Deviation Day 14: Madrid and Home

Our trip has definitely come to an end! As I ride back to Connecticut in the car with my girlfriend Melody, I have a few seconds to write up today and to thank you all for reading my blog of my trip.

Our departure went off without a hitch and we made over the subway and bus to the airport where we promptly checked in and made all the necessary baggage drops.



We met up with our friend Edwin who had been traveling across Europe and was also leaving from Madrid so it was nice to see a familiar face after two weeks.

The flight took off and the eight hours wasn’t that bad at all. We got two meals and I watched two movies, started a book, and finished up some blog posts. Overall it wasn’t as bad as I thought and only time will tell tonight when I feel like I will have stayed up to 4AM instead of going to bed at 10PM.




We got into Newark on time and through customs as speedily as we could and it finally came time for Brian and I to part. I was headed out with Melody and he was waiting for his mom so we said goodbye at the gate and parted ways. It was definitely good to travel with Brian and I would have done it again. We complimented each other’s skills and enjoyed all the same things at the attractions. Despite his snoring, we survived and were in good spirits overall!



So here I am, signing off after a month of writing! Thank you all so much for your attention and encouragement. I hope that you too will consider traveling and seeing some of the same places I did, because you will definitely enjoy it!

Best of luck, safe travels, and thanks again!

Deviation Day 13: Madrid

Our last day to enjoy our deviation to Spain and what better city to spend it in? Madrid is such a modern and well-known city that I was almost unsure that we would have much to do. We were musing that it might have been better to have started in Madrid and used it as a base of operations. Day trips can be made to man towns such as Salamanca, Toledo, Valladolid, León, and even Sevilla and Barcelona using high-speed trains and airplane services. However, WE cannot take it back now and we simply decided to do our best to enjoy the city and its myriad of opportunities while we had the chance.

I went to Madrid about four years ago when I took another Spain trip with my High School but it was a bit different and the years can certainly change things! I’m almost positive that I saw many of the same things on this trip as I did then, but it was still worth it and we did get to do so much!

Anyhow, for starters we left our hostel and took the short metro ride to El Retiro, Madrid’s version of Central Park. With wide, sprawling pathways, vendors selling helado and other snacks, a central pond for rowing, and a fabulous location in the scope of the city and the sights, I could imagine myself spending many an afternoon here had I attended college in Madrid. It offers a very nice respite from the oppressive heat (it was near 100 degrees today) as well as the traffic and noise of the metropolis surrounding it.






The pond contained many, many, many carp, some leaping fully out of the water, and it was very hard for me to resist going back to the hostel to get my fishing rod and try my luck. I, however, decided that fishing for carp in a man-made pond in the middle of the heat was probably not as important as seeing the city of Madrid.

Next we got some lunch and headed in the direction of the Reina Sofia, the Spanish equivalent to the MOMA in New York or any other extensive collection of fine art. The exhibits were very nice and, although I didn’t get all of them, there was a very extensive collection and free admission for students was definitely within our budget. To top it all off at the Reina Sofia we got to see the famous Guernica painting by Picasso detailing the events surrounding the town in northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War in a very Picasso-esque style.






Next we walked to the Atocha Renfe train station to take the subway to the Palacio Real, or Royal Palace of Madrid. Our goal was to just see how the line was and at least take some pictures outside and when we got there we were dismayed because the long line at the door meant that we would probably have to wait too long to get in. Wednesdays are free for locals of Madrid to visit so the line, we assumed, was full of Madrileños looking to have a nice afternoon. We snapped some pictures and sat in the shade to at least read about the palace from our Rick Steve’s Kindle guidebook. We ended up liking what we read, especially the parts about the Royal Pharmacy (mostly for Brian) and the Armory (for both of us) so we decided to get in there an see it while we were in the vicinity. A reduced student rate (from 8 euros to 5) again helped persuade us and we had enough time to see a good chunk of what we wanted and still be ready to move to the next sight. Here are some legal and illegal photos of the Palacio, home of the Spanish Royal Family for hundreds of years.





Finally, after contemplating the awesomeness that was the Palacio, we were ready for our last official sight. The other major museum in the city of Madrid, housing one of the most impressive painting collections in the world, is El Prado. Located in the heart of the city, this museum hosts paintings, many of which belonged to Spanish Royalty, by Goya, Velazquez, El Greco, and even non-Spanish painters like Brueckner. I don’t know the history of the museum but I do know that my free-after-6PM entrance was a great time and it was very gratifying to be able to close the place down and see some true masterworks. It was forbidden to even enter the museum with cameras so I couldn’t even take covert photos, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one and make it out to Madrid to see for yourself.



As we walked out of the museum we sat down on the stones still warmed from the Spanish sun and contemplated all we had seen and done. Thoughts of Italy didn’t even enter my head but as I write this I know that this has been an amazing journey which I will remember forever. So many senses have been evoked and yet the intangibles like being able to feed ourselves for a month, traveling hundreds of miles, and still seeing sights we planned on seeing became just as obvious as the warmth of the sun and the smell of the trees. We didn’t even have to talk to each other to know that we were having a mild epiphanic moment where everything had been encapsulated and summarized in the briefest of glimpses. Somehow the beauty of the art and the character of the city of Madrid just brought it all out in the open.

As we strolled happily back to the hostel we looked forward to our final dinner to celebrate our time on the Iberian Peninsula. We asked the host of the hostel where he recommended and we made it to a great Galician (region in Northwest Spain) restaurant just down the road. We had four courses of delicious Spanish food, starting with Galician stew, moving onto some excellent chorizo, then the main course of a 400gram medium rare steak with fried potatoes. Finally we split Galician honey crepes and some cheese with walnuts and honey for dessert. We paid only 55 euros total so for about $45 per person we had a great meal in a great atmosphere celebrating our triumphant deviation!





At about 12:30AM we rolled back into the hostel and packed up and made ready to set off. We wanted to leave the hostel in the morning by 8AM so that we could get to the airport in plenty of time for our 11:30AM departure so now it’s time to sleep!

Deviation Day 12: Madrid and Toledo

After packing everything up this morning, we took our trip from the hostel to the airport via bus and made our flight very smoothly. It was a very fast (45 minutes of airtime) flight costing only about 60 American Dollars but it was worth its weight in gold because it saved us from another 8 hour bus ride.

After landing we took a short bus ride from the airport to the main metro station and then boarded the impressive Madrid Metro to make it right to our hostel’s doorstep. Unfortunately, our directions (on my iPod) cleared without having wifi so we ended up taking much longer than we wanted on the metro (a few mix-ups) but finally got everything in order. We first had to get to the hostel and make our arrangements for staying an extra night because we had purposely left that night open if we wanted to take a side trip. We were very close to traveling to Toledo and looking for a hostel there but we opted to just stay in Madrid and take advantage of the frequent (and cheap) buses from Madrid to Toledo. For a bit over 8 euros round trip we hopped a 45 minute bus to Toledo right after checking in.

Toledo is one of the most beautiful cities in know in terms of its surroundings and overall layout. It is bounded on three sides by the Tagus River and sits atop a big hill just south of Madrid. In the many picturesque landscapes that are available you can see the highest point is its cathedral. Our visit, while partially motivated by sights, was mostly concentrating on the souvenir department.

I wanted to get back to Toledo myself after being there but Brian really wanted to buy a sword so we ended up filling both needs. We stopped at a lot of cool shops but the one that stood out was the swordsmith (espadero in Spanish) with a free tour of a workshop given before purchasing the same hand-made swords. Here are some pictures of the store and the merchandise available.





After our souvenirs were purchased, we set out to see some sights before the 10PM bus back to Madrid. Unfortunately, we were met with the early Spanish closing system and were only able to see the exteriors of buildings. It would have been awesome to go into Toledo’s cathedral, but we did get some shots of it and other buildings around the city (the two other surviving Spanish Synagogues from the same time period [13th century] as the one in Córdoba).






We did stumble upon one museum which was pretty cool and cheaply priced. More of a temporary exhibit than a full museum, this place had information and artifacts about the conquest of Spain (Hispania in Latin) by the Romans and the previous tribes that existed there as well like the Iberians, the Lusitanians, and the Phoenicians. We learned a bit but got a good opportunity to take some cool and fun pictures too.






As the hot Spanish sun was setting lower and lower we began to think about going back, but not before we got a treat we had been waiting for the whole trip. That’s right, Churros con Chocolate in Toledo! We got a great serving of them and then had some local, nun-made sweets as well before hopping a cab to the bus station.




Our bus and subsequent metro rides were uneventful and we got back to our hostel, Las Musas, without a trouble. We sank into our comfortable beds in the air-conditioned room and thought about the awesomeness that would be tomorrow, our long but last day in Madrid!

Deviation Day 11: Barcelona

After the hiatus from sight seeing ever since Granada (we didn’t see very much in Valencia that wasn’t the beach) it was great to get back on the wagon. I knew that we needed that rest to get energy down the stretch of the trip but I couldn’t help but feel guilty thinking that I had missed something by not actively going out and “seeing” Valencia. With that in mind, I made sure to redouble my efforts to see things in the great city of Barcelona.

One of Spain’s biggest cities, Barcelona is the capitol of an eastern section of Spain known as Catalunya. Catalunya is a unique region because it represents an area where a language other than Spanish is widely spoken and taught. Catalán is somewhere in between French and Spanish (closer to Spanish) with a few different features of romance languages tweaked just a bit. Don’t let this description fool you, Catalán is every bit a language but it just doesn’t have the same army and navy as other more popular romance languages. Fortunately, they do have some very impressive artists among their speakers, and it is these gentlemen who have greatly shaped the overall makeup of the city and the culture of its people.

Pablo Picasso and Antonio Gaudí both had strong ties to Barcelona and their art, while world-renowned, is simply adored by the residents of the whole region.

Lecture aside, as our goal was to see the most of the city possible, we decided to take advantage of something we had known about for a while but never purchased. This was the Tourist Bus system. In many of the larger cities in Spain there is a hop-on, hop-off bus loop which you could pay for and then use like a taxi service on a loop to get to all the attractions you would ever want. We paid only 23 euros and used this great bus service literally all day from about 10AM to its closing at 8PM.



Our first stop on the bus was the world-famous Basilica Familia Sagrada. This huge church was originally conceived and designed with both a mathematical precision and artistic genius of none other than Gaudi himself. Working with his devotion to Catholicism and art, he fashioned this absolutely one-of-a-kind church starting in the 19th century and construction is still not completed on a lot of the major parts of the structure even today. The plans dictate a grandiose main entrance which will entail the destruction of an eight-story apartment complex so that it will fit, 12 small towers representing the 12 disciples, and one absolutely maginificent “Jesus tower which will be almost 100 meters taller than any other part of the church. Here are some photos of the magnificent exterior but do not assume that the awesomeness ends there because the interior is like nothing I have ever seen in a church.







And now, here’s the interior.







On-site there were also a few museums showing how the building was planned and constructed, as well as some of Gaudí’s own involvements and we happily looked at those as well. We eventually tore ourselves away and hopped the bus again to our next destination, the Parc Güell.

Designed by Gaudí to be an extravagant, English-inspired housing development, the actual lots never really sold and now it stands as another completely unique park for the city of Barcelona. It has a feel of an intersection between Central Park and the world of Alice and Wonderland. We stopped at the bottom of the hill to buy some lunch materials (bread, tomatoes, cheese, olives, and drinks) and we made our picnic in the park before exploring for a little bit. Here are some of the details of what we saw.






After our lunch an stroll, we hopped on our bus again and headed to the next destination of note which was the F.C. Barcelona soccer stadium and training facility. Barcelona, Barça for short, is a great team with a rich history of victory and dedication to excellence. While the stadium is huge and can house close to 100,000 fans, it was actually closed today so we got the quick, drive-by tour.





Next stop was the Olympic Stadium of Barcelona which housed the 1992 summer Olympics. Of particular note for this Olympics was the fact that it was here that the U.S. basketball “dream team” defeated everyone in their path. Again, we could not tour the inside of the facilities, but we got some cool pictures outside.





All of these stops were situated on the blue line tourist bus but now we were going to switch to the red line and see some of the port area. The popular La Rambla walk on which our hospital was situated rambled all the way down to the port and then there was even a “sea-rambla.” This was a small path suspended over the water where people could continue their walks despite the water. Here we also saw a World Trade Center, the tallest monument to Christopher Columbus, and even and Imax theater. We hopped into the 45 minute film called “Wild Ocean” and, despite not being the coolest 3D film I had ever seen, it was definitely a cool experience abroad.







We then walked back along La Rambla and stopped to have some paella and tapas while people watching at one of the adjoining restaurants. Finally, we made it back to the hostel and got to bed early for our flight in the morning.

Our trip is clearing hitting the final phase, but I am definitely very excited to get to Madrid and see all it has to offer as well!