The Heart of Spain and the Country Right Next to It
On the last episode of The Wanderer Chronicles Blog, I was sitting on my bed in Madrid, excited to head out to explore Spain the next day. Now, you get to find out what happened (only two and a half weeks late. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!).
Our first full day in Madrid started with us venturing out into the city, looking at murals, statues, plazas, monuments, monasteries, and buildings. We saw Plaza Mayor, Plaza Puerto del Sol, the chapel of the monastery (we didn’t go into the monastery itself, as we didn’t feel like waiting around until two for a guided tour), a series of very blatant sex shops along one of the major streets, and many, many statues. We took a break before heading into the royal palace to get lunch at a Turkish fast food place (with the biggest sandwiches I’ve ever seen), then headed up the hill to check out the royal gardens and the palace.
The palace, at this point, is no longer inhabited, but is still used for the occasional official function. The rest of the time, it’s open to the public as a museum. You can tour the old royal pharmacy, the armoury, and the living spaces of the palace. It’s very grandiose, very Baroque, very ostentatious. That’s palaces for you.
After the palace, we went to visit San Francisco el Grande, which is an enormous domed church full of paintings, statues, frescoes, and symbolism. We had a guided tour in Spanish (other people on the tour: a German couple and four Italians) which we understood most of, and got to go into the rooms behind the altar to see the painting collections displayed there. By the time we were done, we were very tired. It was also raining heavily. When we finally got back to the apartment we were very squelchy.
Day two involved wandering around looking at monuments and fountains. We made our way down to the Prado Museum, which is mostly full of Renaissance art and also includes a bit of medieval. We saw many paintings by Raphael, Goya, Bosch, Rubens, el Greco, and many many others. We stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant (yes, we know, we were in Spain, we should have been eating Spanish food, but that was what was open, convenient, and sounded like it would be good). Then we wandered into a very large park, where we saw the Crystal Palace (a palace made of glass, built for an exposition or some such). We saw the only known public monument to the Devil, showing him as Lucifer, falling from Heaven. Then we went down to the Reina Sofia museum of modern art, where we saw Miro, Dalí, Magritte, and many, many Picassos, including the Guernica.
The next day, we got up at a horribly unreasonable hour to catch a couple of taxis to the airport. We arrived in Lisbon by the early afternoon, upon which we seized the opportunity to visit the Lisbon Oceanarium, where I squealed over sharks and took over one hundred pictures of fishes – including something called the ocean sunfish, which is the weirdest fish in the world. By the time we wandered back to our apartment, we were just about ready to crash.
The next day, we got on the electric tram line and went wobbling and creaking through the city, going up and down hills and looking at everything. We visited the old castle on the hill, ate ice cream in the rain in February, watched Tristan disco dance while balancing an umbrella on his chin, knocked an orange out of a tree and ate it (it was sour), poked around in a very opulent church, broke the handle of dad’s umbrella, and finally made our way back home.
The next day, we went out again, first to visit the Thieves’ Market (yes, it’s really called that) and the National Pantheon, which is a big domed church with the graves of some important Portuguese people in it. Then it was back down the hill to visit the Mude Museum of Design and Fashion (which currently has giant cutouts of the Beatles in front of it – something to do with the collection of record covers inside), and then up another hill (this one just behind our apartment) to check out the archeological museum, which is inside a very interesting looking former nunnery, which lacks significant features – such as a roof. Mom and I actually went inside to look around, while Shona and Tristan took the hill elevator back down to the apartment and dad went to meet them and let them in. We explored, I took many photos, then we came back down to the apartment and together we all adventured out to go to dinner. The place we had been planning to go to turned out to be booked for a party, so we found another place – this one did seafood – and stuffed our faces to our hearts’ content.
Sunday was another travel day – time to go home. We got to the airport without any major issues (though we ended up having to hail a couple of cabs when we found out the buses didn’t run on Sundays) and made it back to Madrid, where we were catching our connection. That, however, turned out to be delayed for several hours, so we occupied ourselves creatively. Tristan and I had a dance party with our iPods, and Shona and Tristan ran around in one of the carts (which was wonderfully amusing until the cart was upset, tumbling Shona out of it and knocking Tristan down onto his butt, which was bruised for the next week). Mom also bought some chocolate, and we ate our way through a bag of M&Ms before we finally made it onto our plane. We arrived back in Toulouse, late, tired, but overall pretty satisfied.
For the last couple of weeks or so, I’ve mostly been chillin’ around the house. We have guests here from Canada right now – the Shulist family arrived Thursday and will be here until Tuesday, and Shona’s friend Molly got here on Monday and will be going home Sunday, on time to get back to school next week. It hasn’t really affected me too much, aside from moving me out of my room for Mark and Gretchen to sleep in; Molly’s mostly been hanging out with Shona, and the Shulists have been going on a lot of day trips. For my part, I’ve mostly been battling with writer’s block and lack of motivation, both of which I’m trying to do something about.
Today has been my day for finishing things up that have been hanging over my head – the first part of that having been to get my vacation galleries up to date and post this entry on the blog. I also went out with Shona and Molly to do a photoshoot this afternoon – my first shoot with more than one model under my command, which went smashing, as they’re both so very fab. Tomorrow I’ll be getting some photos edited and put up on my art site, and maybe finally punching my writer’s block in the face. One can only hope, at least.
So, until next time! This has been the latest episode of The Wandered Chronicles Blog – Tchy, signing off.