Viva España!: Week Numero Dos!

Another week has already flown by, I can't believe how much we did! This was the second and final week of our language school, so week 3 will mark the beginning of my internship.

We started out this week on Monday with our usual Menú del Día for lunch with a few friends I've met through the language school from all over the place, Poland, Denmark, Russia and a few from the states! Lunch is their biggest and most important meal here and they usually eat at around 2 or 3 pm, and many restaurants will offer this Menú del Día (Menu of the Day) where for a fixed price, usually around 10 Euro, you get 4 options each for an appetizer, entree, dessert, and beverage (added bonus - wine and water are the same price!) and after that we headed over to the Palacio Real of Madrid. The one in Madrid is known as the one where most of the country's ceremonial events take place, including royal weddings, the official throne room of the King and Queen, and the room where Spain was signed into the EU. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside, but here are a few views of the outside:

After taking the train to find where my internship building was located, a friend and I discovered we were already halfway to the beautiful mountain town of El Escorial, and made a spur of the moment decision to visit! It was so picturesque, with the most incredible mountain views, a gigantic monastery, and the summer palace of Carlos V. We spent the afternoon there just walking up the big windy hills and small calles, enjoying escaping from the city streets to see a bit more of nature for a day!

Also included in the week's festivities was a new tradition at a place called 100 Montaditos, a restaurant with 100 options for little bocadillo sandwiches with every combination you could dream of from chocolate and jelly to jamón, to calamari, to spanish omletes ("tortillas") to mozzarella and basil, to hot dogs, and absolutely everything inbetween! On Wednesdays every single thing (again including the wine) is only 1 euro! We also had our first taste of the traditional Paella: a delicious dish of rice, vegetables, and either seafood or meat all mixed together. also very salty (like everything else here). A lot of their bottled water they call "mineral water" because it has a bunch of salt and sulfites added into it...organic? AND we finally experienced another Spanish breakfast tradition of churros con chocolate! It was absolutely delicious, and the chocolate was so rich and so good, they put it in a mug and some people put a drop of milk in it and drink it when they're done with their churros!! Below is a picture, again can't do justice to the real thing. And while we're on the subject of food, Spaniards are also obsessed with Fanta, they don't have Diet Coke they have "Coke Light," and they loooove their meat, especially seafood, beef, and of course, anything having to do with jamón (ham!) and it's very common to see large animal parts hanging in windows of restaurants, shops, and bars. thus, you will have a very difficult time finding vegetables, God forbid a salad with actual lettuce, anywhere on the menu. However, luckily for me I can still get my salad fix with the little outdoor market stands, or "Fruterías" that sell really amazing and delicious locally grown and really reasonably priced fruits and vegetables.

The Reina Sofia museum was really cool, a lot more modern/diverse kinds of art than El Prado. They had everything from contemporary featured artists to Salvador Dalí and Picasso (including his most famous mural of Guernica) and a lot of other paintings, propaganda art, and even cinema from the WWII era.

A Salvador Dalí piece "The Enigma of Hitler"

AND THEN over the weekend....we went on our first weekend trip to Seville and Granada in the southern Spain region called Andalucia. It was absolutely gorgeous and I'm so glad we fit so much into just one weekend, but I really wish we could have spent more time there! We skipped Spanish class on Friday (whoops!) and left on the train really early in the morning, and arrived at the hostel, our first hostel experience! It was actually an incredibly nice place, really clean and with 4 floors and a rooftop terrace and bar, tons of common spaces and computers you could use, a full kitchen and breakfast served every morning, and every day they have a really awesome guided morning and an afternoon walking tour which we did on Sunday before we left, as well as a "Tapas Tour" where they take you to the best tapas bars and a flamenco place, pub crawls, etc. There were a ton of huge rooms with about 12 bunk beds in each one and 1 bathroom per room, so that was definitely an experience but overall it was a good first exposure to hostel life! And the best part was that I was really inspired because I met a lot of people who were traveling on their own and doing months-long Europe tours all by themselves. Quite adventurous and a boost for my comfort level with being independent!

<-- Our Hostel

In Seville (the hottest city in Western Europe, and it definitely felt like it) we did a TON of walking! It really is a beautiful city, and a lot more "quaint" than big-city Madrid, so that was nice for us to have a break. Very clean and a lot to look at, the southern region of Spain is very well known for its Islamic style roots and influences. Some of the coolest things we saw were the Cathedral (used to be the largest in the world, now it is the 3rd largest but still holds the Guinness World Record for the largest area of a cathedral) and the Giralda tower, said to be guarded by 2 Catholic women patron saints because the tower withstood 3 huge earthquakes when everything else around it crumbled. Christopher Columbus's tomb is also in there!

Also in Seville was the Real Alcazar, another Royal Palace (surprise surprise!) But this one was cool because it was different due to all of the Islamic Influences, the courtyard looked like the Jungle Book! It was so impressive to look at and it was enormous to say the least.

The Queen's Bath!

We rounded out the day with a pitcher of Sangria and tapas, dinner at 10 pm, and then an authentic Flamenco show at La Carbonería, converted to a nightly flamenco song and dance performance from an old Coal Mine. Seville does lay claim to being the birthplace of Flamenco, after all!

Also a ton of orange trees in Seville. Legend was that a very fat, ugly, lazy Islamic King was arranged to be married to a Muslim woman who was going to be brought to him in Seville. Needless to say, the woman wasn't happy about it at all, and refused to talk to the king whatsoever. On her birthday, the King imported a ton of orange trees to try to please her because it was what she missed most about her hometown. Supposedly it still didn't really work, but the trees are nice now! We were advised not to eat them because: 1. they are public property, meaning they are technically the property of the King of Spain. So, eat one and you're stealing from the Royal Family. 2. Orange trees are not native to the extremely hot and dry area, and orange trees need a lot of water to be fertilized. Not a lot of water, but they still thrive. A lot of tourists drinking in the streets at night...draw your own conclusions!

The very new Plaza Mayor of Seville! Every major Spanish city also has a Plaza de España, unfortunately we just saw Seville's from afar but they did film the opening scenes from a few movies there, including one of the Star Wars movies! Another thing we got to see was the university, converted from an old Tobacco factory, and also the scene of the true story that inspired the storyline for the opera, Carmen. Also, I didn't get pictures of them all but there are a million and one monuments and beautiful gardens all throughout the city, because the city had the grand idea of having a World Fair to attract tourists and make a bunch of money. Apparently round 1 didn't work because it was planned for 1929 (America messed that one up with the Stock Market Crash and that whole Great Depression thing), but round 2 was a big success the year the olympics were held in Barcelona. Regardless, it's very clear that Seville has put a lot of work into beautifying and maintaining their streets, monuments, legends and rich cultural history.

P.S. also fun fact, the national animal of Spain used to be the rabbit, but when the whole idea of the reconquista came about they decided they needed a more ferocious mascot. Hence, the current lion.

On Saturday, we took a 3 hour bus ride over to Granada, famous for La Alhambra: an enormous landmark site containing ancient royal palaces, forts, gardens, and cathedrals. Again, very famous for its Islamic influence in all of the architecture, design, and culture. It took us an entire day to explore the whole place, but it was definitely worth it!