Thursday was the festival of Santa Faz, celebrating a saint in the small town of San Juan, which is one of the small towns surrounding Alicante that are basically part of Alicante.
Anyways, I decided to take advantage of having a 4-day weekend. I'd been talking with several other exchange friends that I'd gotten close to on the Italy trip about traveling to Madrid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands, and Evan and I figured out Santa Faz would be a great weekend for me to go up to Madrid and stay with him.
Thursday, I went up to Madrid by train and Evan met me at the station. Since I'd packed light, we decided to walk around the area, which luckily the train station is fairly centrally placed in relation to many sights in Madrid. We went to Plaza de Cibeles, Puerta de Alcala, Retiro Park and the lagoon there, and finally we went into the Prado Museum, taking advantage of the free entry after 6PM. I saw "La Rendición de Breda" and "Las Meninas" by Velazquez and "El 3 de Mayo" by Goya among other works. After the Prado, we headed to Evan's house to get me settled in.
The lagoon in Retiro Park.Friday, we woke up and headed back to the train station to catch the train to Toledo. Ever since I'd gotten to Spain, Toledo has been on my list of destinations, and since it's 30 minutes from Madrid by train, I made sure to get there while I could.
We spent the morning wandering around Toledo, stopping at various sites on the map from an Info booth. Toledo is a small, old town, but it is very well-preserved. We also stopped along at a lot of the stores we saw, as I was on the hunt for the perfect sword. Between many of my hobbies and interests (fencing, history, etc.), ever since I've known I was going to Spain, I knew I wanted to buy a sword from Toledo, because it would be the perfect souvenir for me. And in the end, I found one!
Toledo.
My sword. Saturday, we spent hitting some more sites, such as the Plaza de España, Plaza de Castilla, and Puerta del Sol.
Plaza de Castilla.Saturday afternoon, we met up with Ariel, another (non-Rotary) exchange student that lives near Evan and we went to a "recorte de toros," which isn't the same as a "corrida de toros." The corridas are the typical bullfights, like what everyone thinks of, but the recortes are like junior/training bullfights. All the recortadores (the people) do is dodge the bull. It was pretty amazing. One of them kept jumping over the bull and another was so close when he dodged that the bull ripped his pants (but he didn't get hurt, just his pants)!!!
Sunday, we met up with Stephen, another Rotary exchange student in Madrid at El Rastro, the biggest, most well-known street market in Madrid. After wandering around and getting lost in the surprising vastness of the market, we stopped off at the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and the cathedral and then headed to Plaza Mayor, two sites I'd gotten to see briefly the only other time I'd been in Madrid. We stopped at a kebab (a Turkish restaurant) for lunch and then it was time to go. We headed back to Evan's house, I collected my things and thanked him for having me and it was time to head to the train station and go home to Alicante.
Currently listening to:
Song: Next Year
Artist: Foo Fighters
Album: There Is Nothing Left To Lose
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2 comments:
You said the rooftops were seen from Alcazar. Any photos of that?
You can see the Alcazar in some of the other photos from Toledo on Flickr. It's the big square building with a pointed tower on each corner.
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