Spring Break Part 1: Madrid

I apologize for my lengthy absence from my blog! However, if ever there were a great excuse for not posting, I think it is called spring break!

Two weeks ago, I was rather caught up in the spring break work rush – lots of exams and papers before we left last Friday for our two-week break.

I have officially survived my first real art history exam in a French class – though the French system in which they hand the exams back from the best grade to the worst with comments out-loud with each one is less than desirable. Students are actually supposed to be not nearly as competitive as in the US, and I think that comes partly from the fact that they have all grown up knowing exactly where they stand among the class and not being ashamed to have others know.

For my art history class at Tufts, we had a paper due the Friday morning before we left for spring break. So, needless to say, we were all up much later than usual Thursday night cranking out our last thoughts on the impressionists of France.

In more exciting news, I spent the first week of my spring break exploring the wonderful cities of Madrid and Lisbon. I am currently back in Paris for 2 days, and then I will head to the south of France for the second week of break! I think I am going to have to dedicate two posts just to the first part of break – too much to tell!

I headed off to Madrid last Friday with two of my friends on an EasyJet flight, which is a low-cost airline that has flights all over Europe. It is certainly no frills (no assigned seating which means you have to get there a little earlier, no free ½ diet coke, and even a little less leg room!), but the flight was no problem, and I kind of liked the announcements on board done in English, French and Spanish (they added Portuguese too when I flew to Lisbon). Once we landed in Madrid we found our way into the city center and checked into our hostel. We ended up having a room just for the three of us with our own bathroom, which was great. Our hostel was in a great location, right near Sol, which is basically the center of old Madrid.

Friday night we didn’t do much other than find some dinner and wander around a bit before heading to bed early as we were all exhausted. Saturday we woke up, and after breakfast at the hostel headed out to explore the city! In Paris, the leader of our program leads a “ballade” (walk) every Friday afternoon through a different part of the city, so my friends and I have taken to calling any exploratory activity a ballade. Our Madrid guidebook happened to have some suggested walks around the city in it so we vaguely followed the path it laid out for us.

Plaza Mayor

Plaza de la Villa

We started out in Sol, and then walked a little ways to an old convent called the Convento de las Descalzas Reales, and then to one of the oldest churches in Madrid – Iglesia San Ginés. From there we walked to the Plaza Mayor, which is one of the oldest and most beautiful squares in Madrid. Continuing down the street, we reached the Plaza de la Villa where the Madrid town hall is, and then followed some cute side streets we passed several more churches and some really interesting buildings with great architecture. I love seeing how different the buildings are from in France! Next we passed the big cathedral and Royal Palace, which are right across from each other. There was a rather long line outside the Royal Palace so we decided not to go in, and instead headed to see an Egyptian temple a little further down the road. It was apparently sent to the Spanish as thanks for helping to save the monument. It is a little odd to see an Egyptian monument in downtown Madrid, but the views from around it were great. After basically making our way back to where we started along the Grand Via (a very busy, commercial street), we found some lunch in the form of bocadillos. Bocadillos are basically little sandwiches, though our guidebook felt the need to specify that they are “filled rolls, usually without butter.” We still have no idea why it is necessary to know that they do not have butter on them, but in general, they were quite tasty! We tried a platter of 12 different sandwiches so we didn’t really know what we were getting, but all were good except a rather questionable jelly-meat combination.

Bocadillos Platter

Cathedral from the front

After lunch we headed to the Reina Sofia, a contemporary art museum with a lot of paintings by Picasso and Dali. We were pretty tired from our morning tour, so after a little while we retired to the beautiful garden in the center of the museum and relaxed in the shade for a while. In France there are currently signs in most of the gardens that “le pelouse est en repose” (the grass is resting) so you are not allowed to go on it. We were thrilled when the grass was not in repose in Spain, and took full advantage throughout the trip.

Chocolate y Churros!

That evening, we headed out to a paella restaurant that our guide book had recommended, but unfortunately it was full when we got there, so we went wandering in search of something else. We actually ended up at an incredible restaurant where I had portobello stuffed chicken, and my friend had amazing oso buco that we all tasted and loved! Our waiter was also very friendly and spoke English very well, which we were all impressed by. For dessert, we decided to try out the famous chocolate and churros from Chocolateria San Gines (open only from 6pm-7am). Churros are basically strips of fried dough, but thankfully, they are not sweet at all because you literally dip them in cups of melted chocolate. Quite decadent! Afterwards, we needed to walk around to work off all the food, so we wandered for a bit and then headed make to our hostel. The guy working at our hostel was disappointed that we were not going to “make the party” so we promised we would do better Sunday night.

Sunday Market

Sunday morning we went on another ballade, though this one did not have quite as many stops. We started out walking through the huge Sunday market that sells everything from souvenirs to clothes to electrical equipment! It was a lot of fun, but pretty crowded so after a while we worked our way to the next stop on the ballade - the Parque del Retiro, which is a huge park with a nice artificial lake and best of all – lots of pelouse! Since it was Sunday afternoon, it felt as though everyone was at the park, but it was a lot of fun to people watch and listen to the various bands playing throughout. After a while we got hungry so we decided to head for another Madrid specialty, bocadillos calamares. These are those same non-buttery sandwiches, but with 

Bocadillos Calamares

fried calamari inside. The combination sounded just odd enough to make us want to try it, and they actually turned out to be pretty good – though they could have used some sort of sauce. Full to bursting with all the carbs one person should ever eat, we headed to the Prado to work off our lunch by looking at some artistic masterpieces! I loved the museum, but mostly because I was able to see some of the paintings I had just memorized for my art history class. Three paintings we studied extensively that were there were Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, Roger van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, and Raphaël’s Portrait of a Cardinal. I also saw another painting that we had just started talking about the week before in class – it was fun to not be expecting it, but to recognize the painting anyway!

Antiques Vendor at the Market

After we had had enough of the museum, we headed for some great looking pelouse just outside where we all took half hour cat-naps in the sun! Later that night we met up with some other friends from the Tufts-in-Paris trip who had just gotten to Madrid. We had dinner in a little restaurant by our hostel, where the waiter spoke to us in French because that was the best way for us to communicate! After dinner we went for some sangria before heading home at what was to us quite a late hour for a Sunday (1:30am), but seems to be rather early for the Madrid natives!

Lake at Parque del Retiro

Monday morning we met up with our friends again and tried to do a tour of the Royal Palace inside, but unfortunately it was closed because of a special ceremony. Instead we headed to show them some of the sights, and ended back at many of the same places we went to on Saturday, but we had a lot of fun because my friend Andi (who was the master ballade leader on the trip) would take us a different way every time! For lunch we decided to check out a place we had been seeing all over called the Muséo del Jamon. We were rather baffled as to why the ham museum was so popular, but it is apparently a restaurant specializing in all sorts of ham and sausages. We got some chorizo sandwiches to go, and walked back to the big park to have our picnic lunch. After lunch we decided to rent rowboats on the little lake and had a blast trying to maneuver ourselves around. We were surprised at the number of actual Spanish people we saw on the boats – we had assumed they were more of a tourist attraction, but after we finished out time on the boats we knew why they were so popular!

"Broccoli Trees" in the Park

That night for dinner we met up with one of my friends who is studying in Madrid for the semester and finally went to the paella restaurant that we had wanted to go to. I got seafood paella, and it was delicious – though how you politely de-head and leg a prawn I will never know.

Palaccio Real (Royal Palace)

The wonderful Museo del Jamon

On Tuesday morning we finally made it into the Royal Palace for a tour of the inside and we were so glad that we did! The rooms inside were incredible, and once again we loved how much we could see the difference from the French style of art and decoration. We all agreed that the inside of this palace might even be more impressive than the rooms on display at Versailles (though the outsides are no comparison at all).

Our flight to Lisbon left that afternoon, so we headed to the airport after a stop at the Museo del Jamon and had a rather nerve-wracking wait in a long check-in line, but luckily we made it through with no problems!  

Some of that wonderful pelouse outside the Prado!

Flamenco Costume in a shop

Loving the Spanish architecture!

Unfortunately, you will have to wait to hear about Lisbon until after I return from the south of France this week. I am looking forward to some delicious bouillabaisse and beautiful beaches!