Last
week we did several more Madrid walks.
The big one that we did took two afternoons to finish because there was
so much! It is caled the Gran Vía. A really long street with important buildings
for commerce, turism, and with historical significance. Similar to the Magnificent Mile in Chicago
there are lots of shops, theaters, movie theaters, retail stores, plazas
etc. Pretty cool street. We learned about the architecture and
historical significance of most of the buildings and it is so impressive and
intersting to learn why a building is designed the way it is! We also visited a park with a ropes course
and had a bit of fun! While in the city
last week there were several protests with picket signs, loud speakers,
whistles and shirts and THOUSANDS of people.
The biggest one was about the education in Spain. I guess the government
wants to increase class sizes and decrease how many teachers are needed to cut
down on bugets. The poeple are not very
happy about it. It was interesting to be
with a group of girls and going through a crowd like that. I don´t know why but my instinct is to just
stay away from bigs riots and stuff, but here are all these girls stopping and
video taping and taking pictures and saying they want to join and stuff. To me this just didn´t feel good at all. We were all fine though, and the girls can do
whatever they want, I just found my reaction so different compared to them. I wonder why I felt so different about it
than all the girls. At the time we
didn´t know what the protest was about and I guess my instinct is not to join
anything that you don´t already know what it´s for. And big crowds usually have more theft and
higher chances of getting injured or something.
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| The protest |
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| The Gran Vía |
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| The Gran Vía |
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| Puerta de La Vicotria |
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| Puerta de España |
The bear eating out of the Madroño tree is a symbol of Madrid, (part of the coat of arms).
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| Puerta Del Sol |
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| More statues of Don Quijote and Sancho Pansa |
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| Just cool! |
The main train station that we go into from Alcalá de Henares is called Atocha. It is a very large station and has lots of shops and a large indoor courtyard with ponds and plants and stuff. Over the years people have thrown their pets turtles in the ponds and they have grown and multiplied! Kind of cool!
One day we stopped at a frozen yogurt place called Llao Llao
(pronounced yow yow). Super delicious! One of their dishes is called a Sanum, and
they put yogurt at the bottom, put a layer of granola, or carmalized cookies or
some other grain of your choice, then three types of fresh fruit, like
watermelon, pineapple, kiwi, mango, strawberry etc. After this they put another
layer a grain of your choice, and then more forzen yogurt on top. To top it off you can have a fruity syrup of
your choice dumped on top of it all. It
was fantastic!!!
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| The Sanum |
On one
of our walks, the girls really wanted to shop in H&M (a retail store) and
they shopped for about forty five minutes and my room mate Michael asked them
if they could help him pick out a few shirts / outfits for his Teach For
America position this summer. So they
started and decided that I should be included as well, so the girls picked out
some clothes they thought would look good for us Michael and I needed to
showcase the clothes for them! I wasn´t
super comfortable with it to start but it turned out really good. I really appreciated the girls doing that
actually cause they said they really liked one of the shirts and a pair of
pants that I tried on. Since the price
was very reasonable, I ended up getting them.
But shopping was so much better with the girls giving us real opinions
on how we looked.
Friday
we started our trip an hour earlier than usual so that we could get to Ávila
and then Salamanca with enough time.
Ávila is a pretty city set on a hill, out in the middle of the “rolling
plains” you could say. What was so
immpressive about Ávila is that it has wall or “muralla” (pronounced mur-aya) surrounding it. There are only nine entrances commonly called
“puertas” to the city and eighty-eight towers.
The city was never conquered. The
city is also known for the Basilica de San Vicente. Very roman style. We also visited the convent where Santa
Teresa became a nun and where she saw Jesus Christ appear to her. An interesting piece of Spanish history and
culture. Ávila is famous for their
“yemas” which are sweeted egg yolks.
They were okay. I have definitely eaten worse things in my life.
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| Convent where Santa Teresa saw Jesus |
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| City wall of Ávila |
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| Basilica de San Vicente |
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| Ávila |
When we
got to Salamanca we got quite a tour.
Our guide was like a walking textbook and was very long winded. But we sure learned a lot, before we all
tuned out a bit. We saw the plaza mayor,
and the linguistics university similar to the one we have in Alcalá de
Henares. In the facade they hid a frog
and told students that if they could find the frog, they would do well on the
final exams because they had patience, were observant and determined. It took
me a while but I did find it too. Just a
tiny little frog amidst a beautiful facade of stone carvings. When the students graduated they got to write
there name in bull´s blood on one of the exterior walls, and you can still see
them!
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| Entrance to the Linguistics University, try finding the frog! |
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| Plaza Mayor in Salamanca |
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| Plaza Mayor at night |
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| Mis Amigos! Scott, Michael, Katie W, Amanda, Chantelle, Julia, Katie F |
We go
to go on top of the La Vieja Catedral de Salamanca that had huge flying
butresses with circle cut into
the structure. It was very impressive to
me. We walked on a balcony inside of the
Catedral about eighty feet off of the ground! Pretty cool. When we were outside we could hear acordian
music and could see all the roof tops and we felt so much like we were in
Europe! Just like the movies! That night we ate chinese buffet, which was
really good. A few of us walked around
after that and saw this street performer that called himself the flaming
flamenco. He was definitely gay and kept
approaching several men in the crowd, including Michael! So weird! But he was
pretty fantastic with yo-yos and unicycles.
After that I went to bed cause of exaustion.
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| On the roof of La Vieja Catedral de Salamanca! |
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| Flying butresses |
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| 80 feet up! |
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| Chinese food |
The
next day, Michael and I wore our new clothes the girls picked out for us, and
both got complimented many times. We
went to a small town called Toro. We only saw a cathedral there called La
Catedral de Santa Maria la Mayor. A
famous painting of the virgin was there that has a fly painted on her
knee. There was also a two foot Cristus
made completely from “marfil” (ivory).
Very impressive. We ate lunch
there and that was it.
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| On the left is a bull, on the right is a lion |
That
night when we got home, Michael, Dottie, and I went and saw a Spanish produced
film. There is definitely a reason that
all of the movies Spaniards watch are American.
The film was horrible! The music,
sound, actual filming, the story, the transtions, everything! It was just bad! We were three of the six occupants in the room, and on a saturday evening! Sunday evening we all went to our directors house and watched Disney´s "UP" in
Spanish. That was really fun.
Next
Friday we go to Toledo, famous for their metal work (swords)!
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