class and on Friday we will be visiting the Congress. It's going to be another busy week!
No comments:
Post a Comment