ESPANA

Following the midterms on Monday, we were given five days to travel wherever we wanted.  After my excursion to Ireland with two girls, I chose to forgo traveling with girls from the program and instead traveled with my older brother Jake.  Jake was the perfect traveling companion.  Not only does he speak Spanish, but he likes to stay busy and see all the sights possible.  After attending the American History class he teaches at Queen Mary on Tuesday, we set out for Gatwick airport to catch our flight to Madrid on Ryan Air.  Our flight was delayed so we didn't get into Madrid until about 1am.  We took a taxi straight to our hostel and crashed.  The next morning we got up and took a historical bus tour.  We saw a lot of great architecture and well manicured gardens.  We used the bus tour to get a sense of the city so we could better decide places we wanted to visit.  After the bus tour, we had to stop and get hot chocolate because it was so cold on the top of the open air double-decker bus.  We walked through the main plazas, went to the Royal Palace and the accompanying gardens and park.  After this we got dinner and went to the train station to buy our tickets for th following day.  Then we went to a great market before going to Museo Prado where we saw great works by Bosch, Velasquez, Goya, and many other prominent artists.  I had learned about many of the works of art on display in this museum and I was really shocked by how large they were.  I had always seen small copies in textbooks and blurred versions on powerpoints.  The messages of the paintings were much more obvious from the large scale.

After the museum, we got hot chocolate, cookies, and donuts, at Starbucks.  It was nice to sit down and relax after walking all over Madrid.  Following the hot chocolate, my mom and Jake arranged for us to go to a Flamenco performance at a club called Cardamomo.  We had great seats right in front of the stage.  I was so impressed by the strength and stamina of the dancers.  Now I really want to take a tap dance class at BYU next semester.  Of course the traditional Spanish music was great too.

The next day we took the modern Madrid bus tour and spent the day visiting various museums.  We went to the Reina Sofia to see Picasso's Guernica.  After visiting this museum, I can confidently say that I HATE modern art.  Picasso and Dali must have been crazy people.  We also visited three cathedrals, one of which apparently has a wider dome than the dome of St. Paul's in London.  We also visited the Museo Naval, the National Library and a few other exhibitions.  The highlight of this day was the churros con chocolate.  Spanish chocolate itself isn't that good, in fact it is kind of bitter but with churros it was delicious.

The little side ally where we ate the churros was so quaint and fun.  There were heaters to keep us warm and soft lights emphasized the calm mood.

That night we boarded a night train bound for Barcelona.  I am glad I took the opportunity to travel on a sleeper train but I will never do it again.  I was hot and cramped and one of the other people in our car was up all night making noise.  We started our tour of Barcelona running on empty.