Every time I think I've had the best day ever, another absolutely amazing day pops up to prove me wrong. This weekend in Madrid was no exception.
Friday night after dinner we (Me, Rach, TeJota, Luke, and Will) went to a discoteca called Kapital. I'm going to do my best to describe it, but words honestly don't do it justice. The place was absolutely crazy. It's a seven floor club with a different style of music for each floor -- the bottom floor was your typical electro/dance/EDM stuff, there was a floor with all hip hop, a floor with Latin music, a karaoke floor that we apparently missed, and a bunch more that I honestly can't remember. We rolled up around 1:30, I think, and proceeded to absolutely lose our minds on the first floor, after running around to check out all of the other floors. At some point everyone started cheering and I turned around to see the main stage and a dude with an ELECTRIC VIOLIN was standing up there, and he started playing CANON IN D and this entire seething crowd of bodies just went completely crazy. I don't remember exactly when it happened but Rach and I realized at the exact same time that he had ended that song and started DON'T YOU WORRY CHILD -- no one around us really realized what song it was, but we were standing there screaming the words and everyone eventually caught on and proceeded to lose it once again and you could feel everyone getting hype for the beat to drop and RIGHT as it did, the coolest part of Kapital happened -- they have a system that blasts freezing cold air and fog and some sort of smelly stuff into the center of the dance floor to both cool everyone off and make it smell less like sweat and dancing and help everyone go insane. I know that entire last part was word vomit, but it was honestly incredible.
So yeah, Kapital, and electric violin guy, and the air fog thing, all of those things combined to form an incredible night. I think we ended up leaving at 5:30 -- Luke and Rach had both disappeared so it was just TeJota and Will and I at that point I believe. Our wake up call Saturday morning was at 8 AM, which was really great considering I went to sleep at 6:15 or so. I may or may not have skipped breakfast in favor of sleeping until 9:15, and eventually mustered the willpower and strength to throw some clothes on and make it downstairs by 9:30 to catch the bus over to the Prado.
Going to the Prado made me so completely stoked that I chose to take Modern Spanish Art, and also made me appreciate just how awesome my art professor really is. He's been asking us if we mind if he teaches us about Spanish painters that aren't technically "modern" -- namely Velázquez and Goya -- and I'm so happy he did, because I got to see all of the paintings we've talked about in class, and since my professor cares more about the stories behind the paintings rather than memorizing medium, artist, and date, I had a much greater appreciation for everything that I was seeing that I think I would have otherwise. I almost lost my mind when we finally got to the gallery that had Goya's pinturas negras in it -- in the last years of his life, Goya was living alone in this old house, he was deaf, he was depressed, he had lived through a war, all of his friends were dead, and so he painted these images on the walls of his house that are somewhat disturbing and somewhat enthralling and one hundred percent portray all of the parts of humanity that no one ever wants to talk about. They're incredible. But anyway, the Prado was sick and I'm really happy I got to go. We also chose to do the guided tour in Spanish, which was another excellent decision because the lady giving the tour was the same one that we had for the Palacio Real on Friday, only when she speaks Spanish she's much more animated and interested in what's going on. At least that's how it seemed to me.
After the Prado, we had a bus tour of the city, which really gave me a feel for the sheer size of it. I guess it is the capital of Spain, but I honestly had no idea what it was going to be like considering before this trip the only place in Spain I had been to was Barcelona. We got to see most of the major landmarks in the city, including the bullfighting arena which was gorgeous. The bus dropped us off at Plaza Mayor, which is in an awesome location and is close to a ton of shops and restaurants and cool things. At this point the crew consisted of me, TeJota, Luke, and Will, and the four of us wandered around and ate stuff and saw stuff and got rained on and ate more stuff and went to this AWESOME market called El Mercado de San Miguel, where we ate anchovies in oil and vinegar (side note: my English is such a struggle right now and it took me six tries to spell vinegar right), and then we found a pastry shop and got some cream filled pastry things and I think you get the picture. Eventually we decided to try to head home, got completely turned around, turned ourselves back around, and got back to the hotel for a siesta at around 5 PM. The original plan was to sleep for an hour, rally, and then go check out more stuff, but that was a complete failure and everyone woke up at 8 PM.
After a lot of effort trying to make a decision for where to go out, we all realized we should probably eat dinner, and wandered around for a bit trying to find a place before finally settling down at a restaurant pretty close to our hotel. Our waiter was this dude, probably in his late 30's or so, that was super nice and very funny AND GUESS WHAT he lived in Charlottesville for 3 years not too long ago and we got to talk to him about that for a while. The world truly is a small place. Oh yeah, and Will and I decided that since our anchovy adventure had turned out so well before (we had picked something on the menu that we didn't understand and hoped for the best), we would do the same thing for dinner. The food came out and looked suspiciously organ-like, but the sauce it was in was spicy and delicious and we had enough bread, so we ate it first and asked our waiter what it was once we had finished -- yeah, it was pig stomach. Possibly also intestines, the waiter just kind of patted his stomach and laughed. I guess this will be my story for "weirdest thing I've ever eaten" unless something weirder comes along!
Dinner ended and we spent a little bit of time with our good friend Don Simón and decided to try to go to an ice bar, which apparently was a bar literally made out of ice. TeJota decided to sleep instead of come out with us, so at this point it was me, Rach, Luke, and Will. We hopped in a taxi with a really cool taxi driver and got dropped off at the ice bar, but it was 15 euro to get in and the place seemed kind of dead, so we did a quick 180 and went to check out the area of town that we had ended up in (I think it was called Las Letras?). We asked for suggestions from some really excited dudes in a cafe, and proceeded to completely ignore their advice and instead go to this completely crowded kind of crappy bar whose only saving grace was the bowl of pork rinds sitting on the bartop that we completely crushed while waiting for drinks. Unfortunately, the struggle became more and more real and we ended up back at the hotel before 2 AM, which may be some sort of lame record.
That brings us all the way to today. The wake up call this morning was at 9 AM, which was heaven compared to yesterday. Also, I got 7 hours of sleep as compared to 2 the night before, so I was loving it. I also got the chance to eat breakfast in the hotel, which for me consisted of a ton of pineapple, some bread, and far too little coffee. I also had the pleasure of hearing all about the shenanigans that the guys got into after we all got back last night, but some things are blog-worthy and others aren't, so I'm gonna leave that one up to y'all's imagination.
On the itinerary for today was Reina Sofía, the modern art museum named after the current Queen of Spain. There was a huge exhibit for Dalí, but you had to pay to get in and we were cool with just seeing the stuff that we had free passes for, so we just stayed in the main part of the museum. There was a lot of Picasso in the museum, along with a lot of really, REALLY strange pieces of art that I am obviously not cultured enough to understand, let alone appreciate. It was still cool though; we got to see Guernica, which is arguably Picasso's most important painting -- he painted it after a town in the Basque Country (northern Spain) by the same name was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. It's absolutely enormous, and honestly a very impressive and moving piece. Maybe I am cultured enough to understand modern art, who knows.
I think I would have appreciated Reina Sofía a little more if we had done it before the Prado, but it was definitely worth the trip. Afterwards, we had free time until 4:00, so Rach Will and I walked around Madrid for a while, and got lunch at Café Gijón, which is this place where the "intellectuals" -- writers, journalists, artists, scholars -- of the Generation of '36 used to gather and do intellectual things. We had gazpacho, which was delicious, and eventually finished up and wandered back to where we were supposed to meet the bus. It's four hours from Madrid to Valencia, and the first two hours consisted of some serious nappage. We made a quick stop at what may be the coolest rest are ever, and then hopped back on the bus and watched Deja Vu, this movie with Denzel Washington in it. It was actually kind of funny now that I think about it, but we watched Disturbia on the way to Madrid and while everyone enjoyed it, it was nothing compared to today. The entire bus was completely invested in the movie, complete with ooohs and aaahs and swearing and cheering and the whole deal. I don't know if that was the reason I enjoyed it so much or what, but it was an awesome bus ride. We got dropped off at the Plaza del Ajuntamiento, which is basically the center of old town, and Rach and I hopped on a bus and headed back to our respective homes.
All in all, this weekend was solid in every sense of the word. I had an awesome time looking at museums and going to touristy places and wandering around the city (actually, today might be the first day that I didn't get lost at ALL while walking around). With that, the weather in Madrid is kind of lame, and by lame I mean cold, and by cold I mean 65 degrees. We got back to Valencia and it was sunny and gorgeous and warm and it made me so happy that this is where we live. I'm definitely not excited about the presentation I have to give in Medical Spanish on Tuesday, but I guess I'll get around to it tomorrow at some point. Only four days of class this week, and then on Friday we're going to Barcelona for Sónar, a huge annual music and arts festival where we're seeing a concert that runs from 10 PM - 7 AM and features artists such as SKRILLEX AND DIPLO AND MAJOR LAZER AND BAAUER and if you can't tell I'm really stoked. So yep. That was my weekend.
Hasta luego!
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