y Madrid

I just returned from a trip to Madrid and Paris. All of the students from AIFS (my program) went on an organized three day trip to Madrid. The first day we stopped in Toledo on the way. I was pretty tired to be honest, so a lot of the trip is a blur. I do remember that we took a walking tour of several parts of the city, including one of the most well known cathedrals which takes a whole day just to see the whole thing. There were a ton of cardinals buried in the cathedral and apparently their hats are hung above their graves when they die. The hats are red (cardinal actually is a more appropriate description... ironic, no?) and look like the traditional chinese laborer hats but with long red tassels. Que chic. We also toured a sword making factory... and some other stuff... I'll have to look at my pictures to remember. The best part of the tour was the guide telling us that there are 16(?) cathedrals in the relatively small city of Toledo.. hence the phrase "holy Toledo". Good times.
The second day we saw the Royal Palace and a museum of Spanish art. Both tours were pretty much a whirlwind of royal stuff... Luckily we had the afternoon free. My friends and I walked to the Plaza Mayor and ate lunch at the Museum of Ham. I kid you not, there is a chain restaurant in Spain called Museum of Ham. They also have ham flavored ruffles. Luckily there was also a Ben and Jerrys in the plaza and we waited 20 minutes for it to reopen after siesta. Then we watched male pigeons try to impress mates while we ate our ice cream. I really thought the day could not possibly get any better, but then it did. We went to the modern art museum. Unfortunately the Picasso exhibit was closed but there were 4 full floors of other art to see. I even saw a few Dalis. For only 3 euro it was a perfect way to spend an afternoon.
The next day we went to Segovia. After we climbed on the bus our group leader told us that Segovia is the coldest city in Spain. And it was raining there. Somehow they failed to give us this information ahead of time and left it off the info packet they handed out... which was great since I left my extra layer and umbrella in the hotel room. After we all stopped whining about the cold and rain the tour of the summer palace was pretty interesting. The palace was fairly plain because the king who built it said he wanted to build a hut for himself and a palace for God (don't ask which king I don't remember). That was great but made for a boring tour, except for the tombs. There was a separate tomb for the kings and queens, but only the queens who bore the first son and future king were buried there. Next to it was the rotting room where the dead bodies rotted for about 4 months before they were buried. The second tomb was for the rest of the royal family, like the other wives of the kings and what not. Those tombs were actually cooler since most of them had a unique statue above the granite box holding the body and the royal tomb was all generic granite coffins. The third tomb was for all the children who died. They buried them in a big granite layer cake, because it was "mas dulce" (sweeter). It was the most creepy morbid thing I have ever seen, and I love cake.
After lunch (and a coffee break) we saw the roman aqueduct. It was built without cement, just with perfectly calculated shaped stones in arches. The story of the aqueduct is that the devil fell in love with a Segovian girl who was a servant in one of the homes in the town. Every night the girl had to go fetch water from the river. One night there was a big fiesta and the girl was sad because she had to go fetch water while everyone else was drinking and dancing and doing what the Spanish do best, besides being extremely slow and relaxed. The devil promised he would build the girl an aqueduct in one night so that she could fiesta with everyone else, and in exchange she just had to sell him her soul. Sweet deal. The servant girl thought so too and agreed, but soon realized what she had done. She ran to the priest in the town and spent the whole night praying that the devil would not finish the aqueduct by morning so she could keep her soul and as the dawn broke the devil was just about to put in the last stone, which was still missing from the aqueduct. So the girl kept her soul AND she didn't have to walk all the way to the river anymore. How fortuitous.
After the aqueduct we went to see the castle that inspired the Sleeping Beauty castle. It was the castle of Isabel la Catholica and Ferdinand. They had many castles, but this was the one they really called home. I thought it looked more like a palace than a castle since it wasn't very fortress-ish. I also thought they should have had central heating. The best/worst part was climbing to the top of the tower. The view was amazing but it required climbing an extremely narrow winding spiral staircase which we learned was both the way up and down. We took some fun pictures at the top and saw the amazing view and then very slowly made our way back down and to the bus. We were excited to get home earlier than planned and take a nap before going out.
For our last night in Madrid we saved up some money and went to Kapital, the relatively famous nightclub. It had "seven stories of pure entertainment". The bottom floor had European club/house music which just makes me laugh, but it also had this machine that shot HUGE gusts of what looked like fog but was thicker and cold on to the dance floor periodically. I'll try to upload the video at some point, it was so cool! They dropped confetti once also. Other floors had hip hop music, salsa music, a lounge and kareoke. All the floors had creepy Spanish men. The only bad part of the night was constantly playing stay away from the gross men. Usually speaking German confused them enough to make them go away. Except the one from Berlin, someone always has to rain on my parade. The club itself was amazing, definitely worth all the hype and the expense. Entrance did come with a free drink and a free thong though. Gotta love Europe...