Day 6

Friday, January 30, 2009

I had a free morning, so I slept in until 10:30 – 12 hours of sleep.
Natasha and I had planned to do some sightseeing when she got back around 1pm, so I decided to do some errands. I went to the locutorio around the corner to use the internet, composed an email to the fam… and just as I was saying goodbye I went to hit Delete and hit another button that turned off the computer. I lost the whole email and a good half hour of writing, which was annoying so I didn’t recompose the email then… I moved on to facebook instead.I had planned on going to El Corte Ingles, which is a big department store kind of place here, but it was 12:30 by the time I was done with the internet.
I decided to just explore the main street by the apt, Paseo de Delicias. I walked until I reached Plaza Beata Maria Ana de Jesus, where I was lucky enough to find an Herbolario. Inside I inquired about some vitamins, but they were wicked expensive; however, the store did have tofu and tofu “burgers” so I bought some to give to Teresa to cook for me. Then a little bit later, as I was walking back on the opposite side of the street I encountered a beauty supplies store. I bought some hairspray, mousse, and intensive healing hand cream because ever since I went to Philadelphia my hands have been dying from the cold. I would have bought shampoo/conditioner, but they didn’t have any au natural products – they told me to inquire at a farmacia.

Natasha and I ate lunch and then left to visit San Sebastian El Grande and La Almudena. We enjoyed the sunshine and saw lots of PDA and graffiti near San Sebastian, which was funny at a holy place. San Sebastian was closed, but we went inside La Almudena and took lots of pictures. I went here last summer, but didn’t really go inside since there was a mass going on.

Then we walked over to Sol and ventured into H&M, where I bought a purple bag that I’m going to use as my backpack (my laptop fits!) and a lint roller for my black pea coat. I think I’m definitely going to have to go back to buy some clothes to go out in, I don’t think I have enough “cute/nice” clothes.

Then we went back to the apt, where I quickly grabbed plane ticket money for Isabel and headed out to meet the group for an outing to Museo Sorolla. I was like 10 minutes late, so they’d already left, but I looked on the map on got on the metro. I called Isabel and she told me where to meet them, when I got off somehow they were just leaving the metro too, so it worked out perfectly. Isabel calls me una chica despabilada, which basically means “sharp” so I’m glad she likes me and takes my solutions when I’m late as cleverness.

The museum was really awesome. This is definitely a museum that I would recommend people visit – it has really gorgeous gardens too. It’s situated in the house Sorolla built in the Mediterranean style here in Madrid in the early 1900s, so it’s small enough to enjoy and not get tired of looking at paintings. His art is for the most part impressionism, but with his own very unique style, which focuses on lighting not the actual subject. I took a lot of pictures (one is my desktop background now) and almost got in trouble because the one guard thought that the “in focus” light on my camera was a flash… I have a funny picture of her yelling at me.

After the museo, we took the metro to Sol where we went to a Tapas restaurant. The ambience was really fun and authentic, but unfortunately the authentic Spanish tapas consist mainly of meat. Isabel ordered me a salad so that my dinner wouldn’t consist of potatoes in different forms (French fries, patatas bravas, tortilla de patata). I had a really good time at dinner talking with Dan, Liz, and Chris. Later we (finally) exchanged numbers because we wanted to go out… but we made a bad decision of returning home. None of us wound up going out because we all fell asleep… Natasha and I slept through our alarms and I left my light on. Teresa turned it off at like 3am.