While the "Fab Five" was bathing in the Dead Sea and nomming on falafel, the Dynamic Duo was meandering around Madrid! That's right, I had a special visitor this week...Jennifer Abbey Zelnick!
Jen had a week-long October break from Haverford and decided to spend it with me in Spain. Wahooo! I met her at the airport on Saturday morning and took her back to my homestay, where she predictably crashed from red-eye-flight-induced exhaustion. Fortunately enough it was POURING out - literally the first rainy day in my 6+ weeks in Madrid - so we didn't have an action-packed day. After a very long siesta and lunch, we met up with a friend at the Reina Sofia museum to see Picasso's Guernica and other modern art works.
My friends Carmen and Miguel also had visitors, so that night we met up with the whole group to hang out. Luckily by then it had stopped raining, so we were able to walk around Tribunal and Gran Via without getting soaked. We met a few more friends at El Tigre, one of our favorite bars ever. It was love at first sight for Jen, especially after she ate the stuffed mushroom tapas. After some cidra (cider-yummm), we headed to Kapital, Madrid's famous behemoth nightclub. It's 7 floors, which in European floor-ology means that there are actually 8! Each floor has something different: pool tables, mojito bar, salsa, karaoke, balconies, a huge theater-type dance floor, and more that I can't remember at the moment. We had a great time dancing with friends and headed home at 4:30.
On Sunday we met some friends in Sol and finally went to the Mercado San Miguel, which I'd been meaning to visit for many weeks. It's Madrid's oldest and most venerable indoor market; think Chelsea Market + Eden Gourmet + Balducci's inside a giant greenhouse. Pretty much heaven on earth! It's also rather pricey, so we bought bocadillos (sandwiches) at a little cafe a few streets away and took them to Parque Retiro for an afternoon picnic.
A lot of things were closed on Monday because Spanish people do not work. Ever. In Spain, whenever there's a holiday on a Tuesday or Wednesday, people take the preceding days off as a "puente" or "bridge" between the weekend and the festival day. Because Tuesday Oct. 12th is a holiday, (celebrating Columbus' arrival in America and the subsequent conquest and subjugation of native populations, forced conversion to Catholicism, smallpox, etc.) Monday was the puente. Unfortunately we did not have a puente for our classes.
Tuesday was Armed Forces Day/Fiesta de Santa Pilar so we didn't have class. Jen and I went with some other friends to see the city-wide parade that marched right past my house. We saw a lot of soldiers and horses and also the Queen! It was very interesting because we got the opportunity to see how Madrileños feel about their government. Everyone was super excited (like, peeing in their pants excited) to see the royal family but booed and jeered at President Zapatero. There are quite a lot of anti-Zapatero sentiments. The King was very angry that the public took this day - which was supposed to be a solemn day to honor and respect the armed forces - to air their political grievances. Here's an article about it: King > Zapatero. Very interesting.
The rest of the day Tuesday and Wednesday Jen and I had fun walking around the city. Because she'd already been to Madrid, we didn't do a lot of "touristy stuff" and instead just spent our time eating and exploring the city. ¡Que divertido!
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