Madrid sola

Mar 22
Today i explored Madrid by myself while Eleanor was in class. Eleanor and I decided to get a good night’s sleep, so we didn’t end up going out. I dropped Eleanor off at school, we got coffee at the school snack bar, it was super strong. My first stop of the day was Centro De Arte Reina Sofia; Madrid's contemporary art museum. It was pretty awesome. I love modern art. The most famous piece there, and the main reason most people visit, is Picasso’s “Guernica”. There was room after room dedicated to only showing Picasso’s work. There was also a whole room full of Dali that I was really excited about because he is one of my favorite artists. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the signs to the temporary exhibits. This month’s exhibit was all Chuck Close, which was also really exciting because he is also another artist’s whose work I really respect and enjoy. There were also some Calder sculptures, which I thought was fun. At around 2 I got really hungry so I left the museum in search of food. I was too nervous to sit down and try to order something because I wasn’t sure how it was done. If I was supposed to order at the bar, and then sit, or sit and someone would come to me… and it was all made worse by the fact that I don’t speak Spanish. So I found a little grocery store type thing and got some snacky food, and ate it sitting outside the Reine Sofia. I went back in and wandered around for a while more, and explored the third and fourth floors. The third floor was just a bunch of weird TV related art. It was all very strange. The floor itself was called “movement and sound” so I expected moving sculptures and cool stuff like that, but it was tons of weird videos that people have made all being played at once, and recordings of performance art pieces. The fourth floor was all that weird modern art that is just a chunk of rock with a hole cut in it, or a video of a deer and a wolf in the same room. It was even a little too weird and too modern for me. After I was done with the museum I went and walked through this huge park called Parque del Buen Retiro. It used to be the grounds for a palace. It was really cool. They had this cool crystal palace, and a man made lake with a monument. One of my favorite things was this statue called El Angel Caido (The Fallen Angel). Which is actually a statue of the devil, and as Eleanor told me later, the only public art installation of Satan. I had to meet Eleanor at 630, so when I was done with the park, I started to make my way back to her apartment. We met up, hung out in the apartment for a while, and then went to her neighborhood bar “The Golden Cock”, for sangria, and traditional Spanish tapas. The sangria was really good. The kind we were drinking had Fanta Limon in it, apparently every place has its own recipe for sangria. For tapas we got “tortilla” and “Chorizo.” Tortilla is scrambled eggs mixed with thinly sliced potatoes, and onions. Chorizo is a kind of spicy sausage that was served with French fries on top. It was all very good. It seemed really greasy, but Eleanor reminded me that most everything you think is greasy, is actually cooked in olive oil, so its not, but it was still kind of a gut bomb. We ended up hanging out with her friends till about midnight, and then going home, not out which was fine. Tomorrow I have to entertain myself again while Eleanor is in class.

Alice