Hiking in Madrid, Fiestas del Pilar and My Birthday

So I've already sent several of these pictures via Whatsapp or Instagram, but I thought I'd upload some pictures of my recent excursions to keep everyone in the loop.

Hiking in Navacerrada

The hiking group that I enjoyed so much last year finally started up a few weekends ago and did their first hike in the mountains just northwest of Madrid. This was actually the same trail that I visited on a field trip with my school last year, but we did not make it to the top (where all the views were) because the kids were too slow.

Anyway, this time it was fantastic - the hike was beautiful, and like last year, we met so many great people! My friend Jenny and roommate AJ came with me, but we split up so that we could talk to other people and make new friends. At the end, we wound up with a small group of new friends who we have now been meeting regularly for dinner, trying a new restaurant every week! Ever since I got back to Madrid in September, I'd been eager for these hikes to start back up, so I was very excited to finally get the opportunity to do one. Now I can't wait for the next!

Jenny and me being silly on the hike

We even did yoga at the top of the mountain!

Zaragoza

The second weekend in October, I went to Zaragoza, the fifth largest city in Spain, for their most popular festival - the Fiestas del Pilar. I was invited to this event by Susi and Jorge, a couple who Charlene, Anna and I met when we stayed at their place through Couch Surfing in Dublin last year! Susi is from Vienna, but Jorge is from Zaragoza, so after their program ended in Dublin, they both moved to Spain and are teaching French and German there now.

Me with Susi and Jorge in front of Zaragoza's main cathedral

A yummy tapas bar we went to

It was great to see Jorge and Susi again, as well as to experience the Fiestas! The festival honors an alleged appearance of the Virgin atop a pillar (thus the name Fiestas del Pilar, which is Spanish for pillar). The townspeople celebrate this event by kissing the pillar - which is preserved in the cathedral - and by leaving flowers before a statue of the virgin.

Left: people lined up to kiss the pillar; top right: people lined up in traditional costumes to leave flowers for the virgin; bottom right: the statue of the virgin and the structure on which the flowers were deposited

But, like all true Spanish festivals, the Fiestas del Pilar mostly involve a lot of drinking and partying. All day on Saturday the bars and restaurants in the city center were completely packed with people drinking, eating tapas and having a good time. Every night there was a crazy event in a large fairgrounds with huge tents containing soundsystems and stages, packed with people dancing.

Partying in the fiestas

My Birthday

And finally, I'm going to wrap up this post by talking about my birthday! As it fell on a Tuesday, I wasn't planning to do anything crazy, and my friend Jenny offered to host a dinner at her place. As it is currently fall, which also happens to be my favorite season, I decided that we should have fall-themed food. Everyone stuck to the theme surprisingly well - we had a pear and walnut salad, pumpkin and spinach risotto, sweet potato soup, homemade apple cider and even homemade carrot cake! I couldn't have asked for a nicer way to celebrate my birthday than by eating such delicious food with such wonderful friends!

London

So I'll probably never have time to actually write a proper blog post about my time in London, but I figured I'd go ahead and put up the pictures so that you can all see them!

This is the British Museum, full of all kinds of artifacts and art objects - the most famous being the Rosetta Stone.

TOP: The British Museum; BOTTOM LEFT: first Western chessboard; BOTTOM RIGHT: a replica of the Rosetta Stone, the original of which is in the museum but was covered by a swarm of people

This is the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, where many prisoners throughout the years have been held and executed, although I never wound up going inside. The red poppies outside are part of an art installation commemorating the centenary of the start of World War I. The idea is to ultimately have as many plastic poppies as British citizens who were killed during the war.

The Tower Bridge (TOP) and the Tower of London

The Borough Market in the city center, with all kinds of fresh and prepared food. I bought a delicious savory pie - but without the meat!

Borough Market

This is St. Paul's cathedral. We happened to arrive during an evensong performance, which the choir sings every night. Hearing such beautiful music in such an impressive space (it's the largest cathedral in Europe) was a truly moving experience.

St. Paul's cathedral

This is the Tate Modern Art Museum, which used to be a factory but was converted and is now super popular.

Tate Modern from the Millennium Bridge

This is a view of the Millennium Bridge from the Tate, looking across the Thames at St. Paul's cathedral on the other side.

Millennium Bridge with St. Paul's across the Thames

This is the replica of the original Globe Theater where Shakespeare worked and where most of his plays were performed. The original burned down many years ago, but this one was recreated as accurately as possible. The central part of the theater is open-air and the tickets are only 5£ to stand on the lawn, so we went to see a performance of Comedy of Errors. However, it started raining while we were there and so we just decided to leave in the middle of the play. You couldn't even hear part of the time because there were airplanes flying fairly regularly overhead.

Replica of Shakespeare's Globe

This is Trafalgar Square, obviously one of the most famous public squares in London. It commemorates a battle which the British naval fleet won against the Spanish at the southern port town of Trafalgar.

Trafalgar Square

We got to see the end part of the famous "changing of the guard" ceremony, which happens with full pomp and circumstance almost every day of the year.

Changing of the Guard

This is Buckingham Palace.

Buckingham Palace

This is the clock tower of the Parliament buildings. "Big Ben" is actually not the name of the tower, but rather of the bell which is inside.

Big Ben

This is Westminster Abbey, which I unfortunately did not have time to visit inside (there was just too much to see!).

Westminster Abbey

The London Eye, which I refused to pay for.

London Eye

We took a river boat to Greenwich, a part of London best known for being the point of reference for the Prime Meridian and the world's time zones, which are of course all measure against GMT - Greenwich Mean Time. I also found an amazing used book store with tons of classics and well-known works all for only 1£!

Hampton Court Palace

One of my favorite parts of the trip were the two day trips we took to small towns outside of London. One of these was to see Hampton Court Palace, a huge, sprawling Tudor Palace built by the infamous Henry VIII for one of his right-hand men. The palace, especially the royal chapel, was beautiful, as were the grounds. I loved the garden and strolling under the lane of trees in the golden light of sunset - it felt like my life was a BBC Miniseries or a Jane Austen novel.

Hampton Court Palace

I felt like my life was a BBC Miniseries walking through this lane of trees

The Thames River by Hampton Court

St. Albans

The other trip we took was to a small town called St. Albans, which is a little medieval town north of London in the county of Hertfordshire, with a lovely old cathedral and lots of quaint buildings on narrow streets. Throughout the trip, I was really enjoying the onset of fall, which is not exactly as evocative and demarcated in Madrid as in North Carolina. One of the best parts of the trip was having "cream tea," where you get your own pot of tea, accompanied by scones with clotted cream and jam, on the lovely porch of a teahouse surrounded by trees, in the midst of the crisp autumn air with the cathedral just behind us. It was the quintessence of picturesqueness and coziness, and satisfied my craving for the autumnal experience I'm not receiving in Madrid.

St. Albans cathedral

Quaint scenes in St. Albans