Spain: Madrid and Cordoba

In the Plaza Mayor

Spain was, to be entirely honest, a disappointment. I was personally expecting Spain to be the easiest country for us to navigate, because Catie and I both know some Spanish. Turns out that's not the case. Also, we wore ourselves out with too much running all over the place and too little settling down in one place for a few days. Anyway. On to the stories!

We flew out of London Friday morning. That meant we left Norwich Thursday night and spent the night at Catie's friend's place. The only thing is, we flew out of Gatwick, which is way in the South. Catie's friend lives on the north side of London. So we get to her place at 9, maybe 10 o'clock PM, talk for a little bit, and then realize that, in order to reach Gatwick at the appropriate time, we have to get up at 2:30 to be out of the house by 3:30AM. So we decided that there was no real point in going to sleep and watched a movie instead. Now you have to realize, this was right after the end of term, when I had two big papers and my creative writing portfolio to hand in. I had, again, gone off traveling on less than 7 hours of sleep in three days. I need to start planning better.

We got to the airport after wandering the streets of London for a while, trying to figure out why the bus we thought we were supposed to take was nowhere to be seen. We found our way to the hostel, then set out for El Museo del Prado, one of two art museums we visited. I liked El Prado. There was an interesting exhibit of 19th century Spanish art, with some historical paintings I liked, and I also got to see some paintings by Durer and Botticelli, along with a really cool painting based of Dante and crossing the River Styx into Hell. That day, we also went to the Plaza Mayor and looked around a market there. They sell weird things in markets in Spain. Fake wigs, strange toys, and so on. I don't understand why you'd buy them.

Our hostel was nice enough, but there were some people in our room who were only in Madrid to party. So we would go to bed at a decent hour, and they would come in at around 5 or 6 AM. Then, we'd get up between 7 and 9 when they were sleeping. It made things difficult.

The Palacio Real

The second day in Madrid, we went to the Palacio Real. This was pretty interesting. It was from the 16th or 17th century, so it was incredibly ornate. One room had wall coverings of porcelain! And the armory was pretty cool, too. They claimed that there were "tense relations" between Spain and England during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. No kidding?

After that, we went to the Templo de Debod, which was given to Spain from Egypt in 1968. It's pretty random--just sitting in one of Madrid's many parks. Then, we went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, a modern art museum. I really enjoyed that one, because there were some works by Dali and the Reina Sofia is also where Picasso's Guernica currently resides. Why it isn't actually in Guernica, I don't know.

The next day, we got up, checked out, and took a train to Cordoba. I really liked Cordoba. It was warm, there were orange trees everywhere, we saw statues of Seneca and Maimonides.

Me and my old bud, Maimonides

Here I must digress for a short while and explain something. Almost everywhere we went, I was reminded of someone we read in the Great Con (or who I knew from history or literature). I feel, sometimes, that this whole year is an extension of the work I've done in Con. People, it never ends. Anyway, we saw the Alcazar and the Mezquita, and wandered the old ghetto. It was wonderful to just walk around the old part of town. Then we took a bus to Granada. That bus ride was absolutely gorgeous--hills and olive trees everywhere, and we saw four castles just sitting up on hilltops. But I'll save Granada for another day.

Roses in Cordoba