Week 1: Museo del Prado, Old Madrid, and Toledo

Settle in chicos and chicas, this is going to be a long one!

I've officially been in Madrid for about a week now and I have been ridiculously busy. For the past few days, I've been attending program orientations, a tour of the Prado, a walking tour of Old Madrid, a day trip to Toledo, and piso hunting. Needless to say, it's been a very eventful and exciting week!

1. Orientations: This week, I've had about 5 program orientations which covered topics like general information about Madrid, Academics, Compultense classes, and Housing.  Random WIPT program fact: There are 80 WIPTers total (30 for the year and 50 for this semester only) making us one of the largest study abroad programs at Universidad Compultense de Madrid (UCM)

Academics are split into two sections for my program: courses from Reunidas (all of these classes are with North American students taught in Spanish by Spanish professors--I will be taking three of these types of classes) and courses from Compultense (courses in Spanish with Spanish professors and students--I have to take two of these classes). I have registration on Thursday, so after next week I can let you know what classes I'm going to be taking!

Building where WIPT office and Orientation is

Housing is pretty stressful. Amy, the Student Services Cordinator, sat us down and took us through the piso (apartment) hunting process. I have to be moved out of my homestay  on February 14th, so over the next week I will be calling different pisos that have rooms (habitaciones) for rent until June. I'm looking in the Arguelles, Moncloa, Cuatro Caminos, and Chamberi areas of Madrid. Right now, I live near Embajadores and it takes a solid 40-45 minutes to get from Embajadores to UCM . The neighborhoods I'm looking at are about 15 mins away from UCM. I've posted a map of the city and where I am in comparison to the Universidad and a picture of my room in my homestay as well!

 

My room at my homestay

(Maps, Left: Madrid Metro, My stop is circled near the middle, UCM is circled under the key;

Maps, Righ: Madrid Map, My homestay is circled at the bottom, UCM is circled at the top)

2. Tour of Museo del Prado: On Thursday, I had my first solo metro ride because my roommate and I are part of different excursion groups. My mission? To get to the Museo del Prado. It took me two metro lines and about 20 minutes to get to my stop (Banco de Espana); after that things got a little hairy. I started out by leaving the metro station by going the complete wrong direction. I walked along Calle de Alcala from the metro stop (which was at the intersection of Calle de Alcala (the street that goes into Sol) and Paseo del Prado (the street that goes right past the Prado) all the way to Sol before I realized I was going the complete wrong direction. After a bit of backtracking, I made it onto Paseo del Prado and walked for a solid 15 minutes before asking for a passerby directions to the Prado, it turned out I was literally right next to it without even realizing it! 

When I finally met up with my group, I met our tour guide, Pablo. Before I start talking about everything I saw, just some general info about the Prado. It's HUGE. I'm pretty sure its like the 3rd largest art collection in the world or something like that. It focuses mainly on Spanish painters like El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. My tour was a general tour of the Prado so we saw a bit of everything. But I saw Las Meninas by Velazquez (one of my favorite paintings!), Goya's La maja desnuda, La maja vestida, Saturno devorando sus hijos, and tons more! I took a class last semester about the history and culture of Spain and we spent a lot of time talking about Velazquez and Goya so it was an amazing experience to be able to see those works in person. I was literally like 2 feet away from them. It was one of the coolest things I've every seen. We didn't take any pictures inside, but I have one that I took while we were waiting to go in.

 

Entrance to Museo del Prado

3. Walking Tour of Old Madrid: On Friday morning, we had another group excursion, this time it was a tour of Old Madrid. We met up at the metro stop Opera (which is right next to Teatro Real--The Royal Opera House) and spent two hours walking around the city before ending at Puerta del Sol which is the center of the city (and Spain!). We saw so many buildings but the highlights were Teatro Real, Palacio Real, Catedral de Nuestra Senora la Almudena, Plaza Mayor, and Kilometro Cero. All of them were so beautiful and the architecture was absolutely amazing. I've posted a picture of each below, but just something random I've noticed here--there are a lot of dogs. But all of them are extremely well behaved, most of the time their owners don't have them on a leash because the dogs just follow their owners.

Teatro Real

Plaza Mayor

Palacio Real

Catedral de Nuestra Senora de La Almudena

Kilometro Cero--this marks the center of Madrid and Spain

4. Day trip to Toledo: On Saturday, we left bright and early to go to Toledo. Toledo is only about an hour outside of Madrid. It is absolutely gorgeous. It was rainy and gross out on Saturday, but the trip was worth the rain and cold! Toledo sits high on a hill and is surrounded by the Tagus River. The streets are very narrow and winding, and made up of cobblestone (Sidenote: make sure you wear comfy shoes when you walk around Toledo--the cobblestones kill your feet!). My impression of Toledo was that it was quaint and filled with some amazing architecture. 

We started out at Puerta de Alfonso VI and walked through the city stopping at Mezquita de Cristo de la Cruz, Plaza Zocodover, Santa Iglesia Catedral Primada, Iglesia de Santo Tome, Sinegoga de El transito, and Monesteria de San Juan de los Reyes before ending at Puente de San Martin. My favorite places were Mezquita de Cristo de la Cruz, Plaza Zocodover, Santa Iglesia Catedral Primada and Monesteria de San Juan de los Reyes. The architecure in all of Toledo is a mix of Roman and Moor so there are a lot of arches and a mixture of brick and stone on the buildings. 

Some interesting things about the sights: Mezquita de Cristo de la Cruz was initially mosque before an addition was put on it to convert it into a Christian church. Plaza Zocodover is a large plaza with a ton of different shops and cafes. Toledo is well-known for Don Quijote and marzapan so there were a lot of stores that sold swords (both real and wooden) and cafes that sold tons of different types of marzapan (I tried it, but I'm not a big fan). Santa Iglesia Catedral Primada was...I don't even know how to describe it. It was amazing. There were so many little details everywhere. It's absolutely massive with a ton of statues and stained glass. The entire time I was there all I could think about was how people were able to create all of the tiniest details without the help of the technology that we can use today. I was extremely impressed by it. Monesteria de San Juan de los Reyes was quite big as well, not as big as the Catedral, but pretty big. It had a court yard with orange trees and in the main sanctuary there were tons of details that represented los Reyes Catolicos (Fernando II and Isabel I). Our tour guide did an amazing job explaining everything to us, unfortunately my camera died before I could take pictures of the Monesteria. 

Also in Toledo, we were able to see a ton of works by Greco, some were in the Catedral. They were as amazing as everything else.

Toledo

Ceiling in Mezquita de Cristo de la Luz

Front of the Catedral

Greco (inside Catedral)

As Week 1 comes to a close, I've got just a few things I've noticed. First, my Spanish is getting better! I'm a lot less self-conscious about speaking Spanish. My friends and I are pretty consistently  switching back and forth between Spanish and English (mainly trying to use English when we don't know a word or sentence or something like that) which is good because it forces me to practice. Everything with my senora is going well, she is an amazing cook. She made tortilla espanola (egg and potato omelette) for us this week which was probably one of the best things I've ever had. She also made this really yummy pumpkin soup. Second, the food in general here is 20x better than in the US. The produce is extremely fresh, I've had a lot of fish since getting here (including either swordfish or soul?fish, I couldn't understand the waiter and paella de mariscos [shellfish paella]). Also, Dad--are you ready for this?--I had olives with dinner last night and I actually liked them AND I've been eating a lot of tomatoes too! Oh, and pineapple! Everything is just so good and fresh that it tastes completely different here than they are in the US. Third, Madrid is ridiculously hilly. I'm so used to Chicago and how flat it is that I wasn't really prepared for it! Not to mention madrilenos (people from Madrid) walk everywhere! My legs are getting a little sore from the constant walking up hills in the middle of the city!

I miss everyone lots and lots, but I'm having so much fun here. I'd forgot how much I love learning about the history and architecture of different places! My friends and I have already started planning out where we want to go next in Spain (maybe Barcelona or Grenada?)!

Until next time!
<3 Kelsey