Thursday May 27, 2010
Talks had been in the works for visiting Portugal during next weekend, because it’s a five-day weekend (with national holiday on Thursday and no classes on Friday). I’ve found that communication amongst the IES students is tediously slow via Facebook groups/messages because people don’t check it often enough. I researched flight prices and travel information the night before to Lisbon, but when Lauren (my IES neighbor) and I researched after Spanish class, the prices had shot up. Dammmn. So we looked up flights for Porto instead. It is the second-largest and supposed to be historic and beautiful. Booking through Ryanair (referred from Sidestep, i.e.: the best flight search engine EVAH, my friend, Isabella, immediately fell in love after I showed her), Lauren and I booked then and there, because there were flights with only a few seats left. It felt so fun and spontaneous to just do it, instead of waiting for a slow group decision. I hate this whole “well… I’ll go if everybody else is going…” mindset that’s so popular here. I guess I understand, nobody likes going out on their own and missing out on what the group is doing. Yet sometimes you just gotta go for it, especially when a group this size, about 30-40 people, will take forever to reach a consensus. But maybe I’m biased from meeting too-cool-for-school solo travelers like German Lisa (from a volcano tour in Costa Rica) and German Britta (from the Barcelonan youth hostel). I want to be bad-ass like them! Taking action was good, because other people naturally hopped on, and as of right now, our group is about 10 or more people. We’re on different flights going but the same flight heading back. The people with flights also booked the same hostel. So things are pretty much set. I love how this group trip quickly organized itself in a span of one day and two nights. Success.
That afternoon, I went on un Paseo Histórico, a tour of the historic district led by the IES-hired tour guide, Mario.
We saw most of the main landmarks and buildings, including: el Palacio Real (where the Spanish monarchy used to live, but now the king and family live elsewhere while el Palacio is reserved for state ceremonies)
Catedral de Madrid (common opinion: “Es muy fea,” too modern, I guess)
Restaurante Sobrino de Botin (world’s oldest restaurant: “Pero, no tiene no precios de estudiante”)
La Plaza Mayor (where they use to host bullfights or corridas de toros back in the day with balconies reserved for aristocrats and a special one reserved for the royal family)
and more.
I love going on guided tours, because you get so much more fun facts, cultural stories, and historical information than just walking around with a camera. God knows, I’d just be taking pictures of banks built to look old and fancy. Only glazed over by history textbooks, the seemingly constant conflict between the Muslims and the Catholics influenced a lot of the historical buildings. Mario pointed out Islamic, Roman, and Gothic architecture, focusing on the tell-tale signs of the arch-shapes in the buildings. We visited this hidden public garden enclosed with walls and blooming roses where people picnic and take siestas. The smaller streets of Madrid have funny names. In the historic district, they have specially decorated tiled signs mounted onto the side of the buildings. Calle de Codo, with the painted picture of a knight’s elbow, is named after it’s sharp crooked shape. In the past, single ladies used to trot around Calle de la Pasa (whose sign is decorated with women walking on the street), looking for potential novios. The saying goes: «El que no pasa por la calle de la Pasa, no se casa». I guess the single ladies then had a different attitude than Sasha.
After our tour, we asked the guide for a recommendation for a tapas place for dindin. He gave us a few options that he didn’t never told us. Winkwink. I guess IES doesn’t want the tour guides to be selling the students anything. We went to one of his recommendations, and it was greattt. The tapa servings were quite large, so each student really only had to eat one for a meal. I got myself some carne asada en jugo. We passed our food around so everyone could try all different types of tapas. Served from heavy glazed clay pitcher (like the one I made in pottery class, don’t make fun of me now, Angie-pie!), the sangria was perfect to wash down the meal. Our big Paseo HIstórico group broke up and I headed over to Fredd Fredd with a smaller group for gelato. We also tried samples at a chocolate place. That’s when Isabella (a fellow rising-junior Yalie) and I found my future calling: food-writing/food-critiquing, because I could pick out the marmalade in the piece of sample chocolate we were offered. Hey, I wouldn’t mind eating for a living. Haha.
Then I went to hang out with another group that was having dindin around the area of La Plaza Mayor and churros con chocolate after. I didn’t eat again, but it was fun hearing about how one girl, Liza, now has a creepy semi-stalkerish fireman named David in her life, because she lives across or at least very near the local fire station. When they met on her very first day in Madrid, he asked if she wanted to see his fire truck, i.e.: take a tour of the fire station, which she did, giving him the wrong signal. So now he keeps texting her to play. Shouldn’t that line “do you want to see my fire truck?” set off alarm bells in her head already?
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