Day 7 - One week!

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Natasha and I had been planning on going to a city a little to the south of Madrid today, Aranjuez, but then when I asked Isabel about it she reminded me that she’d changed the schedule and we were planning on going to the big park, El Retiro, in the morning, not the afternoon. Neither set of plans happened.

We all woke up to rain and fog, not an ideal day for rowing on the lake in El Retiro Park or strolling in the palace gardens at Aranjuez. By the time we meet at Ministerio de Agricultura at 10am, it wasn’t raining anymore, but it was pretty cold and dreary. Isabel gave us the choice of going to the park or the Reina Sofia museum. I voted for the park because I thought it might clear up (the weather changes pretty fast here) and I didn’t feel like doing two art museums two days in a row. I was outvoted though, so we went to Reina Sofia. There were some late people to wait for, so some people looked around in the bookstore and some others and I went into the museum restaurant for a café. The café took a little longer than we thought, so we got in a little trouble with Isabel for leaving our waiting spot.

By the time we were in the museum the sky was already starting to lighten up, and it actually turned out to be a really nice day. However, the Reina Sofia was a really awesome museum too. We spent the whole morning and into the afternoon there looking at Picasso, Dali, Miro, Gris, and other famous Spanish contemporary artists. We spent probably a half hour looking at and talking about Guernica. Dan and I said after we were done, “check!” on our imaginary list of things we want to do in our lives. Isabel freed us, but Audra, she, and I went up to the abstract art floor. This was definitely very interesting, because while I don’t particularly like most abstract art, I always like looking at it… appreciating it in some way. There were a few that I liked, and I discovered the artist who invented the color Klein Blue (it’s fantastic!).

I got home in time for lunch and Teresa told us that we were going to go with her to Plaza Mayor later for a horse show. I thought it was at 4:00, which means 2 ½ hours until sunset and so I didn’t dress warmly enough. We left at 3:30 and got to the Plaza where it was sunny and bright, so I took a lot of pictures, to wait in line to get a seat at the show (it was free). It was then that I learned the show was at 5:30, and I knew I’d be really cold later… oops.

Waiting in line was fun, talking with Natasha and Teresa, taking funny pictures, watching Sue do odd (but unfortunately stereotypical Asian tourist) things. Near the time when they were going to let us in some chaos started because people were cutting in the line. Teresa got very adamant about it, and so did a lot of the other older people in line… Natasha and I never realized how cutthroat old people could be! There was a lot of pushing and yelling when they let us in, I almost got pushed over the gate thing, but Teresa got in to get us pretty good seats in the third row back and the chaos subsided. I personally thought it was pretty entertaining to see these people get so worked up about getting a seat at this horse show.

While we were waiting for the show to start, Natasha and I scoped out some cute guys who were standing on the balcony watching. We discovered that we have very similar taste in guys. We also realized that we were already freezing. The show started with lots of pomp and circumstance about the dancing horses. It was entertaining at points, what they were doing with the horses was definitely very difficult, but like Teresa said, it got really repetitive. They did some hopping and jumping which was something I’d never seen before, and I think I got some good footage of it. By the time the show ended, about 6:15, our toes were numb and we were ready to go home pronto. But Sue told Teresa that she wanted to go see the Palacio, so we had to walk over there first before going home. Natasha and I were feeling a little ill will toward Sue on that walk… it was windy, freezing, getting dark, and we were just in hoodies basically, plus we’ve both seen the Palacio a bunch. I hope we hid it.

When we got home, Teresa left to go on a walk with her friend and Sue went to use the internet, so Natasha and I watched TV for a while. She introduced me to The Guardian and we watched some Disney channel, which I hate and she loves, but it’s always a lot funnier watching it with her. I texted Jaimee some, and we decided we were going to go out at 10:30. Natasha stayed to sleep, so I went alone and thankfully didn’t get lost.

It wound up that it was just Jaimee and I who hung out, but it was great, she’s really cool. We went first to a little cerveceria to warm up and had an interesting red beverage. We think it was like a wine spritzer, but it came from the tap so who knows. Then we talked to Jennifer who told us about a bar they used to hang out at a lot last semester called O’Doul’s, so we went. It was basically an Irish sports bar, with a very diverse selection of people and music. I was telling her about how Europeans love to listen to American songs that are at least 10 or 15 years old, like Gangster’s Paradise… that song came on like 3 minutes later. We had some wine and beer, got hit on by an old guy and some cute Spaniards, and then moved on.

Just right down the street I’d seen a bar that looked cool, so we went in… it turns out it was the same bar, La Soberia, that I’d been to on Wednesday, I just didn’t realize it. So we went in and the same bartender was there. He recognized me and beckoned me to the back, hey chica your amigas are here. I was a little confused, I thought it might be the Dutch guys, but it was some girls I didn’t know. We sat down at a little table, he brought us some sangria, and we watched him take tequila shots with those girls next to us. Next thing we knew he was telling us to join in on the next shot, and we agreed. We moved over to the table, and so by the end of the night, the girls he thought were my friends actually were. We wound up taking 3 shots; ugh I feel sick thinking about it now, and drinking another sangria. Needless to say I was pretty drunk. The girls were from France and then they had some German friends who joined us later, but we talked in Spanish as the common second/third language. We took taxi home at around 3am. It was a fun night.