Finally! I’m sitting in my bed at our hotel in Madrid.
After one of the most stressful travel days ever, we’ve finally made it to Spain – together, and with all of our luggage. You’d think that it wouldn’t be that hard to get two people, two suitcases, two carry-on’s, and two purses from Philadelphia to Madrid – otherwise why would anyone travel?! Well, if that’s true, today was an exception to that rule.
First of all – our flight out of Philly was delayed an hour (which should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the Philadelphia airport!) So, after the 7 hour plane ride, Maggie and I found ourselves running through the London Heathrow airport because our flight got in late, taking a 10 minute bus ride to another terminal, going through security again, running to our gate, which had no plane outside of it, but rather a bus to take us on another 3 minute trip to our plane. After all that rushing, we sat on the runway at the London airport for close to 2 hours because – ready for this? - French air traffic control is on strike, meaning that no one (or very few people) can fly in their air space. So after we got rerouted to God-knows-what-path around France, we got into Madrid at 1:30 – 2 hours late. We missed the opportunity to travel to the hotel with our group travel director, so we had to take a taxi there. Thankfully we met some other people who are in ISA (our group) and we were able to get to the hotel with them. (On a good note, I heard Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” and Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” in the taxi ride, so that was fun!) So here’s hoping that a) today was not an indication of what the rest of the trip will be like and b) French air traffic control decides to stop being on strike by the time we need to fly in their air space again!
Once we got to the hotel, we showered and went on a bus tour of Madrid. It’s a really beautiful city with a lot of history and beautiful architecture. I want to post pictures, but they take a long time to load and I don't want to waste my 30 minutes of free internet!
We explored a little bit after the bus tour and found somewhere to eat with some girls in our program. Ordering at the restaurant took some effort – but we figured it out! The food was great! (As a side note, I couldn’t help and think that if my family was to travel here, or anywhere foreign for that matter, they would have a pretty hard time finding places to eat! You have to be adventurous with willing to try things that you’ve never imagined you’d eat before!)
Hopefully once I’m not so exhausted (I think I’ve had 2 hours sleep in the last 36 hours!) we can go explore it some more before we have to leave. Tomorrow morning we have tours at two famous museums with some free time to explore and get lunch, and then the whole evening to ourselves. Saturday we leave for Toledo, where we spend one night, and then on Sunday we take the long bus trip to our final destination – Barcelona! Can’t wait!
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Xoxo
Lauren
Friday, June 25
Today we started out with a tour of Madrid’s most famous museum, and one of the most famous art museums in Europe, El Museo del Prado. We had the choice of going with an English-speaking or Spanish-speaking tour guide, and I picked the English-speaking one. I’m glad I did, because I was able to understand what she was saying and learned a lot about 3 famous Spanish artists – Velazquez, el Greco, and Goya. I’d learned about these artists and their works in Spanish class in high school, but it was pretty cool to see the originals and learn even more about them! We couldn’t take any pictures in el Prado, but you can take my word for it- it was a really beautiful museum.
During our free time, a group of 8 of us walked around the city trying to find somewhere to get lunch and just explore. We ended up at a very American-ized restaurant called Vitamina. After lunch we walked around some more and then met the group for a trip to our second museum of the day, Reina Sofia. This is Madrid’s contemporary art museum, and apparently the only museum in Spain where you can see the works of Salvador Dali. We also saw works by Picasso (obviously) and Juan Miro. The tour guide explained something interesting about how cubism and surrealism came to be such prominent forms of art– since many people often comment that “it isn’t really art; anyone could do it.” These two types of art came about when photography and cinematography came onto the scene. All of sudden, a snapshot could be taken and could be a more accurate representation of a scene than any artist could ever paint. So, works of Picasso’s like this one: were a way to challenge the way we look at art and make us not only look at the painting, but make the painting evoke some sort of emotion from us.
Again, I wish I could post pictures...but at some point I'll have blog posts with pictures and I'll post them all on facebook!
We napped after the museums, and I think tonight we’ll go out somewhere to find a place to watch Spain in the world cup game tonight! Tomorrow we leave for Toledo at 9am!
Sorry for the extra long, 2 day post, but so much has happened in the last 2 days, I’ve got to have it all written down!
Xoxo,
Lauren
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