Toledo, Spain

http://flickr.com/gp/21456489@N06/tPf73v

Toledo, Spain

http://flickr.com/gp/21456489@N06/tPf73v

Human Mosaic

A while ago, Madrid was nominated as a potential candidate city for the 2016 Olympics. Unfortunately, we lost out to Rio de Janeiro but before that, the city put together a huge human mosaic! There were over 400,000 people who attended, setting a world record! It was sprinkling a little bit, but nobody really seemed to mind. Everyone was singing and dancing! They even played Queen's "We Are the Champions", which was fun to sing along to. It was a blast! I'd only been in Spain for a couple weeks but I definitely felt some Spanish pride within myself.

Here's the link to the pictures, this blog is awful about adding and organizing photos:



http://flickr.com/gp/21456489@N06/K1g98T

This should include the guest pass. Please email me if the link is broken!!



Love you all,
Michelle

La Noche en Blanco

So once a year, Madrilenos hit the streets for an all night event called La Noche En Blanco, or "The Night in White". The name comes from a Spanish saying by the same name, which is used to describe a night with no sleep. Your newborn kept you up all night? You had a noche en blanco.

Couples young and old, families with little ones, and rowdy teens come out for this amazing event. The musuems are all free admission and open until 1am! The city provides free bus services and the metro is open until 3am to help people get around. Unfortunately, we didn't know the museums closed at 1am so by the time we got around to seeing them, they were closed. I was so mad! That was the whole reason I went out, though I found other things to keep myself busy that night. =)

We started our night by going out to dinner. Then we took the metro to Sol, the city's center, and got some tapas at Mercado de San Miguel. It was ridiculously packed! I didn't even have enough room to bend my arms to get my food to my mouth. They were also handing out free beer, which was a weird concept but Jenn, Brandy, and I all took advantage of it and grabbed a bottle each. Mahou, the beer we had, is EVERYWHERE. I'm pretty sure it's the national beer. It's okay, but I think the aftertaste is a little bitter.

**SIDENOTE: Apparently, once bartenders find out you're American, they try to make you drink Budweiser, if they have it. And then they tease you if you say you only want one "cana" (pronounced: CAHN-yuh), which is a small glass of the house beer, because Americans are known for getting belligerently drunk here. They'll keep asking you, "Quiere una mas? Una mas cerveza?" Which means, "Do you want one more? One more beer?" Don't worry, family. Even though it is perfectly normal to have a glass of beer at lunch, people here do NOT get drunk. They go to the bars to socialize with their friends, not get hammered. So, I may mention alcohol, but know that I have maybe a couple beers a week and they're pretty small.

Anyway, after we got our free beer, we walked around the city center. It was PACKED!! In Plaza Mayor, which was where the fat spiderman was in the earlier post, there were probably over a thousand people waiting in lines for the white balloons. They would tie a long long line of balloon ribbon together so some of the balloons were floating over four stories high!! We decided not to wait in line, even though I really wanted a balloon and instead, went to find the Donkey we saw on our tour early on Friday morning.

Let me tell you about this big Donkey, or Burro Grande. We saw it on our tour and were told that it was going to be "lit up" and "look spectacular" for Saturday, which was La Noche en Blanco. It was designed to look like the Madrid logo, which is the silhouette of a bull. So, I thought it would be filled with LED lights and the whole darn thing would be blazing with light and be this amazing sight....you'll see that's not the case. Major disappointment.

After that letdown, we decided to walk around the city and follow the crowds. The streets were packed like the midway at the State Fair. It's about 2:30 or 3am at this time. We found a cozy bar and got a beer and some tapas, which are little appetizers. We met some Italians who tried to guess where we were from. When we told them "America", they looked genuinely shocked and one said, "WHAT?! You CAN'T be from America!! You're not fat!" We laughed so hard! Thanks, fast food. Now the rest of the world thinks we're all obese. Anyway, they thought it was really "cool" that we were from America, especially California. We walked around with them for a while and went to several little cafes and tapas places, which were still open until 5am. The metro reopened at six, so after we said goodbye, we decided to get something to eat while we waited for the Metro to open. I was wearing heels, which were really comfortable* but after being on my feet for about six hours, my feet were aching. We found a little cafe and ate churros with chocolate. Unlike the churros in America, these aren't sweetened with sugar or cinnamon, but are still the same kind of fried dough. Delicious! When the metro reopened, we hopped on and came home....exhausted! It was about 7:15am by the time we got to our beds. What a night!

I loved how families were up all night, too, so it wasn't just rowdy kids. For the most part, I felt really really safe walking around. We made sure to stay where the crowds were, even though they thinned a bit towards the end of the night. The only time I was a little worried was when we walked by the park, which we thought would be lit up. It wasn't. It was pitch black. There were still a lot of people walking by, but we decided to cross the wide street and walk a little faster. It's the same most nights, though, in terms of being busy on the streets so walking places with just us three girls isn't a safety hazard.

Pictures:

A marching band that was playing in one of the smaller side streets. People were following them and dancing behind them. We joined them!

Mercado De San Miguel. You can't see how packed it was from this picture, but it was ridiculous.

The Mahou girls trying to keep up with the demand for free beer. You can kind of see how packed it is in the Mercado in this picture. Oh man.

Jenn and I. Notice the shoes, please.

Brandy and I.

World's most disappointing Burro.
Stupid Donkey.

Uh.... a big sign?

A balloon, really really high up!

People waiting in the square for their balloons. As you can see, some of them were REALLY high up in the air. Pretty sure the balloons are representing the moon.

Reina Sofia....closed.

People waiting in line for the bus. If you look really closely, you can see how PACKED the bus is. Nobody could sit. Everyone was standing.

Biodome!

Guided Tour

We took a guided tour last Friday! Unfortunately, it was raining so between the rain and the moving bus, some of the pictures didn't turn out so great. =( I don't remember all of the names of the places but for the most part I think I can tell you what you're looking at. I replaced some of my pictures for nicer pictures that were taken by Jenn on Saturday afternoon when she and Brandy visited the city's center, Sol, again.

From a hilltop over looking the city.

Pretty sure this is the royal palace. Our tour was in Castilian, so it was hard to get everything straight.

These are the Jardin Botanico (Botanical Gardens). SO pretty!

Plaza Mayor! This has become my favorite place. This building makes up one fourth of the buildings that form the square called Plaza Mayor. In this HUGE courtyard, which you'll see a little more of in the dark in the next post, there are tons of outdoor cafes. There are also a lot of street performers, which you'll see if you scroll down a bit. You can get anywhere in the center by going through one of these exits. Also, there's a great place near here that has the best churros!

The famous Don Quixote statue. Apparently, they celebrate "El Dia Libro", or Book Day, in Spain to celebrate the anniversary of Cervantes' death. I believe it's in the spring (April?) and on this day, friends and families exchange books as gifts. Sounds like my kind of holiday!

One of the street performers. Peter Griffin as Spiderman, anyone? Jenn is on the left and Brandy is on the right. They're two of the four girls I share my apartment with.

And then another of the fat Spiderman. This guy is so ridiculous. I've seen him many times since these pictures and he's always smoking with people in their pictures or they'll ask him to do a ridiculous pose. I love it!

Officially, the least Disney-like Tigger I've ever seen.

Eh.... Just a really nice old building? Some of the nicest buildings house some of the least important bureaucracies. The public water management building, which I don't have a picture of, looks like a palace or an embassy! It's amazing!

On Our Way

Hey Everyone! I'm too lazy to reorganize the photos into proper chronological order BUT this is our nice hotel that we stayed at our first night in Madrid. Thank God they had a shuttle pick us up because it had been a ridiculously long day. Let's just say that airport personnel suck.

This is a weird advertisement I saw in the London-Heathrow Airport. It's for a bank but for some reason it's showing "energy", "indulgence", and "sex". I don't get it.

Our plane we took from San Francisco....

I think you know these people....

This is the boyfriend, Andy, saying goodbye. Very supportive as you can see. hahaha

A

Toledo

Toledo was a welcome break from the craziness of the big city. Located about a half an hour by bus outside of Madrid, Toledo is home to some of the most amazing cathedrals I've ever seen. We started our tour on a hill so we could take some pictures and get some history before we hopped back on the bus to the cathedral.

The cathedral we toured was unlike anything I can describe. The architecture is so impressive. Every single square cm is detailed and carved. There's not a plain space to be found anywhere!

Aside from the religious houses, Toledo is known for it's gold wire jewelry called "Damascene". Basically, artisans take tiny hammers to thin gold wire and create ornate designs and jewelry (I'll grab some pictures off the web since I didn't take any of the actual jewelry). It's quite amazing to walk by these tiny shops and see people working on these pieces.

Toledo is also home to some of the finest sword and weaponry crafters in the world. The weapons used in The Lord of the Rings trilogy were crafted in this tiny town. I should've bought a tiny dagger or two as souvenirs but they were really pricy! Jenn and I got in an epic sword fight with tiny toothpick swords but we got kicked out of the store shortly after. It was fun!

As far as my opinion on Toledo vs Madrid? I definitely like Madrid a lot more. It was so eerie in Toledo because there was silence. No birds, no cats, no honking horns, no people shouting and laughing, just silence and the sounds of our feet on the cobblestones. It was pretty creepy. I think I prefer a little more LIFE in my city.


Here's a link to the pictures:

http://flickr.com/gp/21456489@N06/tPf73v