Monday night we ended up roaming around the city for a while with Katelyn's (one of the girls in our Bilbao program) friend who had been in Madrid for a while and ended up at a bar with an entrance that led downstairs where we had some sangria deliciosa.
Tuesday morning we got up to go to the Prado art museum in Madrid, where there were a ton of original paintings by all kinds of famous artists such as Velazquez, Goya and El Greco. I loved hearing the stories of the artists and their lives and how the developed. Rita, you needed to be there!
Brittany and I then decided to try to find el parque del Retiro which one of the directors told us we shouldn't miss. We stopped by this cafeteria for lunch and the owner was so nice and helpful, it was such a cute little shop. Then we headed out. Well, me and directions, it was definitely very close to the Prado museum but we ended up walking around Madrid for close to an hour without finding it. It was a great walk though and we found some other great fountains and walkways and buildings, I think a different palace (so many palaces!). We then decided just to take give up and take the metro straight to the park, which was one stop away. I'm am so glad we didn't give up on our endeavor to find this park because it was amazing! There was this path line with statues and a enormous gorgeous monument for King Alfonso XII with a pond in front of it where people were rowboating. Brittany and I lied down in the shade by the monument and there was this awesome breeze after walking around in that scorching heat--Madrid=hot hot heat.
Then we made it back to the hotel to meet up with the group and visit the Royal Palace. Talk about luxury, every inch of every room was decorated to the nines! There was also an armory and pharmacy (aka apothecary) on display as well. The king doesn't live in that palace, but a different one further from the center of the city because of security reasons and it's a hassle with the thousands of rooms it has (I know what a pain right?)
Afterwards we went shopping for about an hour and bought some things at Blanco before going back to the hotel. Our whole group (Bilbao people and most of Granada people) went out for dinner for our last night in Madrid. We went to this restaurant called Al Natural, which was a vegetarian restaurant. The owner was great, he gave us free bread because we were students and was just really courteous. It's too bad that the Granada group and our group and separating so early because I was just getting to know everyone. Afterwards we realized we definitely took the long way because when we were walking back it took us less than half the time it took us to get there. Ah well.
There were so many people trying to hand us flyers to bars and clubs or what have you, like Michigan diag times at least 20. We tried to find the place we went to the night before but just ended up wandering around for a while before going back to the hotel to pack our bags to get ready to leave the next day.
This morning we packed up and left our bags in the luggage storage to get when we came back from El Escorial so we could head straight to the bus stop and then to Bilbao.
El Escorial is another palace/monastery but a lot more humble and not as decorated as el Palacio Real de Madrid. There were a lot of portraits of kings and queens. The coolest, and kind of creepy part was this room where all of the kings and queens of Spain are buried. I was just standing in a room amongst all of the people who had ruled Spain, so weird. The corpses are put into these "rotting rooms" by the room until they are nothing but bones before they put them into the caskets. There's no more space though for future kings so it's unknown where the current king will be buried when he dies. There were other tombs as well, including this one where a princess and prince were buried together as they both died before they could be married. There was also one shaped like a cake where all the children under 7 of the royal families were buried.
Also, there was a tomb of this man who was the illegitimate son of the king, so since he wasn't born to inbreeding he was strong and smart and so on, but he was never king. He fought in wars, but our guide told us of how he did not die in battle. He was never married but was supposed to be popular amongst the ladies and the rings on his fingers were supposed to be how many women he was with--16 (or something)--and our guide told us it is thought he died from exhaustion from all his women. I guess that's the way to go.
Finally we headed back to Madrid to pick up our bags and come to Bilbao. The whole bus ride was very scenic, including these giant white cliffs. When we arrived in Bilbao our host dad, Carlos, met us and greeted us with two kisses on the cheek. He is so extremely nice. He doesn't speak English but I think we got the gist of most of what he was saying haha...I'm really hoping to extremely improve my Spanish here. He showed us where the university is (across the river from the Guggenheim museum) as well as other buildings and where the metro was. We live about a 25 minute metro ride away from Bilbao in Gexto. When we arrived in his hometown, he took us to this view of the city and the water. It is absolutely the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life! The house is by 3 beaches, and wow it was stunning. Who would not want to live here?
When we got back to the house we met the son Carlos, who knows English for the most part, and who is also extremely friendly. We got shown around the house, including a patio area with a bunch of plants. We then ate dinner, which was delicious, consisting of a tomato salad, bread, sausage, a veggie/potato/egg mixture which I can't remember the name of at the moment, and pineapple. We sat on the floor for dinner, but Carlos reminded us that it wasn't "normal" and that if you go to eat at someone else's home they won't sit you on the floor, haha but I liked it. They eat at the dining table for lunch. The host mom, Mar, is coming back from vacation with her mother on Saturday. The other son, Borja, is in Atlanta until the end of July and then the son Carlos is leaving on Saturday for London. Spanish is iffy and a lot of que's but we're surviving. Ahhh, too much excitement. OK, well it's bed time.
Adios!
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