A Capital Day in the Capital

Yesterday was a long and quite amazing day! Our Civilization and Culture class (well, all the girls from it, anyway) took a day trip to Madrid to see some of the sites that are pertinent to our class. I wasn’t sure at first whether it would be worth riding 10 hours on a bus in one day just to spend a few hours in Madrid, but as I was happy to discover, it definitely was!

Before stopping at the first place on the docket, we drove around the city a bit. What a great place! It rivals Barcelona for beauty, in my opinion – what little I’ve seen of it, anyway. After my longer trip there this weekend, I’ll be able to give you a more definitive answer. Anyway, the first stop was the Senado, which is the building in which Spain’s senate meets to do their thing. This ended up being my favorite of the places we went to. I wasn’t really sure what to expect here, but I was very pleasantly surprised with big-as-life paintings, some very Spanish-y looking portraits, and some cool statues; some of the most expressive I’ve seen so far here. And of course, all the furnishings were very posh. My favorite part was the little library inside – it was full of beautiful old books, and you all know how obsessed I am with that sort of thing. And the architecture was so neat; two floors, with all the books behind metal doors with big glass panels. I’m having a hard time explaining it…but believe me, it was cool. And when we left the Senado, the tour guide gave us all a gift! We each got a wooden box that had a pretty journal and a little bag with a pencil, eraser, and sharpener inside! I was excited.

After the Senado, it was time for a lunch break. We headed to our next stop, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, and just chilled in the front yard and enjoyed the sun. I never saw the temperature, but it felt close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit! Absolutely wonderful. We had the very agreeable problem of being too warm! Kristen M. and I even bought some delicious Haagen-Dasz ice cream, feeling very celebratory about the summery-ness of the day.

Once we’d had enough calories to spur us onward, we went into the Biblioteca. This place is essentially the equivalent to our Library of Congress in the States. It was pretty interesting, though not really what I was expecting. It was a lot more ordinary-looking than I thought it would be. And we actually didn’t even really see that many books, though we did get to see a display of some really cool facsimiles. There was a tiny book full of illuminations and miniatures, which I of course loved, as any of you who know about my English project last semester can very well guess. There were even two of Leonardo Da Vinci’s design books, which sported his famous backwards handwriting! And beyond these, it was nice to enjoy the quietness of the library (it’s a rare moment when I find myself in complete silence in Spain) to see all the old-fashioned rooms and such. We took a look at their old card-catalog system…that brought me back a few years, since I haven’t used one of those since about the third grade. And it made me think about how weird it is that I’m old enough to remember when libraries didn’t use an internet cataloguing system.

When our tour of the Biblioteca was through, we were starting to get rather fatigued, but we pressed on. Our last stop was a quick trip to the Museo de Antropología. We only had about an hour or so to spend here, since our library tour had run long (our tour guide was good, but she seemed to really enjoy talking…that’s okay, though, because we learned a lot). We were kind of glad that it wasn’t any longer, though; there wasn’t a ton to see there. What was there was fascinating, though! We saw the Dama de Elche, a statue which is apparently the most famous/recognizable piece of Iberian art. All that remains of it is the head and shoulders, though the experts think that it was originally a full-body statue. There were lots of other cool things in the museum, like some Grecian urns (which of course made me think of Keats), some incredibly detailed ivory sculptures – my favorite was the one of God kicking all the fallen angels down to hell…so intricate and intriguing – lots of old coins, a few statues, and other things of that sort. It was nice that there wasn’t a ton there, because we had the time to really look at things, which one doesn’t always get in big museums because one feels as though it’s necessary to see as much as possible in the little time there is, which ends up as a focus on quantity, not quality. That’s all right in its own way, but it’s nice to be able to take the time to really ponder what’s going on in a piece of art.

After the museum, it was time to head home. We took one last turn around the city to see a few more places of interest. Lauren and Kristen M. are so excited to go back this weekend and see some of those places up close and personal! They look astounding. We didn’t spend too long with this, though, since we were more than ready to get back to Pamplona to rest. The bus ride was rather long, but not too boring. We watched our second movie of the day (the first had been a cute Spanish chick flick called Mia Sarah…might have to look for that one on the web or something), which was a fun little Audrey Hepburn flick by the name of Sabrina. Besides the fact that the movie was really cute with lots of funny moments (many of which were due to over-acting), it was the first movie I’ve seen in English since before I left for Spain! That was exciting. It was nice to not have to strain to understand it the whole time. Don’t get me wrong, watching Spanish TV/movies is probably my favorite way to practice understanding the language, but it’s nice to have a break.

And now I’m off to try to remember what productivity is! We have tomorrow off from school, but there’s a lot to do today before our weekend trip to Madrid, Segovia, and Toledo. But more about that later. I’m so excited to see yet more wonderful Spanish cities!