Some Places I Went

1. The City of Ourense

A Roman(ish) bridge

Ourense is one of the four Galician Provincial Capitals (along with Lugo, A Coruña, and Pontevedra) located in the southwest corner of the Comunidad Autonoma. It was the last of the Galician capitals that I've visited, and pretty similar in style and architecture to the other three. Ourense's distinctive features are: a gigantic Roman bridge (remodeled in the 1500's), a very gloomy cathedral, and the termas, or hot springs scattered around the town.

The picture to the right is kind of misleading of my experience in Ourense--it absolutely poured down rain the entire time. By the end of the first day, even my knee-high rain boots proved incapable of keeping out the wet. 

Besides the rain, the trip was fairly uneventful. We ate a lot, walked a lot, saw a lot. We also got yelled at by the lifeguard at the termas for not having chancletas (flip-flops). The whole "you're going to spread foot diseases!" argument doesn't really hold water for me, since you have to take them off before you get in the pool. If foot diseases are going to spread, they'll do it in lukewarm non-cholirnated water, not the disinfected floor of the changing room. 

But this is just part of Spain's overall anti-foot fetish.


2. O Carbaliño

inside the casa

O Carbaliño is a little village in the province of Ourense where I went to visit a casa rural with some other Auxiliars and some friends-of-friends who happened to be teachers. 

A casa rural is more than just a "rural house." A casa rural is like a hotel/vacation home that you can rent out for the weekend. Well worth it if you want to have a big weekend get-together when everyone lives in tiny little apartments. There was a lot of eating, a lot of talking, a lot of games and walks and general merriment. I don't like to put on my bragging hat (okay, that's not true) but I will to share these fun facts.

• We visited another castro, one of the biggest ones that has been discovered. 
• Team Anglophile held its own in a Spanish-only scattergories-type game.
• I tried my first queimada.
• And made a cat friend (see the last post for pictures of cats)

Quick digression. What is a queimada? Literally, it means, a "burning" and while there is fire involved (LUME!!) it's a little more than that. The queimada is part ritual, part cocktail. The beverage is a mix of aguardiente, sugar, coffee beans and lemon rind, which is then lit on fire and stirred, while someone reads the traditional conxuro (incantation), which is meant to drive away evil spirits. It's pretty long, but here are a few of my favorite lines:

Farts of the asses of Doom

Bellow of the enraged sea

Useless belly of the unmarried woman

Speech of cats in heat

...

Stop the burning firewater

Becoming so purified

...

Goes down our throats

And we will come free of the evil

You can click this link to read the full thing.


3. Combarro

to give you how small the town is, this streetsign says only, 'street'

This past weekend I went on a little day trip to a village on the Atlantic coast with a couple Auxiliar friends. 

There wasn't a whole lot there besides adorable houses and tourist shops that were suspiciously similar to the ones back in Port Townsend. Lots of cheap shell-type nick-knacks and vaguely celtic stuff.

We walked around for a bit, poked in some of the shops and spent a lot of time waiting for various busses. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

cute little houses

Overdue update

Wow, it's been like a whole month since I've posted anything. More than a month. Oops. I could blame it on not doing anything special, but that's not true--I went to the city of Ourense to soak in the hotsprings, visited a casa rural and had my first queimada, had my second Thanksgiving abroad... I could say that I've been doing too much writing, what with November being NaNoWriMo, but I started that late and didn't even "win." I could say that I've just been super busy preparing classes and teaching English, but that's a downright lie. 

No, the real answer is I've been lazy. Ya está. We'll see if I get my act together and actually write something interesting later this month. Hopefully before I leave--

WAIT, WHAT? 

Yes! Before I leave! It's true--I'm going home for Christmas this year! Hooray! I am super looking forward to seeing all my friends and family, my cat, my piano, my wide selection in different sizes of bags... (seriously. I can't justify buying new bags because I have like five different sized bags at home, but it's so inconvenient not having a bag that is just the right size for all the objects I want to take with me to locations X Y and Z)

But yeah. Especially the friends and family part. I'll be flying in on the 18th of December, and flying out the 11th of January. I plan on making a trip to B'ham, probably to Seattle as well, but nothing's really planned yet. Really planning isn't exactly my thing.

Now a couple obligatory pictures:

Ourense in the rain

casa rural in the sun

A cat friend

The City of Culture

Last weekend I visited the "Cidade da cultura" with one of my fellow auxilars. City of culture is not, I think, the best translation, though I´m not sure what else to call this... thing. A cultural center perhaps, but I'm not really convinced. Maybe someone else can give me a name for this place after I describe it a little bit.

The complex is located on top of Gaiás hill just outside the city and consists of half a dozen or so buildings/structures that house a museum, a library (that didn't seem to have that many books), some art exhibits, a concert hall, a café-bar, and a bunch of other odds and ends that I don't know what they are. 

Back in the 1990's, the city of Santiago held a competition to design a facility to house the museum etcetera that I mentioned above. The winner was, by far and away, the most interesting, exciting, and extravagant of the entries. The winner, American Peter Eisenmann, managed to incorporate many of the prominent features of Galicia into his design. Rolling hills, seashells, the plan of the old town of Santiago, and tartans to harken back to the mythical days of the celts (we're pretty sure those days existed). 

This grand design resulted in 10+ years of construction, and many, many reevaluations of the budget. A lot of Galicians are upset over the waste of money (let's not forget about la crisis, folks) on a space that no one really uses because they're not really sure what it's for.

When I went, the facility was surreally empty and although it was pretty, there was a tumble-down, shoddy feel to it. Construction was officially stopped this year, but there are still some big holes here and there that may never get filled in.

It looks pretty from afar at least

Can you spot the hole in the facade?

The shelves of the library are designed to look like a model of the city. They're mostly empty

rust stains from the tartan stripes. Note the construction stuff in the background

One of the denizens of the place. There was also: one employee each in the museum and cafe, some German tourists, and a snail. 

It may not be a City of Culture, but I hope that something is made out of this place some day. It has potential.

What am I even doing here?

I've just started my second year in Spain as and Auxiliar de Conversacion, (or, as all my coworkers call it 'lectora.' Don't know why) and I figure it's about time I explain on here what exactly it is that I do.

One of the funny things about the program is the wide range of responsibilities and expectations the different schools place on their auxiliars. At some schools you're pretty much expected to be a real teacher--planning and executing all your own lessons by yourself, while the regular teacher takes the opportunity to get caught up on their own work. In other places, you're not much more than a reading machine/dictionary, where you are only expected to be an example of correct pronunciation. 

Fortunately, my experience has fallen between these extremes, though much more towards the full-blown teacher end. At both the schools I've worked at, I have had two kinds of classes--straight up English classes, and "bilingual sections" aka content classes taught in a foreign language (obviously English in this case). 

For the English classes, I am expected to prepare my own lessons, usually based on either the current grammar or vocab theme the students are learning about, or a seasonal/holiday/cultural lesson. For the bilingual section classes, I often end up reading from a textbook or other source, or doing a vocabulary lesson or game.

A standard lesson plan looks something like this:

Recipes lesson

3rd of ESO (8th grade)

• Go over command form in English
• brainstorm dish ideas
• pair and write recipes
• share recipes
• early finishers share with other early finishers
• whole group
• extra time? 
• 2-3 min--tongue twister
• 4-10 min--taboo/other game w/ food vocab

And that's it. There's other stuff involved, like stern looks and crowd control, and not laughing when students say snarky/cheeky things, but that's all secondary.

And the obligatory picture:

I went for a walk the other day in Belvis park, one of the many parks in Santiago. For a Spanish city, Santiago is very green. It may have something to do with weather predictions like this one:

Family Vacation

Finally, vacation time is over, and the school year has begun. Since I've been lazy and haven't done much blog-writing I'll talk a little now about some of the adventures I've been on since the last post.

These people came to visit

I was a little busy with private lessons and starting my new job at Lamas de Abade, so I wasn't able to join in on some of the little trips Celeste and Johnny went on, but I did manage to rearrange my schedule enough to make time for a nice little trip to one of my favorite places--Portugal.

I'd already been to Porto, but last time I went it dumped rain the entire time and I missed out on a lot of the things I wanted to see. 

Johnny had gone off on a solo adventure to Barcelona and Marseilles, so for the first couple days it was just Celeste and I to poke around the city of wine and tiles. We got up before dawn to catch the 6am train and watched the sunrise through the smoke of the forest fires that have been ravaging the peninsula. Then, thanks to the magic of time travel changing time zones, we arrived at the hostel at 10am five hours later.

From there on, it was the typical tourist things--go on a tour of the city, meet other tourists and spend money on unnecessary things. 

It's a melon boat with ham sails

After some trial and error, Johnny made his way to the hostel and Celeste set out for this place:

It's Morocco

Johnny and I poked around Porto some more, and saw some pretty awesome stuff, such as:

This little church

A Francesinha

some nice plazas

From there we went to Braga, the little city that Spanish adolescents find absolutely hilarious. (Braga is Spanish for "panties")

If you haven't been to Braga, and you're in the area of northwestern Iberia, it is worth the trip. Once upon a time it was the capital of the Galician kingdom, and before then, one of the outposts of the Roman empire. These days, it's a quiet mid-size town and one of the prettiest places I've been. 

There were roughly 10,000 churches in the city of 100,000, and enough flowers to build another 10,000, if flowers were a viable construction material. And like in Porto, most of the streets and sidewalks were paved with black and white stones, making painting street lines and arrows a thing of the past.

Just a flower garden next to a castle.

The next day we took the bus out of town to the church on the mountain, Bom Jesus. 

The church itself was not that impressive on the inside, but the 600 stairs leading up to it were, and the gardens surrounding it make the trek (or the funicular ride) worth the effort. Each landing on the stairs had a different pattern of black and white tiles, and a fountain of some kind.

Fountains

Gardens

After a long walk back down the 600 stairs, Johnny and I grabbed a quick coffee in the city center, and caught the one and only bus back to Spain by the skin of our teeth. This involved a lot of frantic running around, missing passports (not ours, thank God) and melting icecream. We did make it back to Santiago however, just in time to grab a tapa at the bar down the street.

It wasn't too long after that that Johnny set off for Seattle via Madrid, and Celeste returned from the north of Africa with tan lines and a bag full of dirty clothes. The two of us hung out in Santiago for a few days, with another little trip to Lugo to eat pulpo and watch fireworks at San Froilan. The quantity of octopus eaten at the festival is incredible. I find it amazing that the fishermen are capable of finding and catching so many tons of octopus each year and shipping it to this random inland city. 

Ecological ramifications aside, it was a fun experience, and nice to catch up with some old and new Lucences.

After one final night out on the town in Santiago, Celeste jetted off once again for sunnier climes leaving Meghan behind in the comforting drizzle of the northwest.

Something fun for the whole family and other news

You know what I think is fun? Answering 140 questions about words. And now you can too!

I found this survey on the internet the other day, made by North Carolina State University that will tell you which region/cities in the continental United States has/have the accent most similar to your own. I took the short(er) 25-question survey first, but was kind of disappointed when Salt Lake City showed up as the city with the dialect most similar to my own. I tried again, with the longer version (I know there are probably better ways to be spending my time, but whatever) and got Tacoma, Bellingham and Everett as the cities with the dialect most similar to mine. Not too bad!

I was a little worried that after a year abroad, my accent would change, and for a while I was convinced that it had. In reality though, I think I have changed my manner of speaking around non-native and non-American English speakers more than anything else.

In other news, I am still waiting on that new residency card. It turned out that the delay was caused by two things: 1. I actually did need this one document that the guy at the Santiago Foreigner's Office told me that I did not need, and 2. when the office in A Coruña tried to contact me about the error they screwed up the address (by writing plaza instead of rúa) and the letter got lost in the mail. They eventually sent me a text message telling me I had to come to the A Coruña office in person. super.

It should be all sorted out now however (though this is what I thought before and I was proven wrong). Now my problem is that I am scared to actually call the A Coruña office to see if they got all the completed forms and photocopies they wanted. Is it normal to spend two or three days working up the courage to make a phone call? Probably not, but autopshychoanalysis is probably not the solution.

Taking a walk in the Alameda

On a happier note, some of my family has come to visit me in my adopted home. Celeste and Johnnie arrived on the fifth and have been/are going to be jetting around Spain and Europe for at least a solid month. 

We've mostly poked around Galicia, visiting A Coruña (with a nice little stop at the Foreigner's Office) to see the castle and the Roman lighthouse, Pontevedra to see a medieval festival, and then Lugo to meet up with Julián and Carmen, and returning American Ryan. Celeste and Johnnie took a little overnight trip to Léon and Astorga, to take in the architecture and morcilla

Right now, Celeste has rented a car and is going for a little road trip to the beach, while Johnny is off on his own solo adventure, though I won't say more for fear of giving my mother a heart attack. I'm at home, procrastinating while I should be planning lessons. Later this week, we'll be taking a trip to my favorite place I've been in Europe: Porto. We'll see some other places as well, but I'm really looking forward to another francesinha. 

Waiting for the joust to start in Pontevedra. 

And finally, a little behind the game, is I've been catching up on the America's Cup coverage. Oh my goodness those boats are so absolutely gorgeous. The speed, the physics, the tactics, even the venue is beautiful and epic.

August Update

Well! I've certainly slacked off on the blog writing. Last time I wrote about my Galician course, and to be honest, not much has happened since then. I've been kicking it in Santiago, giving private under-the-table English classes, getting to know the city and some of the folks that live here, watching all of the star trek movies....

Since I don't really feel like talking about my private lessons and I'm too lazy to buy more batteries for my camera, I'm going to instead talk about 4 Spanish language films you need to see. Most of these are Spanish (from Spain) with a little Guillermo del Toro thrown in there.

1. El Labarinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) 

You've probably already seen this movie, but if you haven't, the story revolves around a young girl and her mother during the Spanish civil war. The mother is recently married to an officer in the Nationalist army, a cold and violent man. The girl has an obsession with fairy tales and magic, and throughout the movie the viewers are left wondering what is real and what is only in the imagination of a little girl trying to escape from a scary and depressing situation.

If you haven't seen the original Spanish, it's worth a watch. The dub is well done, but watching films in the original language always gives a better sense of the setting. It's a good one for those whose Spanish isn't perfect or even that great, since the story isn't too complex and most of the dialogue uses a child's vocabulary. There is some interesting use of the vos form, but it's not hard to understand.

2. Celda 211 (Cell 211)

Celda takes place mostly in a prison somewhere in Spain and centers on an inmate who stages a rebellion (played by lucense Luis Tosar!) and a young prison guard (played by Alberto Ammann) who must fool the prisoners into believing that he is one of them. It's dark, gripping and somewhat stressful as you lose track of which side you're supposed to be rooting for. I'd say more but I don't want to spoil anything. Suffice to say there's lots of twists. 

Subtitles recommended.

3. Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes)

I was warned before I watched this film that, even though it's a sci-fi flick, there are almost zero special effects and I shouldn't expect anything like Xmen or the new Star Trek films. So I was expecting something campy and maybe with some rubber monster suits, but that turned out not to be the case.

The biggest effect of the film is the time machine itself, while not nearly as cool as the Delorean with its flashing lights and flaming tire marks, is actually more plausible and doesn't require as much suspension of disbelief. Most of the film consists of the main character running around trying to solve the problems that he himself has created in the stream of causality. 

There's actually not a whole lot of dialogue, but I'd still recommend subtitles if your Spanish is a little shaky.

4. O Apóstolo (The Apostle)

Absolutely beautiful movie. I've mentioned this one in a previous post, but I'll mention it again since it's so worth watching. 

It's a Galician film, all done in Tim Burtonesque stop motion. The movie starts with a brief voice cameo from Luis Tosar as his character from Celda 211 as two inmates escape from prison. They then split ways and we follow Carlos Blanco's character Ramón as he disguises himself as a pilgrim to avoid the police. Things get complicated however as Ramón gets caught up in a real life Galician legend of ghosts and curses. (It's a little complicated, just pay attention)

The art is gorgeous, the music is great, and best of all many of the iconic sites in Galicia are featured. About half of the characters speak Galician, so you should probably stick with the English subtitles even if your Spanish is good.

If you have any recommendations for more Spanish language films, let me know!

In other news, a letter from the government just arrived the other day. It's not however addressed to me, so I'll wait til the landlady stops by to open it just to be on the safe side.

Classtime!

A couple things before the real post.

First off, you probably heard on the news about the train accident on the outskirts of the city a few days ago. According to the news, over 150 people were killed or injured in the accident, which was caused by too much speed going around a curve. I'm not going to make any speculations or accusations, I just want to say that I'm fine and every one I know here is fine, but there are a lot of people who aren't fine, and it's a tragedy that this happened.

Secondly, a continuation of the theme from a couple posts ago--dealing with bureaucracy. I just found this little video that was originally for a short film contest that depicts really well the struggle in dealing with bureaucracy, not only in Spain but anywhere. 

Fun times.

And speaking of fun times, this time without the sarcasm, the summer course at USC. Not University of Southern California, the other one. 

We took a little trip to Padrón, the hometown of
 Rosalía de Castro, the mother of Galician literature.

The course was intensive, but short. Three and a half weeks total. Classes started at 9:30 every morning and ended at 11:30, followed by a half hour for coffee and socializing, then some kind of cultural or linguistic presentation by a guest speaker, or a film in Galician. (There's some pretty good Galician films out there, and Spanish films in general. If you have the chance, check out O Apóstolo, a spooky and beautiful stop motion film.) This part of the day usually lasted until around 1:30, 2:00. Just in time for lunch. In the afternoons/evenings there were extra optional activities, such as seeing a dance recital, or a poetry reading, or a visit to the cultural museum. 

I was in the Elemental 1 class, which had about 13 students including myself, from all over the world--Argentina, Germany, Iran... We were the only students who had not previously studied Galician in a classroom setting, which at first I found surprising, but the realized it made sense for students who had studied Galician at college would jump at the chance to study for a month in the Galician capital. Most of these students were filología students, or language/comparative literature students with an emphasis in Romance or Western Romance languages. In Europe, these students are required to study at least three languages (if I remember correctly), so it would make sense to choose three that are quite closely related. 

At first I was disappointed in my placement (level 1! But I've been in Galicia for months!) but by the end I was happy with it. Even though I may have picked up a few words and a good level of understanding, I had (heck, still have) only a shaky grip on the grammar and was really only Galician-izing my Spanish.

It was nice being in such a small class, with students who actually wanted to learn to speak the language. This compared to my Spanish classes in college, where even in the 300+ level courses very few people voluntarily spoke the language, except maybe those who had just returned from study abroad. "I'll just pick it up when I go to a Spanish-speaking country" they said. "But you're in Spanish class right now" I said, "con gente que sí habla un poco y que debe practicar ahora cuando estén en una situación tranquila y sin riesgos" Or something along those lines in a much more broken fashion. 

But I'm getting off topic. Here are a few highlights of some of the extracurricular activities.

A staircase in the cultural museum

This is the Castro de Baroña, much better preserved than the one in Vilardonga, but without the snazzy museum

Taken from a bridge in a riverside park where we had a group lunch with all the students and teachers

I went on a little hike with some of my classmates to this church in Pontedeume

Proof I was there, I guess.

At the end of the course, there was a mini graduation ceremony, where the President of the Real Academia Galego gave a little talk and we all got certificates of completion. There was of course free wine and empanada afterwords. 

As a whole, the course was a lot of fun, and probably the most multicultural experience I've ever had. It was hilarious listening to non-American non-Spaniards make the same complaints and compliments that me and my American/English-speaking friends have made, and learning about how things are done in other parts of the world. Fried eggplant for breakfast in Romania? Supermarkets open Sundays in Argentina? How to say "cheers" in German? (Prost!)

But now that my time as a student is over, I have to return again to "real life" and start doing some grown-up things, like looking for an apartment come fall, and getting a public library card. I guess it can all wait til Monday though, once things are open again.

Aventuras de Cocinar II

Hola, amigos. Os voy a escribir otro post en castellano sobre mis aventuras de cocinar. Don't forget, to read it in English, just paste the URL into google translate. 

El plato que voy a enseñaros es menos complicado que lo de antes.Y también menos sana.  Se llama "huevos revueltos al microondas y patatas fritas al horno." Los fogones del piso en Santiago son un poco más peligrosos que los de Lugo y por eso estoy buscando recetas que no los necesitan. Los etapas son los siguientes:

Primera Etapa: Las patatas. 

Bueno, antes de cortarlas, hay que lavarlas. Yo sólo usé una, porque estaba cocinando solo por mi mismo. Después de lavarlas, córtelas en trozos finos y todos del mismo tamaño para que tardan igual en asar.

Pon los trozos en un cuenco grande y lávalos. Échales un poco de aceite, sal y especias. A mi me gusta pimienta negra y pimentón picante. Mezclalos bien y mételos en el horno a las 175 grados (centígrados).

Segunda Etapa: Los huevos.

Agrega los ingredientes. Puede ser lo que queras, sólo el huevo es obligatorio. Prefiero echar un poco de leche y algo de verduras. Carne también es una opción. 

El que hacer es muy sencillo. Pon un huevo (o dos) en un cuenco (o taza grande, lo que sea) eche un poco de leche, y cortar los verduras en trozos muy finos. Mezcla todo y mételo en el microondas. 

¡Ten cuidado! El microondas es un instrumento muy poderoso. Por eso es muy fácil arruinar el plato. El truco es poner el energía bajo y sacar la mezcla cada 45 segundos más o menos para removerla. Repita esta procesa hasta que los huevos no sean crudos.

¡Remúevela!

Tercera Etapa: ¡Comer!

Después de 20 minutos en el horno las patatas ya están hechos. Con tal que no las cortases demasiado gordas. 

Qué buena pinta

Rico, fácil y no hay mucho que limpiar después!

The Quest for the Holy ID Card

One of the difficult things about living abroad is the mountains of paperwork required to do so. Legally. And in order to stay in Spain, I have to renew my ID card, which seems to be equally as difficult as getting the visa in the first place.

So, in an effort to avoid the soul-crushing frustration and anger, I imagined that I was on a quest. Going forth into strange lands, completing tasks, figuring out puzzles and enlisting allies to defeat the agents of bureaucracy before Ganondorf found the rest of the triforce and... I'm getting off track.

I won't subject you to too many details, but here are some points that really struck me as jerkish.  I know they weren't being intentionally jerkish, but from my point of view that's how it seems. 

There is very little communication between the various branches of government, specifically, the Ministry of Education and whoever the heck it is that deals with foreigners and paperwork. The Xunta sent me a list of documents I needed to bring to the Extrajería (these being proof of employment this year and last year, photocopies of my passport and old TIE, form "EX00" and another form saying that I'd paid the fee), but once I went to the actual office, I was told I needed like three other things (an empadronamiento or "proof of civil registry" and a photocopy of my insurance card. Yes two is like three) but I did not need the fee form. Also I needed two copies of everything, not one.

In the end it was all fine and I got everything squared away, plus the bonus of getting to know my way around the old part of Santiago while I desperately hunted out a photocopy place that was open before 10am (FYI, there is not). Now I just have to wait and hope that they send the thing to my mailbox and not the neighbors, because there seems to be some confusion as to which apartment is 2A and which is 2B. (Good job Spain, way to be on top of things.)

In other news, Santiago has been nice, if hot. The Galician course has been interesting so far, and I'll probably do a real post about it later. In the meantime, here's a picture I took walking home the other day.

Na Rúa San Pedro

Grand Tour Part VII: The Nation's Capital

Is it capital or capitol? I'm never sure and don't care quite enough to bother looking it up. Either way, what DC is to the States, Madrid is to Spain. It's also the largest city in the country, with over 3 million inhabitants and an extensive rail/metro system. It is also one of the most expensive places, and between high rents, metro tickets and everything else I can see why the Madrid Auxiliars get an extra 300 euros a month. Since we couldn't find a hostel that looked nice and still within our price range, we went with an alternative and stayed with a nice couple who lived in the afueras and rented out their spare bedroom to travelers. We did this in Gijón as well, I just didn't mention it.

We arrived late in the afternoon on Sunday, chatted with the couple who lived in the house, and went for a walk to recuperate from the bus ride from Sevilla. The next day we planned our excursion and headed out into the city. The cercanias train station was a short five minute walk from the house, and after some initial confusion it turned out to be quite convenient. (there are three seperate systems of things that run on rails and look like trains in Madrid: the metro, the national railway system RENFE, and the cercanias, which I guess could be translated literally "closenesses" or better "train that services the neighborhoods at the edge of the city")

The word for royal in Spanish is real, while the word for real is real.  hmm...

Our first stop, and the thing I was probably most excited for was the Royal Palace. This is one thing that we most certainly do not have in the states: royal palaces with real live royals living in them. Our founding fathers might through a fit if we did, but it'd still be pretty cool.

Of course, since the royal family actually lives here, not all of it is open to the public. But the parts that are are very impressive. Photos are not allowed, so I'll try to paint a picture in words. (this is a test of my memory more than anything else) 

Once you pay for your ticket and go through security, you walk across the big stone courtyard pictured to the left and go through one of the three sets of double doors at the far end. From there you go up a grand marble stair to the first floor (second for Americans) and begin your tour of the public rooms. 

The rooms themselves are edged with gold where the walls and floor and ceilings meet (no, the ceilings and floors do not meet) and each one has a different theme, usually pulled from mythology or biblical scenes. The ceilings are painted with huge, detailed frescoes that are equal parts work of art and optical illusion. Sculptures erupt from the molding and take part in the picture, in what Rick Steves calls a "multimedia extravaganza." The whole place is lit with crystal chandeliers. And although these are beautiful today, I can only imagine how they must have looked with changing, flickering candlelight making all the facets sparkle, rather than blaring, static electric lights. 

Also featured is the biggest single dining room tables I have ever seen. With a table like that, I could invite my entire extended family over for thanksgiving, including all the Mormon cousins and their babies and still have enough room for a NWICSA-wide flip cup competition. And place settings, my goodness! Like five different glasses and twelve different silverwares! 

I don't want this to go on for too long, so I'll leave one last tidbit: the Royal Stradivarius collection. There are a few hundred Stradivariuses (Stradivari?) left in the world, and the Spanish royal family has six of them--a full quintet made by Antonio Stradivari specifically for the Spanish royal family (two violins, two cellos and one viola) as well as a child-size violin. When the Queen is in the mood for some chamber music the instruments get pulled out and tuned up, but most of the time they are on display in atmospherically-controlled glass boxes. 

For lunch we went to another cultural site, the museo de jamón or "ham museum." I'm being deliberately misleading here. The museo de jamón is a restaurant chain that specializes in ham products. Again, we had to wait in line, but not that long and without any surprising coincidences. 

Looking down at the bar/butchershop. I can't even count the number of pig legs hanging up

Madrid, like DC (apparently. I've never been), is home to some of the biggest and best museums in the country. The two really famous ones that we saw were the Reina Sofia, the modern art museum and home to the Guernica, and the "classical" art museum the Prado, home to two versions of Saturn Devouring his Son and much much more. 

Both museums are free to the public the last two hours before they close, but two hours is really not enough time to appreciate everything there, and especially at the end of the day when your feet are sore and you're ready to go home. I won't say anything more about these two because I know I can't do justice to the art inside.

For dinner we had tapas and churros con chocolate. Churros con chocolate (which consists of a plate of deep-fried churros and a cup of thick, pudding-like hot chocolate) is usually a breakfast thing, but breakfast for dinner is just about the best dinner option, even if you feel slightly sick afterwards.

In Amsterdam, I think my favorite thing we saw was the botanic garden (I'll admit, the warm greenhouses played a big part), so the Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid was on my must-see list. As a result, I think I took way too many photos. A lot of them were under the presumption that I could later go back and look at them all and become more well-versed in plant and tree identification, but we'll see if that actually happens. 

I don't think I can even read all those little signs

This is my favorite photo

We then retired to Parque del Retiro for a picnic, where we saw a crazy man, made friends with some cats and were attacked by hundreds of baby spiders. We also stopped for an ice cream just next to this big lake.

There were fish in the lake

We did see two more cool things while we were in Madrid: the Naval Museum and the "La Caixa" Forum. I've been to boaty-type museums before and they just haven't done it for me. Kind of musty-smelling with a bunch of model boats and nothing is explained very well. But I should have figured this one would be above and beyond the Maritime Museum in Victoria. Spain's naval history goes back hundreds of years--battling the British, pillaging the Americas and fighting off pirates... It was all very exciting! They even had the first ever European map to feature the "New World." Not super accurate, but it's the thought that counts.

The other thing, the La Caixa Forum, was surprisingly good as well. It's this big building in the center of the city that houses 2-4 rotating exhibits year-round and is free for bank members (like me!). When we went, there was a photo exhibition on infrastructure, and a more museum-y piece on Mesopotamian mythology, art and architecture. The photos were okay, but the Mesopotamian stuff was incredible. Maybe it helped that I had recently read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but I was blown away by the delicacy, the complexity and the ancientness of the things on display.

And that was the end of our trip. We sat outside the Forum for a bit, hoping the pigeons would fall into the water feature as they tried to drink (one did, but it was missing a foot) and discussed the stuff we'd seen and done, got the money squared away and made our plans for the next morning when we would head to our respective homes.

Looking up at the garden wall outside the Forum

I think what I liked most about this trip was how easy it was to fall back into being with someone from back home because honestly, that has been something that I have been worrying about. People change, and I can only hope that I haven't and won't become insufferably snooty even if I do drink wine and give little air kisses when saying hello and/or goodbye.

kiss kiss

Grand Tour Part VI: All That Stuff I Mentioned Earlier

One thing that I think I did not mention is that Sevilla is a wonderful city, at least in terms of atmosphere and things to see. It's a big city, but with a ton of history and flowering trees. It was founded by the Phoenicians and later conquered by the Romans, Goths, Moors and Castillians who all piled layers of architecture and culture and flavor on top of each other to create the lasagna that is Sevilla today (no, they do not eat lasagna there, but it was the best layered food I could think of). 

Since I don't really remember the order in which we saw things, I'm going to talk about them in the order that I listed in the previous post.

Looking up at the bell tower from the patio of orange trees

1. The Cathedral
I think I've described other cathedrals as huge, but this one tops them all. Inside, in a glass case you can see the proof for yourself--this is the largest cathedral in the world by area, Guinness World Record Certified. Which to me begs the question: Which is the largest by volume? Mass? (tee-hee) But apparently it is not the biggest church in the world. It could have been, but someone thought better of upstaging the Vatican and decided against it.

Besides being impressively big, the cathedral is also famous for originally being a mosque, but the conquerors decided, hey, this is a nice, big building, why tear it down? So instead they added it and consecrated the land. Did you know that to make a place Holy Land, all you need to do is bury a relic and have a priest bless the land?

A couple more neat things: the bell tower was originally a minaret, from where the Imam would call the worshipers to prayer. Now, the imam position was usually filled by an older man and that is a very tall tower. So what their solution was was to, instead of putting stairs in, put a ramp so that the elderly Imam could ride his donkey up and down five times a day rather than walk up god knows how many flights of stairs. There are 34 ramps that go up in a square spiral to the top, and then a small flight of stairs to the observation deck where you can see the city and the 20-something bells. Heather and I were sure to start heading back down before the bells struck the hour.

The last thing that deserves mentioning is the Patio de las naranjas. A relic from Muslim times, the lines you see on the ground are not just decorations, but an intricate watering system for the trees. There are five fountains, one at each corner and one in the middle, and if you lift a little gate on the fountains, you can let water run through the system of miniature canals that run through the patio.

2. The General Archive of the Indies
The archive is home to all (I'm not sure if this is all-all or just Spanish) documents pertaining to the new world between the 16th and 19th centuries. Journals, maps, trade agreements and a million other forgotten things. Today it's a research library and a really fricking huge one with (according to wikipedia) 9km of shelves, 43,000 volumes of works, and 80,000,000 pages. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of it is on display, but at least entrance is free. Heather and I ran into a bit of trouble with the security guards however, when the metal detector detected the silverware we had borrowed from the hostel for our picnic lunch. The security guard thought it was hilarious though, and we got our knives and forks back at the end. (no photos were allowed inside)

3. Maria Luisa Park
Just a big, beautiful European-style park, right close to the Plaza de España. We happened to stop by a modern art museum in the park as well, where we got to play with a one-way mirror and take ice into a large wooden tube. (modern art. Don't ask.)

4. Plaza de España
This plaza, along with a lot of other things in Sevilla, was built for the 1929 World's Fair, which never actually happened due to a minor economic crisis. It has since been used in such films as Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars: Episodes I & II and I could totally see why a someone would want to use it as a setting for some grand and foreign land.

This picture doesn't show it well, but along the foot of the building there are a series of alcoves where each province capital of Spain has a little fresco and map painted on tiles. Below is the one for Lugo where you can see the Moor surrendering to the Christians just outside the muralla with the cathedral (in blue) on the right and the plaza del campo (I think??) on the left.

5. Photo Exhibit
The photo exhibit was just a block away from the plaza, in one of the pavilions built for the World's Fair. It was a big domed affair, with all the curves and gaudiness of the time. I could totally imagine classy art deco folks dancing to modern jazzy music between the columns. 

The exhibit was a little odd and not really what I was expecting. The premise was photos of housing developments in crowded/extreme places and conditions, but the artist took some liberty and photoshoped in some ultramodern/futuristic/unrealistic/fantastic houses/boats/giant shell things.

But at least the building was pretty.

6. Bull Ring
We were in Sevilla, so I felt almost obligated to check out the bull ring. And while I disagree with the idea of bullfights, the museum and tour guide were very interesting. In the museum you can see a few paintings, some taxidermied bull heads, matador costumes and some very scary looking implements of destruction. The tour shows more than just the museum though and we also got to see the chapel where the bullfighters pray before the fights, where they keep the mules (or were they donkeys?) and the ring itself, which is the second biggest in Spain, after the one in Madrid. Some fun facts: there is a special door through which the matador can exit if he gets a perfect score, and that the prizes for getting points are the ears and tail of the dead bull.

7. Scenic Path
The path was not really a destination in and of itself, but one of the routes we could take to get from point A in the north of the city to point B in the south. It was quite scenic, except where a construction project blocked off part of the path and we had to walk around it. Pictured below is one of the bridges that cross the Guadalquivir.

This bridge was built by the same architect who did the Eiffel Tower

Tomorrow, Madrid!