Spain

The weeks here are starting to blur together because its going by so fast. I'm trying to do everything I want to in Rome while still recovering from travel every weekend. My Rome time is suffering because of it. Not to mention that I'm finally getting sick (been expecting it for weeks) so all I want to do is sleep. Right now I'm drinking the Italian version of airbourne, which is actually much more pleasant. I'm fighting it though--today we went to St Peters and walked through again. Its massive. Tomorrow we're going to the Aurelian walls for class, so that will be interesting. I don't know much about them, but I think they were one of the initial defensive walls erected by an Emperor. Guess I'll find out.

My last two weekends have been dedicated to Spain. Last weekend was Madrid, el capital ( I think lol). I went with a few friends, one of which is from Venezuela so we had a native speaker with us. It was nice, but I held my own. I guess once you take Spanish 1 three times the basics never leave you. We arrived on Friday afternoon and went straight to the Prado because it was free. I really liked it because it reminded me of the Met, except only paintings. My favorite part was when we walked through about five rooms of Goya, my friend told me that Goya had started to go crazy towards the end of his life and you could see it in his paintings. I didn't believe him because we got to about eight rooms and I still didn't see anything unusual. It was when we got to the ninth room of Goya paintings that I could see the crazy. There's a famous one, of Saturn eating his children, that really creeped me out. Everything in that room was disturbing. If anything, it was really really nice not to see Madonna and Child for the 600th time.

After the museum we had dinner at a Spanish/Cuban place. I got the paella, which was nice. I refuse to eat pasta or pizza outside of Italy because I eat so much of it here. We went out with our hostel to a club that night, but they would only let the girls in (one of our guy friends wasn't wearing a collared shirt), so we took pictures for five minutes and then left. It was interesting to look at though, because it was a five level club.

Saturday we went on a walking tour of the city. I love walking tours because you learn a lot of history and can stop and take pictures. The guides are usually really cool too because they're used to dealing with young people. The walking tour guide I had in Hungary loved to swear in English and it was kind of great. Our tour guide in Madrid was a South African named Bruce, and in my mind he had an Australian accent, so I kept thinking of Finding Nemo the whole tour. He gave us 2000 years of Spanish history in about two hours, which was pretty cool. Everywhere I go makes me more and more interested in European history, because I never covered it in depth in high school.

Spain still has all of its original buildings because it wasn't involved in World War II, so it was really cool to see apartment buildings (still in use) dated to the 1400's. There's also a lot of Arabic influence hidden throughout the city, which is another refreshing change. After the tour we went to the city park, which is supposed to be three times the size of Central Park. I believe it--it was massive, and had a lot of interesting landscaping.

We went to the Reina Sofia museum that night because it was free, and saw Guernica by Picasso. I had studied it in my Spanish classes, and was very glad to see it in person. It's incredible. I thought it was still hanging in the UN in New York, but I guess it got moved back once Spain was 'free from tyrannical oppression' in the 70s when Franco died. My books must have been really old.

Saturday night we ate at a really good restaurant called Restaurant Puerto Rico. It was a set menu that was so good. We made friends with the waiter and chatted with him in Spanish (Eyal mostly, but I interjected a few times). After dinner we went on a pub crawl with the hostel, which turned into a huge project because one of our friends got lost, so we had to go find him, and then we couldn't find the rest of the group so we sneaked into a salsa club for a few minutes. It was fun. We were told we had to get chocolate and churros after the crawl, so we found a place still serving them. The Spanish really know their hangover remedies. It was a really thick hot chocolate with plain churros straight out of the pan. Delicious.

Sunday morning we went to the El Rastro market for an hour to look around. At one point I looked down the street (down a hill) and all I could see were people's heads and awnings. So many people! I wanted to stay longer, but we had to check out of the hostel and get to the airport. I had a spanish tortilla sandwich for lunch, which is actually eggs and potatoes and greatness on a bun. I'm going to learn how to make it.

I loved Madrid, so I was really happy that I was going to Barcelona the next weekend. I'll write more on that later because I need to get some sleep, but on a side note, I booked two more trips for my time here. On Thursday (Thanksgiving) I'm flying to Athens! I'm very excited because Greece was on the top of my list of places to visit while I was here, and I didn't think I'd get to do it. The other trip I've booked is to Ireland, the second on my list. I can't wait!

Note: I'm much better about updating pictures than actually writing, so check the pictures because they're always more current. I'm working on Barcelona right now.