Making Madrid Mine

The weekend after Salamanca, a girl named Fiona came to stay with me for the weekend. She is from Canada but is teaching English in the north of France along with my friend Charlene, which is how we got in touch with each other. She was planning to come to Spain anyway for a short volunteering program and was going to be passing through Madrid on her way to a smaller town, so it was a fortunate coincidence that she happened to mention this to Charlene and that I was able to host her during her first two days here!

Not the greatest picture, but the only one we got of both of us!

We hit it off pretty well and I had a great time hanging out with her and showing her around the city. Her time here was a great chance for me to visit all of the touristy places in Madrid that I see every day but usually never stop to appreciate. Her arrival also coincided with the advent of better weather, which obviously makes everything seem more delightful and beautiful. Here are a few pictures of some of the things that I've been re-appreciating lately.

Centro

Barrio de las Letras, Sol & the Palace

The Metropolis Building

Plaza Santa Ana

A random but beautiful building in my neighborhood

Puerta del Sol on a particularly lovely day

Plaza Santa Ana in the daytime

The Royal Palace

All of the places above are less than a ten minute walk from my apartment! The other night I was walking to meet my friends at a bar for drinks and took two photos on Instagram with my phone because the scenery was so beautiful - it's these great moments when you realize, "Dang, I'm living in the middle of Europe and just stepping out the door is a chance to see beautiful and interesting things!" (A bit corny, I know, but it's true!)

So although my posts are usually about my travels outside of Madrid, I decided to write this blog post to fill you in not only on my adventures in other parts of Europe but to also share some pictures of all of the amazing things to do right here in the city where I live! Even though I've already explored a lot, there are still so many museums, restaurants, bars, parks, neighborhoods, cultural centers, monuments, and so much more waiting to be discovered.

To begin with, here are some pictures of two of my favorite things...food and drinks!

Food & Drink

A famous bar that sells shots in chocolate shot glasses

A rainy day spent reading in a cozy book store

Pizza night with Natalie and Victoria

I found a bar with Belgian beer in Madrid!

Another example is Moncloa, a neighborhood at the northwestern edge of the city center with an enormous, lovely green park, a high concentration of museums, some really pretty buildings and arches, and amazing views of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains in the distance (unfortunately you can't really see them so well in these pictures). I had never spent much time there, but I finally made it out to the Museum of the Americas, a very interesting museum with lots of fantastic Latin American art, including a lot of really famous pieces that we talked about in the art history class I took in Quito! While I was there, I took the opportunity to explore the area and photograph some of its interesting sights.

Moncloa

Air Force Academy

Arco de la Victoria (Victory Arch)

Museo de América (Museum of the Americas)

As another example, one day I took the metro to a random stop and stumbled upon one of Madrid's most iconic architectural sights - The Gate of Europe (see picture below) - along with a small cultural center that had a diminutive but interesting exhibit on Degas. That center also advertised classical music concerts once a month, which I am still hoping to attend at some point!

The Gate of Europe

Here are two other things I more or less stumbled upon while making my way through the city:

Plaza de Toros, Madrid's bullfighting ring

An overpass of a big highway near my school

As the weather has been in the sixties for the past couple of weeks, I've also made a number of trips to the river, where there is yet another nice park with lots of places to sit and read, ride bikes, go for a jog, etc. I often forget that Madrid has a river, because, unlike many other rivers of Europe, it does not flow through the heart of the city and is in a kind of out-of-the-way place. However, it is a very nice area - the wide open spaces and the fact that it's a bit of a hike from my house make it a great place to "escape" - you feel like you've left the city, but you're really only a 15-minute train ride from home!

The Manzanares River

Madrid Río, a park by the river

And finally, here are two pictures of amazing sunsets I've seen to finish off this blog post!

 

Salamanca

The weekend of Valentine's day, we got a big group together and went on a trip to Salamanca, a small city about two and a half hours from Madrid with a lot of history and a hopping nightlife. The night before we left, which was the actual day of St. Valentine, we met up at our friend Victoria's place and made delicious burritos for dinner!

Our delicious Valentine's Day burritos!

Originally, there were only going to be four of us going to Salamanca, but then another friend had her plans change at the last minute and wound up joining, along with one of her friends as well! In total, we were six, but it all worked out perfectly because we got a private room at the hostel (which was only 10€ a night since we were there in the super off season) and had a ton of fun being all together! It was the first time I'd traveled with such a big group, but it obviously makes everything crazier, yet more exciting.

Our Salamanca group: me, Natalie, Victoria, Amanda, Kamil and Kristi

The University

The city center of Salamanca has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site thanks to the high concentration of old and well-preserved buildings it contains. It is most famous for being home to one of the oldest universities in Europe, which was founded in 1134. The university continues to function today, and while we were unfortunately unable to take a tour of any of the beautiful buildings, we did get to experience the college-town party scene when we went out Saturday night!

Two old buildings that form part of the university 

Plaza Mayor

Salamanca is also famous for having one of the largest and (although this is obviously unquantifiable) most beautiful main squares in all of Spain. As in Madrid, the rest of Spain, and most of Europe in general, the central plaza is not just a tourist attraction but is truly a social "center" for the inhabitants of the city. The first floor of the plaza is full of shops and restaurants, while the upper stories are occupied by apartments. On Sunday, when it was in the mid-sixties and perfectly sunny, the square was full of people who had brought food or coffee and sat down on the ground to enjoy the weather. At night time, it is lit up to beautiful effect!

Me and Victoria in the Plaza Mayor

Enjoying a Sunday frozen yogurt in the Plaza

The Plaza Mayor at night

The Cathedral

Like any good European city, Salamanca has many impressive old churches. In addition to the Plaza Mayor and the university, it is also home to not one, but two quite famous cathedrals. Un-creatively named the "Old Cathedral" and the "New Cathedral" (Catedral vieja y catedral nueva), they are built right next to each other, appearing as though they were one giant building. 

Just one side of the massive "double-cathedral" complex

The interior of the Old Cathedral was very impressive, as some of the wall paintings date back to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries! There were all kinds of curiosities inside - tombs, an extremely ornate main altar, peculiar sculptures, and some very interesting old organs (this is what the green triangular thing in the top right picture below is).

Interior of the Old Cathedral

The New Cathedral was obviously cool too, but not much different than every other cathedral we've already visited.

Interior of the New Cathedral

You could also climb up the towers to get great views of the cathedral's roofs, buttresses and spires, as well as of the city.

Views from the top of the cathedral

The façades of the cathedral are also famous, as each and every inch is bursting with intricately-carved sculptures. On one of the façades, there are an astronaut and a frog hidden amongst all of the ornate decoration. Legend has it that if you can locate the frog, you will find your true love immediately afterwards! We found the astronaut, which was added as a kind of joke by workers doing restoration during the nineteenth century, but not the frog! So much for finding true love!

Just one doorway on one of the façades of the cathedral. You can imagine how hard it was to find the tiny frog and astronaut!

In spite of not finding true love, it was all in all a wonderful trip! Although we only stayed for one night, the two days we spent there were packed with fun and fascinating things. It always makes for a great trip when you can find not only old, beautiful art and architecture but also modern-day excitement and fun. And, of course, trips are always better when shared with good friends!

Lyon

At the end of January, Amanda, Natalie and I went on our second trip outside of Spain to Lyon, France. As with Belgium, we had bought the tickets simply because they were incredibly cheap, and while I didn't love Lyon as much as I had enjoyed Belgium, it was still a nice trip. Although it is not necessarily somewhere you've probably heard a lot about, it is the third largest city in France after Paris and Marseille, and the historic center is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Views from the apartment where we Couch Surfed

Lyon is built around two rivers and two large hills. The hill you can see in the topmost picture (above), with the cathedral and what looks like a replica in miniature of the Eiffel Tower (it's actually a TV broadcasting tower) is called Fourvière. The apartment where we stayed was on another hill called Croix-Rousse. The two rivers are the Rhône and the Saône. In the far distance in the bottom picture (^ also above ^), you can see the Alps!

Because it is so hilly, there are several systems of long, steep stairs and narrow cobblestone streets snaking their way between the old stucco buildings.

There is also a system of "secret passageways" (okay, they are not actually a secret, but they seem mysterious to me) that allow you to pass through residential buildings without having to go out of your way. Most of these routes, called traboules in French, were created for workers in silk factories, as silk was Lyon's biggest economic driver in the nineteenth century. Some of the factories have now been turned into apartments, and apparently many of them are located in the somewhat Bohemian neighborhood where we were staying.

Patios in two of the traboules we explored in the city center

You could also take a funny little tram called the "Funicular," or Funiculaire in French, up the Fourvière hill to see the cathedral at the top. We were excited by its old-timeyness and by the possibility of great views, but upon exiting the station it promptly entered a dark, creepy tunnel and did not emerge until we arrived at the top of the hill! Still, it was a fun thing to do, and apparently the tram has been there since 1862!

The cathedral on top of the hill, more formally called Basilica of Nôtre-Dame de Fourvière, is actually not that old, having been constructed in the late 19th century, but it was nevertheless beautiful and impressive.

The best part of ascending the hill, however, was the amazing views it afforded of the city.

On the other side of the same hill are the remains of the Roman settlement Lugdunum, which at one point was the second largest urban center in the empire outside of Rome! The largest part of what remains is the Roman theater, the coolest part of which is that it is so carefully constructed acoustically that a person standing on the stage doesn't even have to raise her voice to be heard perfectly, even in the last rows. We were able to verify this when another tourist started talking in the center and we could hear her perfectly from high up in the seats.

Being minstrelsy in the Roman theater

Among other highlights of Lyon were a very lovely fine arts museum, an interesting history museum, several other old cathedrals, and lots of really delicious food! Lyon is apparently the gastronomic capital of France, and while we refrained from forking out tons of money to eat really fancy French food, we did have some very delicious crêpes, along with some other not-so-traditional things like pizzas and falafel wraps.

Beautiful! Beer! Belgium!

During our penultimate weekend in Madrid before Christmas, Natalie and I took a short trip to Belgium. We really only bought the tickets because they were very cheap and we wanted to travel somewhere outside of Spain before heading home to the States for the holidays. But as is often the case, the trips where you have the least expectations turn out to be the greatest! Not only did we get to meet up with Charlene, who drove up from France with a friend, but Belgium was beautiful, quaint, charming, and full of amazingly delicious food and beer!

The church of St. Catherine in Brussels

Christmas

As in Madrid, Christmas decorations were on display throughout Brussels. They also had an enormous Christmas market with hot spiced wine, sweets, and all kinds of trinkets and doodads. Here are just a few pictures!

The Food & Drink

To be honest, we spent the majority of our time not in museums or out and about seeing the city, but in different bars and restaurants! The food - and especially the beer - in Belgium was definitely my favorite part. There was one beer (de Garre, in a picture below) that we tried during our trip to Bruges that was only brewed and sold in the building where we bought it! 

We also enjoyed the famed - if overpriced - Belgian waffles and fries. French fries, of course, are originally from Belgium, even though we call them "French" in English.

The Sights

The two most famous things to see in Brussels are the central square, or Grande Place in French, and an awkward statue of a little boy peeing! I have no clue why this second one exists, but it is extremely popular, even though it is actually quite small. The city even dresses him up in different costumes at different times of the year.

Bruges

After a day and a half in Brussels, we felt like we had seen the majority of the things there were to see. So, we decided somewhat last-minute to take a day trip to Bruges, a small town about an hour's train ride from the capital. Although it is small and sleepy now - aside from the thousands of tourists - in the 15th and 16th centuries it was a bustling city, as its location near the ocean and on a river made it an important city for trade. It is often called the Venice of Northern Europe, as many lovely canals run alongside its narrow cobblestone streets.

 It seriously seemed like something out of a fairy tale - enchanted and enchanting! All of the buildings were quaint, picturesque and charming. Combined with all of the delicious food and fun we had had in Brussels, Bruges was the icing on top of the cake for this already wonderful trip!