With all the chaos of moving in and getting situated (somewhat) behind me, I was able to enjoy myself this weekend with a lot of fun times in the city.
To start things off on Saturday night was La noche en blanco, a festival here where the city stays up all night with museums and other buildings open. It ended up being an extremely fun night, starting off with an African music concert/singer in Lavapies, the more immigrant part of the city. The lady who sang was really good and sang in both English and Spanish. There, I met up with some other Fulbrighters and we headed to Plaza de España where there was a rap battle tournament. This place was packed! People were shoulder to shoulder in the plaza trying to see the stage. We couldn't see, but we could hear. Unfortunately, none of us spoke Spanish well enough to understand rappers who were a) talking really fast and b) were using a lot of slang. While it sounded cool, we had no idea what it meant. So we left there and made our way down the busiest street in Madrid that night, where people were everywhere and going crazy. It was fun to walk through, but we kept on going and headed to the Reina Sofia, a contemporary art museum.
The Reina Sofia was nice, but the art was a little too modern for me. I'm not a huge fan of when people just splash paint on canvas and call it art. Or one was just a bookshelf. I mean, that guy could have just bought that at Ikea. We did get to see Guernica, Picasso's most famous painting. It was huge, and awesome to see in person.
Picasso's Guernica in the Reina Sofia Museum
We met up with some more Fulbrighters there, but our group was so big that we really couldn't get much done. So, I broke up from the group and headed by myself up to Santiago Bernabeu stadium where Real Madrid plays to take a tour. While the line was really long, I was super excited about seeing the stadium and did not care that I had to wait for 45 minutes. And Miguel met up with me about 20 minutes into waiting and went in with me.
The stadium was so cool to see! We got to walk around the inside bottom level, then onto the sidelines. We also got to sit in the player's seats on the sidelines, which were really comfortable! Then they took us up into the trophy room to see all of the Real Madrid trophies, which were a lot! The tour overall was really exciting, and makes me want to go see a Real Madrid game at some point while I'm here. But that's a little more expensive of an adventure, so it will have to wait for another day.
Miguel and I sitting in the player seats on the sidelines at the Real Madrid stadium.
Sunday was a very relaxing day. I woke up at about 11, went for a run, then relaxed until the afternoon. On my run through Retiro Park, I noticed that the streets were closing right outside the park. Having watched the news here, I remembered that it was for the Vuelta a España. The Vuelta is a bike race, a lot like the Tour de France but not as well-known, across the country of Spain. Sunday was the last day, with the finish in downtown Madrid.
Being the sports junkie I am, of course I went downtown at 4 (about an hour early) to meet some other Fulbrighters and get a good spot to watch the finish. We got a great spot to see, and were able to see the cyclists a lot of times because they went through 5 laps by us (so, we saw them 10 times!). I got some great pictures, cheered them on, and wondered how many more times they were coming through. The guy who ended up winning was Alejandro Valverde, a Spaniard. We stayed until the very end to see the awards ceremony, then headed home for a relaxing night.
Lap #... who knows. It was awesome to watch them ride by.
The awards ceremony, with Valverde holding up his winning trophy.
As for this week, there probably won't be much going on. I don't start class until Monday at 11:20 am, so until then I'm going to try to get out and see some more of the city. Then this weekend, it's off to San Sebastian!
Hasta luego!
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