We arrived in Madrid on Friday afternoon. Our hostel had a great location. It was right on Gran Via and our room looked out onto the plaza and the street. Here is me and Justin and the plaza behind us.
That night, we went to a show in Madrid. Megafaun (from Durham, NC, and friends of Spencer) were playing in Madrid. I had been planning on going to Madrid for the show since I heard about it. And, fortunately it was on weekend, so I was able to. Here is a picture of the poster that advertised the show.
Here we (Justin, Nick, and I) are waiting for the show to start:
The name of the club was Moby Dick and it was all decorated very nautical-ish.
The show was absolutely fantastic. I had seen Megafaun a few times in NC before Madrid, so I know it was going to be great. I was able to talk to them some after the show and it was nice to see people from NC-- a little bit of home in Spain.
I have a video of part of one of their songs at the end of the post. The quality is pretty bad.
On Saturday, Justin was flying out and Nick and I stayed in Madrid to enjoy the day. The day started off with a weird occurence-- There was some type of filming going on right outside of our hostel in which hundreds of motorcycles were parading threw the plaza and out onto Gran Via.
Nick and I had kind of a slow start to the morning-- we had to change hostels and we went to a book shop, and a few more things. Before we knew it, it was lunch time and we went and ate at the lovely Parque de Buen Retiro. Its probably my favorite part of Madrid. I make a point to go there pretty much everytime I am in Madrid. It has been kinda sad and cold in Madrid recently until this trip, so I got to enjoy it the way it should be enjoyed. :)
Later that day we went to a Bull fight. It was my first one. I must say that the Bull ring stadium in Madrid is quite beautiful.
Here is some art outside of the Plaza de Toros:
I had been warned many times by Spaniards that I was not going to like bullfighting. So, I felt like I had mentally prepared alot. Even so, the first bull that was killed was still quite jarring. But after the first bull you get kinda de-sensitized. And I spent a lot of the time trying to figure out the rules, etc of the sport. Here is a video of the last part of the killing of one bull. I think this was the third bull of the Corrida. (Corrida is the name for the bullfight)
Here is a picture of the "team" of torreros (bullfighters). The 'lesser' toreros use pink capes, and the head honcho uses a red cape like you saw in the video above.
Here is an image of the bullfight in the plaza. I think it helps emit the true sense and "antiguedad" of the Spanish corridas.
And, here is me sitting in the stands:
Later that night we sought out a bar that had Flamenco music. We finally found a place that had this older man and guitarist just playing and singing their hearts out. I was pretty happy to see that everyone else there was Spanish, so it felt a little more authentic. As with Spanish music, everyone watching claps along and yells "ole" when the singer/guitarist/dancer does a good job. I have a video below of the singer and guitarist and also two girls who did some improv Sevillanas dancing. I am taking Sevillanas classes, so it was awesome to see some Sevillanas as it is done in the little Spanish bars. It was pretty thrilling for me.
Video of the concert: This recording is really bad. Some guy in front of me kept getting in my way, so i had to keep moving and I eventually gave up before the song was over. But I wanted to put it on here for my own memory.
This is a picture of Liam, Justin, myself, and Cheri in front of the Castle.
We kinda had to walk over rubble to get into the castle. It was quite an adventure. We felt like we had discovered some unknown ruin. Javier, who is in the background, told us that most people did not care about the castle because it is not well conserved. But it was for that reason that we all found it so intriguing.
